Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Coffee (talk | contribs) at 11:33, 19 December 2019 (→Biography: a media sharing site is not a reliable source... nor is a random person's Facebook post (which is what this reference points to) ... as such also removing outlandish claim and tagging with cn). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Max Winter" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Max Winter (June 29, 1903 – July 26, 1996) was a Minneapolis businessman and sport executive.

Biography

Winter was born in Ostrava, Austria-Hungary. He emigrated with his family and settled in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He graduated from North High School in Minneapolis in 1922 (see North High Polaris for 1922). He attended Hamline University on a basketball scholarship.

Winter opened The 620 Club in 1934 with his brother Henry and boxing manager/promoter Ernie Fliegel as equal partners. Located at 620 Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis, the restaurant specialized in turkey and closed in 1971.

In 1947, Winter became part owner with Ben Berger, Sid Hartman, and Morris Chalfen and assumed the general manager duties of the new Minneapolis Lakers in the National Basketball League. By the mid-1950s, Winter was interested in attracting a pro football team to Minneapolis. He attempted to get an expansion team in the National Football League; when that failed Winter and his partners joined with the newly created American Football League in the fall of 1959.

By 1960, with creation of the AFL, the NFL decided to expand to both Dallas and Minneapolis-St. Paul. Winter and his group pulled out of the AFL and received an NFL expansion team that began in the 1961 season. The team was named the Minnesota Vikings on September 27, 1960.

Winter remained on the Vikings board of directors until 1989. He served as team president from 1965-87. In 1985, Winter shocked and angered his fellow Vikings owners when he attempted to sell his share of the team to Irwin L. Jacobs and Carl Pohlad. The case went to the Minnesota Supreme Court and finally was settled in Winter's favor.

Legacy

The Minnesota Vikings headquarters and training facility in Eden Prairie, Minnesota is named Winter Park, in honor of Max Winter.

References

This business-related Austrian biographical article is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e

• Hamline Pipers men's basketball players
• 1903 births
• 1996 deaths
• Austro-Hungarian emigrants to the United States
• American men's basketball players
• Jewish American sportspeople
• European business biography stubs
• Austrian people stubs