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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
NFL Week 6: Vikings hope to draw inspiration from team orgy. Plus: Fox hates baseball, exhibit 3,442.
Oct 14, 2005 | The big news in the NFL this week was allegations that 17 Minnesota Vikings players chartered a pair of yachts, stocked it with call girls and strippers and had a sex party on Lake Minnetonka until the boats' disgusted, fearful crews returned to shore early.
Either that or Ben Roethlisberger's injured knee, but we're running a business here and we need page views.
Crew members have said they had to step around people having sex and that they felt intimidated by football players demanding that the alcohol flow more quickly. Female crew members say they were propositioned aggressively. There are also charges that some of the players urinated on a nearby lawn.
The Hennepin County Sheriff's Department is investigating and pondering charges of prostitution and lewd behavior. All players involved have either refused comment or denied the charges.
The Vikings released a terse statement saying they're waiting for more facts, and head coach Mike Tice, already under fire after the team's 1-3 start, said he's not too happy about the whole thing. New owner Zygi Wilf, who's been silent, can't be pleased either. This sort of thing doesn't exactly grease the skids for the new stadium deal he's trying to get from the state.
NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who pressured ESPN into dropping its soap opera "Playmakers" because he said the show inaccurately portrayed NFL players as hard-drinking, crack-smoking, wife-abusing, groupie-fondling reprobates, gave the go-ahead for the show to resume production.
Not really, but I have to wonder what's becoming of the NFL. I mean, this is outrageous.
You're an NFL player. You risk your health, your future, even your life every Sunday. On the field you're in the equivalent of two or three dozen car wrecks every week. For the entertainment of the masses, you're likely to spend your middle age and senior years in debilitating pain before dying younger than average.
And you can't have a sex party on a yacht? You can't fly in a stripper or two from Florida for some moonlight-on-the-water lap dancing? You can't intimidate and threaten a few pencil-necked bartenders, pee on a lawn or two, aggressively proposition the odd waitress who's trapped at the job site because it's a boat?
Good grief. The Vikings have to be thinking, "Why play football at all?" Of course, they seem to have been thinking that all season.
