EAGAN, Minn. (AP) — The comfortable life Nolan Teasley was living after college left him unfulfilled, and he could clearly see what was missing: football.
Encouraged by his wife to rediscover his passion for the sport, Teasley diligently sent letters to all 32 clubs in the NFL in pursuit of career satisfaction over the benefits and security his work in marketing provided.
The Seattle Seahawks were the only one willing to listen. After 13 years with his home state team, Teasley is departing with two Super Bowl rings and a dream job as general manager of the Minnesota Vikings.
“It was always going to take a special opportunity to leave a special place in Seattle," Teasley said Wednesday at his introductory news conference at Vikings headquarters. "As I progressed through this process, it became very clear the Minnesota Vikings were just that.”
Having fired Kwesi Adofo-Mensah after four seasons in the role, Vikings ownership appointed executive vice president of football operations Rob Brzezinski as interim GM to steady the ship through free agency and the draft. Brzezinski, a well-regarded salary cap expert and contract negotiator around the league and a revered fixture within the organization, was also one of the five finalists for the job.
The success the Seahawks have had under president of football operations and general manager John Schneider clearly held significant sway for the small circle of Vikings leaders involved in the search, including head coach Kevin O'Connell.
The Seahawks made the playoffs nine times and reached three Super Bowls over the 13 years that Teasley worked for them, winning it all after the 2013 and 2025 seasons without ever bottoming out between two different championship cores.
“That did have a factor to play in it, but again that's got to be along with the person,” Vikings owner and president Mark Wilf said. “The way that Nolan carries himself, his devotion to process and working with others, I think all of that combines.”
Schneider hired Teasley an intern in the scouting department and gave him a full-time position the following year. He was promoted to assistant director of pro personnel in 2017, again to director of pro personnel in 2018, and finally to assistant general manager in 2023.
“The Vikings aren’t just getting a great football mind. They’re getting an exceptional human being — ego-free, values-driven, and one of the best communicators I’ve been around in this business,” Schneider said in a statement issued by the Seahawks.
Teasley, 42, will report directly to ownership along with O'Connell, who's entering his fifth season. Though they're equals on the leadership chart, Teasley will have authority over the roster. Brzezinski, who attended the news conference and was the frequent target of praise from Teasley and Wilf, will work under Teasley and remain in the executive role he's held since 2014. Brzezinski has begun his 28th year with the Vikings.
Seeking stronger collaboration among all facets of their football operations with a general manager skilled in consensus-building between coaches, scouts and researchers, the Vikings were unconcerned about the potential for power struggles over personnel decisions and have raved this week about the combination of expertise and personality they have with Teasley, O'Connell and Brzezinski in their respective areas.
“If it comes to structure, we’ve got a problem, OK?” Wilf said. “The end result is making sure leaders collaborate and work together.”
Teasley, who has four sons with his wife, Morgan, will live outside the state of Washington for the first time in his life. After a standout career at Ellensburg High School, he stayed in town to play running back for Central Washington University before hanging up the cleats following his junior season and graduating with a degree in public relations in 2007.
Nearly two decades later, he's deep in the game he's always loved, tasked with elevating a star-crossed franchise that has yet to win a title despite plenty of regular-season success and has not won a game in the playoffs in seven years.
“Our goals are simple,” Teasley said. "We’re going to build the deepest, most competitive roster possible so we can be at our best in December and January and ultimately work toward winning the Super Bowl this fan base deserves.”
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Minnesota Vikings' new general manager Nolan Teasley talks during an NFL football press conference Wednesday, June 3, 2026 in Eagan, Minn. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)
Minnesota Vikings' new general manager Nolan Teasley, left, talks alongside owner Mark Wilf during an NFL football press conference Wednesday, June 3, 2026 in Eagan, Minn. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)
Minnesota Vikings' new general manager Nolan Teasley talks during an NFL football press conference Wednesday, June 3, 2026 in Eagan, Minn. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)
NEW YORK (AP) — “This is ‘60 Minutes,’” Harry Reasoner announced on Sept. 24, 1968, introducing his new CBS News show alongside fellow correspondent Mike Wallace. “It’s kind of a magazine for television.”
He added: “We do think this is sort of a new approach.”
More than a half-century and 58 seasons later, that same term — “new approach” — is being deployed by CBS News leader Bari Weiss to explain her sweeping changes at the most renowned news program in TV history: firing the top producer and two correspondents, among others, and installing a new chief with no TV broadcast experience. Now, one of the show’s most famous faces, Scott Pelley, is gone too — fired after a tense confrontation with bosses.
“We realize, of course, that new approaches are not always instantly accepted,” Reasoner said on that night in 1968. And Weiss’ “new approach” has been greeted with biting criticism from some corners. Moreover, the turmoil has become a top news story in itself, with competing narratives flying — none of them flattering to CBS News.
The essential question percolating on Wednesday: Where does “60 Minutes” go from here? Can it stop being the story, get back to work and retain its reputation for probing journalism and its legendary success atop the news food chain? Or is its famous ticking timer, as some fear, literally running out?
To one prominent analyst of TV news, it seemed Wednesday that something had already evaporated — if only, perhaps, a long-held perception that “60 Minutes,” which manages to be both old-school and pugnacious, was something essentially untouchable.
“My first response is, it started in 1968 — not a bad run,” said Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture. “Because it really does look like this is systematically deconstructing what (the show) was."
But, he quickly added: “I don’t think we’re writing the obituary of ‘60 Minutes.' I think there’s just too much value and voltage built into that brand.”
He felt, though, that there were concerning signs. The show is suddenly down four correspondents. Three have been dismissed, including Pelley, and Anderson Cooper is leaving of his own accord. There have also been unsettling accusations launched by Pelley. “New management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story,” the correspondent and former evening news anchor contended in a statement Tuesday. “I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified.”
CBS News denied the charge. “There is no political interference at CBS News, not from ownership, not from Bari Weiss," said a statement from a spokesperson Wednesday night. "The only ‘interference’ is the normal back and forth between editor and correspondent that happens in every newsroom.”
To Jeff Fager, former executive producer of “60 Minutes” and author of a book on the show, a major deficit will be the loss of Pelley himself.
“I can’t imagine running ‘60 Minutes’ without Scott,” said Fager, author of “Fifty Years of 60 Minutes: The Inside Story of Television’s Most Influential News Broadcast.”
“His is the most remarkable body of work in the history of the broadcast,” Fager said. “It’s hobbled without him.”
A dizzying week of public airing of dirty laundry continued Wednesday with remarks from Weiss to staff about Pelley’s firing — and Pelley's response to those remarks. In a transcript seen by The Associated Press, Weiss began a morning editorial call by saying she was “only interested in working in a newsroom that is built on trust and mutual respect."
“That foundation was broken on Monday, and despite our attempts to engage with Scott Pelley and to find a way back, unfortunately we weren’t able to do so, and so we had to part ways," Weiss said on the call. "We did not want that to happen, but that’s the path that he chose."
In short order, Pelley countered with his own lengthy description of their meeting. “Bari Weiss knows what she said is not true,” he said in a statement posted by New York Times media reporter Ben Mullin. “In the meeting on Tuesday, in which I was effectively fired, there was no effort to ‘find a way back.’”
Turmoil had been evident at “60 Minutes” for more than a year, after President Donald Trump sued the show over its editing of a 2024 interview with then-Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. It became part of a broader upheaval at CBS News after Weiss was named to the new role of editor-in-chief by parent company Paramount late last year following David Ellison's arrival as the network's corporate leader.
Ellison's company, Skydance, merged with CBS parent company Paramount, which later settled the Trump lawsuit for $16 million, angering some at “60 Minutes" — and indirectly leading to the departure last month of popular CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert, who had called the settlement “a big fat bribe.”
Discord at the show burst into public view last Thursday, when Weiss and CBS News President Tom Cibrowski announced their changes aimed at “building a show that thrives in the 21st century.”
They installed Nick Bilton, a former technology columnist and documentarian, as executive producer, replacing Tanya Simon, a 30-year veteran of the show who’d been in the top job about a year. Also let go were correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi, whose segment about Trump administration deportees in a Salvadoran prison had been abruptly pulled by Weiss before running a month later, and Cecilia Vega.
Four days later, a Monday morning staff meeting exploded into acrimony when Pelley confronted Bilton, saying he had little relevant experience for the job. When Bilton told the meeting that “Bari loves this institution,” Pelley countered, according to accounts of recordings: “She’s murdering ‘60 Minutes.’ She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it and she’s doing exactly that.”
That led to Weiss, Bilton and others calling Pelley in for the Tuesday meeting, after which he was fired. Weiss and Bilton did not answer interview requests Wednesday.
Reaction, though, pinballed across the media industry. “This is David Ellison's ‘60 Minutes’ now,” CNN media critic Brian Stelter wrote in his newsletter Wednesday.
So what does the future look like for the show? In her staff call Wednesday, Weiss praised some of Pelley’s work on recent “unforgettable stories” and promised Bilton would be delivering that kind of work “in season 59 with the amazing team that’s still there and hopefully from some new people that are going to be joining us.”
There was no word on those additions. A much larger question was whether the disarray at “60 Minutes” would prove, over time, to be more political in nature — Pelley and others have accused the new leaders of trying to gain favor with the Trump administration — or more of a generational debate. Weiss and Bilton have presented the changes as necessary to evolve with the times.
Fager, among others, worries about that narrative. The show, he said, has done a good job adapting.
“It hasn’t been running in place — that's such a misunderstanding of the broadcast,” he said. “We adapted on a regular basis. Every time there’s been a new leader, there has been significant evolution."
He acknowledged that some change and evolution is always necessary. But watching the past week's "new approach" unfold, he remains concerned about the show’s overall future.
”I worry about it,” he said. “I’ve always thought it’s fragile, and I don’t take it for granted.”
Jocelyn Noveck covers the intersection of media and entertainment for The Associated Press.
FILE - Dan Rather, center, joined by Harry Reasoner, second from right, and Mike Wallace, right, celebrates his first anniversary as anchorman and managing editor of the CBS Evening News, at a restaurant in New York, March 9, 1982. (AP Photo/Nancy Kaye, File)
FILE - Against a backdrop of the famous "60 Minutes" stop watch, Don Hewitt, the program's creator and executive producer, reads prepared remarks to reporters during a session on "60 Minutes" during CBS' Winter Press Tour in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles, Jan. 17, 2004. (AP Photo/Rene Macura, File)
FILE - Scott Pelley, anchor of "CBS Evening News," at the CBS Upfront in New York, May 15, 2013. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)
FILE - The "60 Minutes" team, from left, Andy Rooney, Morley Safer, Steve Kroft, Mike Wallace, executive producer Don Hewitt, Lesley Stahl, and Ed Bradley pose at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York celebrating their 25th anniversary, on Nov. 10, 1993. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
