ICYMI Sports | Bud Grant: Vikings wanted me to replace Mike Tice in 2004

March 07, 2026

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Hold on a second… the late, all-time great, Bud Grant revealed that the Vikings wanted him to replace Mike Tice back in 2004.

Shocked yet??

Grant would have been 78 and well-compensated

Grant broke the news in his book, “I Did It My Way.” Grant writes that he would have accepted the job if the Vikings had offered him a lot more money.

According to the Pioneer Press, Red McCombs, who owned the Vikings at the time, offered Grant the same salary that Tice was making. Tice was the lowest-paid coach in the league, so Grant told McCombs that he would take the job for $1 less than the highest-paid coach in the league.

The report says the counteroffer fell far short.

“I would have come back,” Grant wrote in his book. “I thought the Vikings had a pretty good team, and returning to coaching was kind of an exciting thought. The money would have been good, and I thought it might be fun to come back to coaching — for a short time, anyway. It certainly would have been exciting to do at 78 years old.”

Grant led the Vikings to 11 division championships and four Super Bowls during his head coaching days (1967-83, 1985).

For the record, Tice and the Vikings reached the playoffs with an 8-8 record and went on to upset the Packers at Lambeau Field in the Wild Card round of the playoffs.

Grant was one of the best coaches to ever walk the NFL sideline. Would he have taken Daunte Culpepper and Randy Moss to higher levels of playoff success?

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