MINNEAPOLIS — There’s a half-joke, half-truth adage among local sports journalists that goes something like this: there is always a Minnesota angle to a story.

Minnesota connections have a way of showing up in any large national story ... or scandal ... or trade ... or bit of weird history.

Maybe we look harder for them than others, doling out “one of us” status to anyone famous who had as much as a connecting flight through our Land of 10,000 Lakes.

But it does seem to hold up more often than not. And sometimes you don’t even have to look that hard.

Such was the case this week, when the Vikings and Kevin O’Connell suddenly found themselves in a tentacle of the Dianna Russini story.

Russini has been in all kinds of the wrong headlines in recent months because of her interactions with Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel — a situation that led to her ultimate departure from a high-paid job as an NFL Insider with the Athletic.

An anecdote in a long New York Times article about Russini relayed how, on a podcast appearance, she talked about how she used access to an NFL coach to get out of a traffic ticket for being on her phone while driving.

Guess who that coach was? Yep, O’Connell. We learned that from body cam footage of the traffic stop first reported by the Center Square.

While it doesn’t seem at all that KOC did anything wrong, the revelation is interesting on a number of fronts.

Was O’Connell a primary source for Russini?

In the video, we learned that the officer who pulled her over in New Jersey is a Vikings fan (“unfortunately,” he adds for good measure, as any long-suffering Vikings fan will do). Upon hearing that, Russini pulls out her phone and shows him some text messages she had exchanged with O’Connell — presumably to try to help her get out of a ticket. (It worked, by the way). National writers and local beat writers are often in text-based conversations with the coaches they cover, so there’s nothing strange or untoward about this. But it does raise questions about how much information KOC was sharing with Russini.

Timing is everything

For instance: The traffic stop came on Jan. 19, less than two weeks before Kwesi Adofo-Mensah was fired as GM. Russini was heavily involved in breaking news on that story. Was O’Connell painted in a favorable light in that story because he was giving Russini information? That’s how things work a lot of times with “insider” media culture.

Russini embellished story?

One interesting side note is that the body cam footage appears to contradict Russini’s original telling of the story on a podcast appearance. She said she shared a FaceTime call with the coach, not a string of texts. That’s a minor point, but it does show that the coach (O’Connell, as we later learned) was not an active participant in helping her get out of a ticket.

McCarthy takes a hit

In her interaction with the officer, as they are talking about the Vikings, Russini praises O’Connell but says, “Your quarterback sucks.” This was in January, right after McCarthy’s disappointing season had ended but before Kyler Murray signed, so they are almost certainly talking about McCarthy. It’s fair to wonder how much of Russini’s opinion of the young Vikings QB was influenced by communication with O’Connell. That said, it also doesn’t take anything more than your own eyes and an understanding of football to form a similar, albeit less crude, opinion of McCarthy’s 2025 season.

The takeaway

This is a story with some smoke but not fire. If the officer had been a fan of a different team, Russini likely could have pulled out a text thread from that team’s coach. Ultimately, it raises questions about how Russini used her access to get out of a ticket and how much KOC was a source for her reporting. It was a headline the Vikings, O’Connell and McCarthy didn’t need and not much more.

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