Vote a Player off the Ship

In light of the boring off-season period, for the next 10-weeks we are going to try something fun. Each of the next 10-weeks we will vote to kick one Vikings player off the ship. Someone you think is the weakest link...or maybe just dislike.

Each following week, I'll repost the poll with one less player and the process will start all over again! So we'll start with ten and end up that you will have to make a choice between two players! We'll select the one player you cannot live without. That one player that gives you the most confidence each time you see him in purple. Who will it be!?!?

The result of Week One was that Chris Hovan was voted off the ship with a mandate. 70% of you told poor, misunderstood Chris to shove it.

In Week Two you showed that Vikings fans can hold grudges. For years. With almost 60% of the vote, you gave the finger to Morten Andersen. Who can forget the 1998 NFC Championship game?

Well, we couldn't and it is bye-bye Morten.

Week Three saw the closest voting to date with loquacious Kelly Campbell getting the boot by just a few votes over E. J. Henderson.

Week Four did finally put an end to swabbing the poop deck chores for E. J. Henderson. In spite of Randy Moss being traded to the Raiders, Henderson easily was voted off with nearly 60% of the vote.

In Week Five, you elected to boot Michael Bennett. Maybe an early indication that you expect him to be traded before the April draft. You did this despite the fact that Randy Moss is now longer a Viking yet remains on the ship for another week.

Who will be booted in Week Six? Wouldn't it be soemthing if Moss hung around until the last week and had to go toe-to-toe with Daunte Culpepper or Kevin Williams? We'll see what the voters have to think.

Voting will be open until Wednesday morning (3/16). Make your vote count!

Sharpen that Pencil Tice

Sung to Two Tickets to Paradise

I've got two tickets at twice the price.
Make your check out to Coach Mike Tice.
I've got two tickets at twice the price.
I've got two tickets at twice the price.

You know, back after the season ended I thought to myself, "How can I possibly find anything to write about daily for this blog?" I forgot that the team I cover is the Minnesota Vikings. I could do multiple entries each day if I chose to do so.

As I posted last night, Don Banks and George Dohrmann of Sports Illustrated report that Tice is under investigation for allegedly heading up and profiting from a Super Bowl ticket-scalping ring within the Vikings organization.

Apparently it is very common that NFL players and personnel routinely buy Super Bowl tickets and re-sell them at a profit. The profit, which can be $2,000 to $3,000 per seat, seldom if ever is acknowledged as taxable income.

Tice reportedly was doing more than re-selling his own tickets at a profit. Instead, he was brokering the sale of his players' tickets and then pocketing a piece of the action. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that, per an anonymous informant who reported Tice to the league office, the coach traveled to Chicago on January 19 with his cache of tickets and returned with $250,000 in cash. But as the story states, Tice was not in Chicago on that date and has proof.

Yes, Tice is drawing the focus of NFL Security, but he's hardly the only violator.

"A lot of teams do it," an NFL assistant who once worked for the Vikings told Banks and Dohrmann. "Everybody can do it. Every team has a guy who takes care of moving the tickets. I'd hate to see it end because coaches have always used that as extra money. Coaches do count on that as a little extra deal. [Team] owners will probably stop doing it now, because they don't have to give us those tickets."

Tice acknowledges that he has been questioned, but he denies any wrongdoing. "They were in there here talking to me and others about how we deal with our Super Bowl tickets, and how they're distributed,'' Tice said. “I'm confident when the league finishes looking at this, everything will come out fine. It's a shame assumptions are being made about my role in this. I did not approach any player about Super Bowl tickets as head coach of the Minnesota Vikings.''

However, the Banks and Dohrmann narrative lays out a fairly critical indictment against Tice, which could induce some type of injunction by the league office. Not to mention a not so friendly phone call Tice should expect from the Internal Revenue Service.

Think this is not a big deal? Think again. Consider the experiences of several NBA referees, who faced suit in the 1990s for converting their first-class airfare to coach, pocketing the difference, and not declaring it as income.

Then on January 1, the NBA began withholding taxes from referee's wages for the two complimentary premium tickets they are eligible to receive for each game they work represent income. Officials who accept the free tickets for every game they work will realize more than $25,000 in additional annual income.

The Banks and Dohrmann story also does not explicitly address a key question that instantaneously came to mind when this story broke.

Who turned him in?

One has to think it was a player who Tice recently pissed off, and seemingly someone who was in the club long enough to observe Tice's demeanor in the past few years.

So here’s my short list of people secretly laughing at Ol’ Pencil Ear today:

• Randy Moss
• Larry Ned
• Terrance Shaw
• Rhett Nelson
• Cory Withrow
• Kenny Clark
• Chris Hovan

Tice couldn't stand Moss, and it's possible that Moss opted to convey his disdain for getting belittled by the head coach by making a shadowy report to the league office regarding Tice's activities.

Hovan was put on the inactive list several times this past season by Tice. On a Monday Night Football half-time expose', Tice openly criticized Hovan for the entire nation to see. And a hooded sweatshirt Hovan strikes me as the kind of guy who would look for a way to exact a little retribution against Tice.

Or could it be Ned? Picture this. Ned sits in jail for his recent escapade at Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix and decides to work a deal with the local authorities and NFL investigators. In exchange for leniency, Ned will give up a Big Fish involved in a much bigger game. Namely Tice.

In any event, Tice should engage a fine lawyer, buttress himself for the ride of his life, and get his resume in order.

I leave you with this quote:

"Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid." -- Heinrich Heine

From the Sidelines

The Wife® had a story published in the STrib today. Give it a read.

Posted by maasx003 at March 9, 2005 07:25 AM | TrackBack