GREEN WILL LEAD VIKINGS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 11, 1992                   TAG: 9201110132
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: EDEN PRAIRIE, MINN.                                LENGTH: Medium
GREEN WILL LEAD VIKINGS
The Minnesota Vikings, who until 1988 were the only NFL team never to have had a black assistant coach, Friday made Dennis Green the second black head coach in modern league history.
Green, 42, replaces Jerry Burns, who resigned after last season. He becomes the fifth coach in the club's 31-year history and joins Art Shell of the Los Angeles Raiders as the NFL's only black head coaches.
"I don't think players are going to look at is as, `We've got the black head coach,' " Green said. "If I treat them all the same, they're going to treat me the same."
The hiring was the first major move by club president Roger Headrick, who a year ago replaced Mike Lynn as the man in charge of the team's daily operations.
Green, who received a five-year contract, was selected ahead of New York Jets defensive coordinator Pete Carroll. It was the second time Green beat out Carroll, who coached the Vikings' defensive backfield from 1985-89; both were finalists for the Stanford job that Green got in 1989.
Headrick said that Green's past head coaching experience gave him the edge over Carroll but that it was even more important to bring about change in an organization that hadn't gone outside to hire a head coach since Bud Grant in 1967.
"He can come in here with the ability not to be bound by the past," Headrick said. "This team needed change."
Last season, Green coached Stanford to an 8-4 record, the school's second winning season since 1980 and Green's only winning year as a head coach. The Cardinal was 3-8 in 1989 and 5-6 in 1990. Green went 10-45 from 1981-85 at Northwestern, where he was the Big Ten's first black head football coach.
Green's only NFL experience came in two stints (1979, 1986-88) as an offensive assistant under then-San Francisco 49ers coach Bill Walsh, who has recommended Green highly.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB