Tom Clancy Almost Bought NFL Team
Prolific author Tom Clancy came close to becoming an NFL owner
Clancy, who died earlier this week, actually submitted the winning $200 million offer for the Minnesota Vikings in February 1998, but the sale fell through apparently because of cash flow issues and Clancy’s contentious divorce.
Ironically perhaps, the Vikings were wiped out in a Super Bowl terrorist attack in his 1991 book The Sum of All Fears, which Clancy called “an embarrassing coincidence.”
Reportedly, Clancy was involved in two failed attempts at NFL ownership, once in trying to buy the New England Patriots and another in attempting to bring the Los Angles Rams to Baltimore.
At the time of the Vikings transaction, there were also concerns that Clancy’s ownership group might move to the team away from the Twin Cities, a contention that Clancy strongly denied.
The best-selling spy novelist already owned a minority interest in the MLB Baltimore Orioles, but he was also a big football fan. Clancy, 66, passed away at a Baltimore hospital from as-yet unspecified causes.
Clancy’s effort to close on the sale ran into some complications, however, according to Deadspin: “The NFL was concerned that Clancy didn’t have enough money to follow through on his purchase, even after he claimed to secure $100 million worth of additional financing from Citicorp. He had also brought in as a partner Rockets owner Leslie Alexander, who many Minnesotans believed wanted to eventually buy out Clancy and move the team to Houston… The real problem was in a courtroom. Clancy was in the middle of an acrimonious divorce from his wife of 29 years.”
Tom Clancy withdrew his bid for the Vikings in late May 1998. Texas businessman Red McCombs wound up buying the team later that year, and in 2005 he sold it to a group headed by real estate developer Zygi Wilf.
Wanda Clancy came out of the divorce in early 1999 with a 50 percent share of Jack Ryan Enterprises ( a company named after the hero of many of Clancy’s thrillers) along with half of Clancy’s Orioles interest.
Actor Alec Baldwin, who played Ryan in the 1990 film version of The Hunt for Red October, described the lateTom Clancy as “smart, a great story teller, and a real gentlemen.”
[image credit: Kevind810]
