"No quit in Tice, who shows how it's done"

By BOB SANSEVERE

Pioneer Press Columnist


His contract signed, his news conference completed, Antoine Winfield
was walking down a hallway when he saw his old coach from Buffalo,
Ted Cottrell, now the Vikings' defensive coordinator. Winfield
smiled. It was big and broad, the smile you see on lottery winners
and first-time papas. Winfield and Cottrell hustled toward each
other. They hugged.

"I cannot wait," Winfield said to Cottrell.

"Me either," Cottrell said back, his smile just as big and broad as
Winfield's.

The gloom that had wafted over the Vikings a day earlier was gone,
replaced by the kind of sheer joy that comes with getting what you
want, what you really want.

The Vikings really wanted Winfield, a shutdown cornerback who can
help win games, and now here it was late Friday afternoon and he was
theirs.

It didn't look like it would play out this way 20 hours earlier. As
the clock pushed toward 8 p.m. Thursday, Vikings coach Mike Tice
watched a TV report that said Winfield had agreed to a deal with the
New York Jets. The Jets already were making plans for a Friday
morning news conference to introduce Winfield as their new shutdown
corner.

"I wasn't a little low," Tice said. "I was big low."

But Tice did something his players need to learn how to do. He never
let up. He never quit.

"In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, it ain't over 'til it's over,"
Tice said.

He showed a determination and resilience that would have put his
players in the postseason if they had anything resembling it.

Tice didn't let the ball get caught in the end zone on the final play
this time. He intercepted it and went 100 yards the other way to get
the win.

"And then I got a $5,000 fine for spiking the ball in their face,"
Tice said, laughing.

Tice never stopped trying to call Winfield's agent Thursday. When he
got through, he persuaded Winfield to take a late flight to
Minnesota. Tice sent a friend's private jet to Long Island to fetch
Winfield, his wife and his two agents out from under the Jets.

"I didn't feel good until he was in a limo and on the way to the
airport," Tice said.

Once Winfield was in Minnesota, Tice and Cottrell and director of
football operations Rob Brzezinski — and others, too — offered this
young cornerback and his wife the kind of security, financial and
otherwise, they weren't finding with the Jets.

"When I got off the plane and saw the snow, I said, 'This is home,' "
Winfield said.

He felt better, and his wife, Erniece, did, too. There was something
about living on Long Island, where the Jets practice, that just
didn't feel right.

"She didn't like Long Island," said Tice, who grew up
there. "Obviously, she liked a Long Islander."

A lot of people liked what had just happened. Gov. Tim Pawlenty's
policy manager, Ward Einess, put in a call to Lester Bagley, who is
overseeing the Vikings' stadium push.

"He said signing Winfield could help the stadium effort," Bagley
said. "He said it shows we're committed to being successful and that
we're committed to Minnesota."

And now the Vikings players need to show a commitment to never
letting up, to doing just as their coach did in his pursuit of
Antoine Winfield.