![]() Something about wanting to make sure everybody else got the credit.įinks was still out of football when Benson, an automobile dealer and banker, bought the New Orleans Saints in the summer of 1985. On the day they actually clinched the East Division title, he was nowhere to be found. In the interim, he served as president of the Chicago Cubs, who in 1984 happened to win their first championship in 39 years. Before he left in 1983, he had acquired 19 of the 22 starters for the Bear team that won the Super Bowl in 1985. In the previous three years, they had gone 13-28-1.īy 1977, they were in the playoffs. So, in 1974 he took over the Chicago Bears, who had not won a championship in 11 years. “He always has to have those challenges.” “Once things reach status quo, my dad feels he has to move on,” Jim Finks Jr. Except that Finks was around for only two of those big games. Three years later the Vikings were in the first of their four Super Bowls with Finks-built teams. Instead of panicking, he spent three years building, then hired Bud Grant. When Finks joined the Minnesota Vikings for his first NFL general manager’s job in 1964, they had gone 10-30-2 in their previous three seasons. “That guy could talk a dog off a meat truck.” “During all of our ups and downs in New Orleans, he has been our one constant,” Miller said.įinks is no more complicated than his sayings, which co-workers scribble on notepads for posterity. It was this sort of emotional balance that helped Finks in professional football jobs that have included quarterback, assistant coach, scout and general manager. He quietly boarded a plane the next day and returned to New Orleans. Tom Benson, owner of the Saints, pleaded with him to publicly decry the rebel owners. Finks was defeated by three votes, lawyer Paul Tagliabue carrying the day. On July 6, he gathered his wife and four children at an airport hotel in Chicago for the election and subsequent celebration.īut an uprising by the league’s newer owners, who wanted more than one candidate strictly on principal, canceled the party. That year he was the only candidate recommended by a search committee as the new commissioner of the NFL. ![]() Reading those pulses helped the plain-speaking Finks rise from his rural roots in Salem, Ill., to the top of the sports world in 1989. “The man wants to know how I’m feeling? Even now, it’s like he has his finger on everyone else’s pulse.” “Only Jim could pull something like that off,” he said. A close friend, Paul Buckley, called him at home last month, and Finks said, “Hey Paul, how are you feeling?”īuckley, general manager of a New Orleans hotel, later laughed about the exchange. God forbid,” said Marie Knutson, president of the 2,000-member Saints’ booster club.įinks, though, remains Finks. “From a fan’s standpoint, if we should lose him. Many Saints fan are even having Masses said for his recovery. “Everybody has been very concerned,” said Don Shula, Miami Dolphin coach. The first order of business at the June owners meetings in Atlanta was a full report on Finks’ condition. “Dad is at his best when he could most easily knuckle under,” said Jim Finks Jr. ![]() After watching him lead the failing Minnesota Vikings, Chicago Bears and Saints to unexpected success, the football world is hoping that he can now use that same magic on himself.
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