and bought another former ABA team, the Denver Nuggets. He held onto the team until 1985, when he sold it to Sidney Shlenker. In 1998, McCombs bought the Minnesota Vikings for US$250 million. After an unsuccessful attempt to replace the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, McCombs sold the team to new (and current) owner Zygi Wilf before the 2005 NFL season. McCombs was also actively involved in thoroughbred racing and breeding for many years as a major partner in Walmac Farm, a leading American breeding farm, in Lexington, Kentucky. McCombs was one of the first investors of the Circuit of the Americas. In December 2020 he got his 'own' corner called 'Big Red'. Controversy McCombs owned a piece of property surrounded by National Forest near Wolf Creek ski area, a resort in southern Colorado owned by the Pitcher family. McCombs had long wanted to develop a resort community on his property, a plan that has drawn opposition and lawsuits from environmentalists and surrounding communities. McCombs had been unsuccessful in his attempts to convince the court to remove a key roadblock preventing his proposed development. McCombs then attempted to build a casino resort at Navajo Canyon on Lake Powell. The local Navajo Nation chapters, local government officials, all unanimously rejected the casino proposal and any projects by McCombs. In 2013, McCombs was found by the United States Supreme Court to have engaged in a sham tax avoidance transaction and was therefore liable for a valuation misstatement penalty. McCombs severely criticized the 2014 University of Texas hire of Charlie Strong as football coach. He described Strong as "great position coach ... not on a par with other candidates." Three days later he apologized and pledged "total support" for Strong. Personal life and death McCombs was a reformed alcoholic, who could "handle his social drinking" until the age of 48, when overcome with convulsions he went into a five-day coma at a medical facility in Houston. McCombs said in a Christmas 2016 interview, "God was good to me and for whatever reason wanted me to live, because I was really dead when I left in 1975 to go to Houston on that medical plane. They told Charline, 'Go ahead and start making arrangements because we are losing him.'" McCombs said that he recovered and never again had a desire for alcohol. The McCombs Foundation has donated more than $118 million to charity. It is