{"id":28775,"date":"2015-01-22T16:52:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-22T16:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/vikings-first-draft-pick-mason-dies\/"},"modified":"2015-01-22T16:52:00","modified_gmt":"2015-01-22T16:52:00","slug":"vikings-first-draft-pick-mason-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/vikings-first-draft-pick-mason-dies\/","title":{"rendered":"Vikings&#8217; first draft pick Mason dies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Eden Prairie, MN (SportsNetwork.com) &#8211; The Minnesota Vikings announced Thursday that the club&#8217;s first-ever draft pick, running back Tommy Mason, died at the age of 75.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Tommy was an enormous talent. He was a great player, a humble man and an outstanding teammate. I will always cherish the years I spent with Tommy,&#8221; said former quarterback and franchise icon Fran Tarkenton.<\/p>\n<p>Mason starred at Tulane before the expansion Minnesota club took him with the first-overall selection of the 1961 draft. He was also the franchise&#8217;s first All-Pro selection in 1963.<\/p>\n<p>The Louisiana native totaled 3,252 yards and 28 touchdowns over 70 appearances in six seasons for the Vikes (1961-66). He also suited up for the Rams (1967-70) and Redskins (1971).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eden Prairie, MN (SportsNetwork.com) &#8211; The Minnesota Vikings announced Thursday that the club&#8217;s first-ever draft pick, running back Tommy Mason, died at the age of 75. &#8220;Tommy was an enormous talent. He was a great player, a humble man and an outstanding teammate. I will always cherish the years I spent with Tommy,&#8221; said former [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[72,71,73],"class_list":["post-28775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nfl","tag-minnesota","tag-minnesota-vikings","tag-vikings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}