Red McCombs, born in Spur, Texas, attended Southwestern University and the University of Texas at Austin School of Business and School of Law. He left law school in his second year and began his career as a salesman in the automobile business in Corpus Christi in 1950. In 1958 he relocated to San Antonio where he is owner of Red McCombs Automotive. In addition to his auto interests, he is co-founder of Clear Channel Communications and of McCombs Energy in Houston and is active in a variety of other businesses. McCombs has served leadership roles in many national, state, and local organizations including Chamber of Commerce, United Way and San Antonio's World Fair. He formerly served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Southwestern University where he has been honored as Distinguished Alumnus. He is past Chairman of the Board of Visitors of University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Mr. McCombs has chaired many fund drives and community service organizations. He has been honored as Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Texas at Austin. He has also been honored with numerous local, state, and national recognitions including the San Antonio Business Hall of Fame, the National Automobile Dealers Hall of Fame, the Texas Business Hall of Fame, and the National Football College Hall of Fame.
In the past, Mr. McCombs was the owner of the Minnesota Vikings, an NFL franchise based in Minneapolis/St. Paul. In addition, he has owned the San Antonio Spurs, a National Basketball Association team which he secured for San Antonio in 1972. He also owned the NBA Denver Nuggets which he sold in 1985. At age 25, he purchased his first professional sports team, the Corpus Christi Texas Clippers in the Big State Baseball League. He is the namesake of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin (an honor given in recognition of a fifty million U.S. dollar donation to the University) and was named one of Forbes magazine's 400 richest Americans for the past 10 years. Red McCombs is a world-class entrepreneur. He is a transdisciplinary thinker who has diverse professional experiences in business that spans a broad spectrum, including the automotive industry, communications, sports industry, real estate development, exploration of oil and gas and finally various insurance companies.
