Matthew Coller: The story behind 'Straight Cash, Homie'

A tribute to Randy Moss, 20 years after he dropped his most memorable line.

Minnesota Vikings Randy Moss moons the crowd after scoring a touchdown during the fourth quarter of their game against the Green Bay Packers Sunday, January 9, 2005 at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis. / Dale Guldan / USA TODAY NETWORK

When the Minnesota Vikings first opened TCO Performance Center in 2018, KARE-11 web content creator Dana Thiede went to the new facility to do a story on its debut. While he was working inside the truck, KARE social media manager Bea Chang came running up excitedly with a random Vikings fan by her side.

“There he is!” she told the fan, while pointing at Thiede. “That’s the guy who made your shirt possible.”

The fan, who had driven all the way from Ohio to see TCOPC and take in a Vikings practice, had a shirt with three words on it: “Straight Cash, Homie.”

Thiede took a photo with the fan and told him about how he was responsible for Randy Moss’s famous catchphrase.

Here’s that story…

On January 9, 2005, the Vikings faced off with the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field in the Wild Card round of the playoffs. Early in the fourth quarter, the Vikings held a 24-17 lead and had the ball in Packer territory at the 34-yard line. Quarterback Daunte Culpepper looked to his right and saw that his megastar receiver was going to have man-to-man coverage. Any time an opponent was going to try to stop Moss one-on-one, the play call immediately switched to throwing Moss a deep ball.

As he had done hundreds of times before, Moss left the Packers defender in the dust, flew down the sideline and caught a touchdown that essentially put the game on ice. After reaching the end zone, Moss turned his back to the Packers crowd and pantomimed pulling his pants down.

“That is a disgusting act!” announcer Joe Buck declared.

Moss would later explain that his celebration was a response to Packers fans mooning the opposing team’s bus.

The subsequent days were a circus.

The Vikings owner Red McCombs released a statement demanding FOX remove Buck from the divisional matchup between the Vikings and Eagles. McCombs’s statement said that Buck’s commentary, “suggested a prejudice that surpassed objective reporting.”

FOX responded by saying: “We hope Mr. McCombs enjoys Joe’s play-by-play call Sunday, because he’ll be in the booth.”

Four days after the faux mooning, Moss received a $10,000 fine from the NFL.

Back then, the Vikings had a penchant for bizarre and uncomfortable stories cropping up. Arrests, sex boat parties, Whizzinators, things of that nature. Inside the KARE-11 building, there was concern from some of the sports reporters that players would refuse to talk if they were grilling them about these types of stories, so they would send Thiede down to the Vikings old facility at Winter Park to do the dirty work.

Thiede grew up in New Hope, Minnesota, in the 70s as a Packers fan. Because his parents were educators and had summers off, he would spend the summer months vacationing at their lake place where he would often spend all day reading in a hammock. When he was eight years old, he borrowed a book from his uncle by Packers legend Jerry Kramer and then became obsessed with Green Bay football.

When Thiede started his media career, he landed in Green Bay and then Milwaukee as a producer. In 1992, he returned to Minnesota to produce the 10 o’clock news. Eventually he became a field reporter at KARE, which he describes as, “going out and whipping a story together and talking to interesting people and writing a script and then handing it to one of our famous people and they would say my name at the end.”

On January 13, 2005, Thiede’s dirty-work assignment at Winter Park was to stake out Moss, hoping for comment about the fine that the NFL handed down for the “disgusting act” at Lambeau. He went with general assignment videographer Monica Hanson to see if Moss would talk.

In those days, if a player wasn’t in the locker room, reporters would wait outside the back door of Winter Park for them to come out and walk to their cars. Thiede and the assembled Twin Cities media waited and waited and waited outside that door for Moss. Eventually, the long-time producer realized that Moss wasn’t going to walk out where the reporters were gathered. No, he would try a different way.

“Everyone’s standing around and all the sudden I looked at [Monica] and I say, ‘you know he’s not going to come out this door, right? He’s not coming out this door,’ Thiede told Purple Insider over the phone. “It’s not rocket science. How could Randy get out of the building? The loading dock. Duh!”

Thiede and Hanson walked down the ramp that led up to the locker room door and went around to the loading dock, which was maybe 100 feet away.

“It was the edge of the afternoon and it’s really bright and there’s lots of shadows and all of the sudden I’m looking up at the dock and the door opens and here comes a very tall, thin man with a the hood drawn around his head,” Thiede said. I looked at [Monica] and said, ‘here we go!’ She rolled it.”

As Moss approached his truck, Thiede called out to Moss. Here was the exchange:

THIEDE: "Write the check yet, Randy?"

MOSS: "When you're rich, you don't write checks."

THIEDE: "How do you pay, man?"

MOSS: Huh?

THIEDE: "If you don't write checks, how do you pay these guys?"

MOSS: "Straight cash, homie."

Boom. Iconic. But why ask Moss the question that way?

Thiede has an explanation.

During all those years that he spent doing field reporting, he was always asking questions but his questions would never appear on the reports, so he learned to be conversational with interview subjects in front of the camera. And when it wasn’t a serious subject, he would often joke around and keep things light. Because he was more of a news reporter, he viewed the Moss mooning as a hilarious turn of events, not something that needed to be treated like a serious news story.

He also had enough exposure to Moss to get a sense for his personality. He knew that the superstar wide receiver had a good sense of humor, so he tried to tap into that.

“One thing I learned about Randy is that you didn’t deal with him the same way you dealt with other people,” Thiede said. “You were playful and had fun because he couldn’t stop himself. He was a fun guy. God, he was a fun guy to cover. I always found in the interactions that I had with him, he always responded a lot differently and was a lot more engaging when you had fun with him. That was the intent.”

Thiede and Hanson knew exactly what they had when they jumped back in the KARE truck and headed to the studio. Pure gold.

Dana Thiede with a fan who wore a “Straight Cash, Homie” shirt. / Bea Change

When they arrived, Thiede told senior executive producer Lonnie Hartley that he had something to show him. They put the tape into to logging bay, turned up the volume and played it.

“[Lonnie] was not a guy who usually laughed but he started laughing and kept laughing until tears were pouring out of his eyes,” Thiede said. “He shouts, ‘hey guys come back here and look at this!’ All the sudden you have a logging room and there’s 25 people packed in and we’re playing it over and over and everyone is laughing. It exploded after that.”

KARE played it on TV over and over for the rest of the week. It blew up after that and stood out as one of the moments that defined Moss’s time in Minnesota.

What’s fascinating about “Straight Cash, Homie,” is that it has had staying power. How many events from 20 years ago, no matter how memorable, still resonate like that?

“People just loved it,” Thiede said.

They still do. On Sunday when the Vikings play the Packers at US Bank Stadium, it’s an absolute guarantee that there will be fans in the crowd with the “Straight Cash, Homie,” shirt. ESPN has used the phrase as a segment on NFL Countdown, which features Moss as an analyst.

Thiede said that every time the saying appears on TV during an ESPN segment or on an anniversary, his phone will blow up with friends and family reminding him that he was the one who asked Moss the question.

“It was a fun part of my life,” Thiede said. “I’ve won Emmys and in 2005 I won the Edward R. Murrow award for the best large-market writer in America but I will never be known for those things. In 33 years of work, that is the singular moment that people associate with me and I’m totally good with it. It was great to be a part of.”

His wife, naturally, thinks he deserved a little more credit for Moss’s famous moment.

“If you talk to her though, every time it comes up she rolls her eyes and says, ‘that guy owes you some money,’ and I’m like, ‘honey, take it easy,’” Thiede said laughing. “That’s her thing.”

Thiede has never had a chance to talk to Moss about it and relive that moment. He’s hoping to do that someday.

When the Vikings play the Packers at US Bank Stadium on Sunday, Thiede will be rooting for Green Bay. He will also be rooting for Moss and missing him on ESPN. Two weeks ago, the Vikings legend announced that he’s battling cancer.

“You want to talk about a great success story,” Thiede said. “For him to elevate to a role like [on ESPN] to show that he’s smart, he’s funny, and be the shining star of that program — that’s how I warm up on Sunday’s before football is by watching Randy.”

And if you were wondering, yes, Thiede does own a “Straight Cash, Homie,” T-shirt.