On Sunday, the Vikings memorialized Bud Grant. On Monday, at the league's spring meetings, the NFL conjured a sentence the Hall of Famer could not have comprehended when he was coaching:
"NFL owners flew their private jets to Minnesota to attend league meetings at the luxury hotel adjacent to the Vikings' massive headquarters and practice facilities in Eagan, as franchise values edged toward $10 billion."
When Minnesota hosted the Super Bowl for the first time, following the 1991 season, the Vikings were based in Eden Prairie, at Winter Park. When they wanted to practice inside, they would inflate a 40-yard bubble that precluded punting and throwing long passes.
Sunday, Vikings coach Kevin O'Connell said Grant would tease him about having 22 coaches on his staff. Grant had four. This week's meetings at the Omni Viking Lakes Hotel on the team's campus offer a similar reminder of the league's growth, and dominance of the North American sports landscape.
You can bash the NFL for disregarding player health and failing to hire a reasonable number of diverse head coaches and general managers. In fact, you should.
But these meetings and their setting provide a reminder that NFL owners through the years, guided by former Commissioner Pete Rozelle's template, run the shrewdest operation in sports.
Former Vikings coach Leslie Frazier, who is taking a year off as Buffalo Bills defensive coordinator, was in the lobby on Monday. He starred for the 1985 Bears who won the Super Bowl.
"I was just talking to one of my old teammates in Chicago this week," Frazier said. "We were talking about what our facility was like, compared to some of these facilities today. It's hard to believe that we functioned, and had the success we did, under those conditions.