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Red McCombs
The Man, The Money and The Mission
How Texas Entrepreneur Red McCombs Came to be
our Angel Investor
By Pam Losefsky
The first time you hear Red McCombs’ voice, you will immediately know why he is so successful. You can’t help but pay attention to his thunderous baritone, naturally projecting itself beyond the boundaries of the dais. It overpowers the microphone and transfixes the audience. Heads turn, people fall silent, eyebrows rise in expectation. Opera singers would kill for projection like that.
Even without super-charged doses of business savvy and small-town Texas charm, that God-given megaphone of a voice was sure to take him places. If he had chosen acting, he’d have become a Broadway sensation; preaching, and he’d have converted multitudes; but Red McCombs chose business, and the money has piled up ever since.
And just how much money are we talking about? Well, Forbes ranks him among the top 400 wealthiest people in the United States in its October 9 issue, with a net worth of $1.7 billion. “But it is interesting that money has never been a goal of mine,” says McCombs. “My goal was to be one of the guys that made the decisions. I wanted to be the best at whatever it was I was doing, and the money has just been a by-product of that.”
Born in 1927 with a head for business in the tiny West Texas town of Spur, by the time he was ten, Billy Joe ‘Red’ McCombs knew he would be successful. He remembers, “I had a little business selling peanuts and it backfired on me. I had a milk bucket full of nickels, but it took all the nickels to pay for all the peanuts. I could very easily figure out what it would take to make it successful, and I corrected it and it was successful.” That was a basic lesson learned at a very young age, but McCombs has built on it throughout his entire life.
“Of all the business people I know,” says Marty Wender, a good friend of McCombs and a San Antonio real estate developer, “he has the best business sense and the ability to analyze a situation quicker than anybody.” Lowry Mays, who co-founded Clear Channel Communications with McCombs in 1972, calls Red a focused risk taker. “He’s got a keen eye for a good deal.” McCombs is also just a natural-born salesman.
Simple horse sense, a keen eye, a winning sales pitch, or whatever it is that Red has, he has it in spades. Name the business and McCombs has probably done it, and done it well: cars and trucks, sports franchises, insurance, real estate, communications, oil exploration, ranching. While he is often identified with the automobile business, having built a reputation as an astute and forthright businessman in that industry, Red’s reach is wide: in the past 20 years alone he has been involved in over 300 ventures. “He has an insatiable appetite for achieving success in whatever the endeavor,” his wife Charline attests. “With the possible exception of fly fishing, he has never accepted mediocrity in anything he attempts.” And the degree of his success is matched only by the integrity with which he conducts his business. “You’ve got to do business in a way that makes people want to come back,” he says.
McCombs has a long history of building businesses from the ground up—earning every penny the hard way. He began selling Fords on commission while still in college, and by age 25 he had his own dealership. By the early 90s he had transformed that single dealership into the sixth-largest auto conglomerate in the United States. In 1972 he and Lowry Mays bought a couple of radio stations and turned them into Clear Channel Communications, which is now the largest radio and out-of-home advertising company in the U.S. with worldwide operations. An interest in Longhorn cattle led McCombs to create a new marketing approach, advancing the breed’s popularity far beyond Texas borders.
Some people say that he has the Midas touch, but Red disagrees. “I’ve had a lot of things that did not work. I sold a lot of businesses to other people who did very well with them.” But his business philosophy is simple: he’s got to have passion for what he’s doing. If the passion fades and the venture becomes just an investment, it’s time to sell.
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A Passion for Sport
Sports is one passion that McCombs will never lose. A star on
his high school football team, he went to Southwestern
University on a football scholarship—the only way he could
afford college at the time. He bought his first professional
team—a minor league baseball team called the Corpus Christi
Clippers—when he was only 25. He has owned the NBA’s San
Antonio Spurs twice, and is past owner of the Denver Nuggets. In
1998, realizing a life-long ambition, he bought the NFL’s
Minnesota Vikings. “The absolute capping of all his many
careers,” says Charline, “owning an NFL team is his dream come
true.”
For Vikings head coach Dennis Green, the day McCombs bought
the team was his lucky day. “Red’s been a tremendous owner
and a breath of fresh air,” he says. “He’s got a great
love of professional sports and he brings a lot of
experience.” The Vikings, who had been suffering from waning
interest among fans and a long downturn in ticket sales, were in
great need of an infusion of passion.
The day Red bought the team, the NFL was calling him one of the
top five most influential owners, and he has fully lived up to
that expectation. In his first two seasons as owner, the Vikings
posted their best back-to-back winning seasons in the
franchise’s 39-year history. In 1999, the Vikings attracted a
record of over 500,000 fans
to the Metrodome.
“He’s made Purple Pride live again,” declares Green. “He
made the fans realize how important it is for them to express
their feelings for the Vikings.” The Metrodome has become the
NFL’s noisiest stadium. And no one expresses his feelings more
profoundly than Red: he and his entire family—children and
grandchildren—are at every game, swathed in purple.
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More Than Money
Of course it is his wealth that enables McCombs to realize his
dreams on so many levels; but even more impressive than his
financial success is Red McCombs’ incredible heart. “He has
proven that you can combine business and heart and it comes out
the best for everyone,” says his friend Wender. “Red has
been behind anything good that has happened in San Antonio in
the past 40 years.” McCombs has had a hand in bringing
HemisFair to San Antonio in 1968, wooing Seaworld, constructing
the Alamodome, increasing the popularity of basketball,
renovating historic buildings, and getting roads built.
But the city of San Antonio is not the only beneficiary. Many
areas of both UT and Southwestern University have been enriched
by McCombs gifts. In 1997 Red and Charline gave the largest gift
ever to UT women’s athletics—$3 million to fund a new
softball complex. They have supported Kosovar refugees by paying
for medical teams to travel to the war-torn areas of Albania and
Macedonia. The list goes on, but ninety percent of what he does,
says Wender, no one even knows about. While he certainly has
been generous with his dollars, it is what he gives of himself
that really makes the difference. “You want him involved,”
says Wender. “When Red McCombs is involved, he stands behind
it and makes things happen. And he won’t stand for anything
but the best.”
“I don’t think what is so great about him is anything he has
done or created,” adds McCombs’ youngest daughter Connie,
“It is just who he is. My father is the most awesome person,
he is so positive and it is an inspiration.”
The Man, The Money and the Mission Part II
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
