Vikes GM: Wall Street to NFL is 'different canvas, same art'

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com.

Kwesi Adofo-Mensah spent his first eight years out of Princeton on Wall Street, working as a commodities trader and a portfolio manager.

Crossing the country to continue his studies and become an economics professor at Stanford was only the start of a sharp turn on the career path that led him to the NFL.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM

"I was going to wear a tweed jacket and glasses and teach students," Adofo-Mensah said, "and I still had a lot of decision-making left in me. I wanted to be a part of it in a practical sense."

Now he’s the general manager of the Minnesota Vikings, a decidedly unconventional decision by a consistently competitive franchise that has played 61 seasons without winning a championship.

"I know my background is unique, but when you think about this job, the job is about making decisions, building consensus in the building, combining different sources of information into one answer and having everybody behind it," Adofo-Mensah said at his introductory news conference at Vikings headquarters on Thursday. "Along those lines, I don’t think there’s many people more qualified than I am."

The emotional stability that served him well in the volatility that exists in the financial industry, Adofo-Mensah said, comes in handy in the high-intensity, high-stakes world of pro football. The ability to pick the right stocks at the right price is also not all that unlike building an NFL roster through free agency and the draft under a salary cap system.

"It’s just a different canvas with the same art, I’d say," he said.

Though he comes without on-field experience, the 40-year-old Adofo-Mensah has nine seasons in