Vince McMahon Once Considered Purchasing the Minnesota Vikings

Vince McMahon has never been shy about exploring options outside of the WWE, and that curiousity in other business ventures once lead to him exploring the possibility of purchasing an NFL team.

According to Bruce Prichard on Something To Wrestle With, McMahon explored the possibility of purchasing the Minnesota Vikings, at least for publicity's sake.

The Vikings went up for sale in 1998 at a time when the team was incredibly successful. They had a rookie Randy Moss and ran up a 15-1 regular season record on the way to a playoff run that ended in a heartbreaking loss to the Atlanta Falcons in the NFC Championship Game.

McMahon of course passed on making a real bid to purchase the Vikings, though the experience may have prompted him to explore football a little bit deeper with the eventual launch of the XFL a couple years later.

As Prichard tells it, "We didn't know what the hell he was talking about. More than anything it was a publicity stunt because they were floating out there that the Vikings were up for sale and Vince floated it out there that he was interested in it. I dare say that if the price would have been right he might have bought the damn thing for publicity purposes to make it -- okay the WWF just bought the Minnesota Vikings and Vince McMahon is now entering the football arena. So it worked, it got people talking."

McMahon would not have had the personal wealth needed at the time to make a competitive bid for the Vikings, though he could have assembled a group of investors and headed that up.

This is of course not the first time that the Vikings have been connected to the WWE. In 2004, Brock Lesnar left the WWE following WrestleMania XX (and an incredibly forgettable match against Bill Goldberg) and tried out for the Vikings that summer. After participating in training camp, he was unable to make the squad.

In recent years, the stadium that the Vikings play in (US Bank Stadium) has been attempting to land a WrestleMania. Though those attempts have yet to succeed, many feel that the new stadium in Minneapolis may one day host the WWE's biggest show of the year.

[H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.]