Pros and Cons (20 page)

Within weeks after the coaches moved in, Endy started receiving reports from a certain sales representative, a young single woman, that Solomon was making unwanted sexual advances toward her. Over time, the reports increased both in frequency and in severity. “I had known the woman for a couple of years,” Endy said. “During the season, we’d talk on the phone at least twice a week for business-related matters. It was in this context that she made me aware of Solomon’s actions. She wasn’t asking me to do anything about it. She wanted our business. She was just making me aware because we had a mutually respectful relationship.”

But Endy did do something with the information he was receiving. He forwarded the reports directly to his superior, team vice president Jeff Diamond. Endy estimated that at least once a month throughout the spring and summer, he would meet with Diamond and convey what this woman was reporting. Each time they met, Diamond would take notes and would ask Endy if he had ever witnessed firsthand the reported harassment. “I was always up front with Jeff,” Endy said. “I told him that I never personally witnessed this stuff, but that I was merely forwarding along this woman’s reports. I had known her for over two years and had no reason whatsoever to doubt her.”

Then in the preseason, the nature of the woman’s complaints changed from mere verbal harassment to physical assault. “When she called me she was crying,” Endy said, referring to a call the woman made to him in August of 1992. “It was the first time that had ever happened. She went on to tell me that Solomon had come into her office, thrown her up against the wall, grabbed her breasts and tried to force himself on her. To me, that was an assault. And it was the first time I ever asked her, ‘Do you want me to do something?’”

Endy had been to Diamond’s office so many times in the previous seven months with less than flattering reports of Solomon, that when he arrived to report the latest, Diamond looked up and said, “What did he do now?”

“This guy’s dick is going to get us in trouble,” Endy flatly stated, as he closed the door and sat down.

Endy was not sure what Diamond was doing with all the notes he was taking about Solomon. But as soon as the regular season started, the sales representative from a Minneapolis hotel began reporting unwanted sexual advances as well. Only the subject of these complaints was not Solomon, but Green.

The Vikings stayed at the hotel every Saturday evening prior to home games. One of the people who handled the Vikings’ hotel account, a very attractive woman in her thirties, began reporting to Endy that coach Green was requiring her to meet him at 6:00
A.M.
for breakfast on Tuesdays during the regular season. She said that Green, who was married at the time, would always conclude the breakfast session by kissing her on the lips. “Maybe that’s a term of affection,” the woman said to Endy. “But I’m an employee of the hotel. He’s doing this around other employees and customers. I don’t think he meant anything by it, but there’s a restaurant full of people who might assume I’m some other woman.”

“So don’t meet him for breakfast,” Endy suggested.

“I have to,” she said.

“Why?” asked Endy.

“I don’t want to lose your business,” she said wryly. The Vikings were renting 100 rooms per weekend from the hotel during the winter months.

N
either of the sales representatives at either hotel asked Endy to forward their reports to Vikings management. Moreover, by going to Diamond on his own, Endy, who had been with the club for over a decade and had aspirations to become the assistant general manager, was risking that he might alienate himself among the new coaching staff. So why did he bother reporting the accounts?

“My motives were
not
altruistic,” Endy said candidly. “I was afraid there was going to be a scandal. I had heard enough from these women to know that a scandal was not unlikely. And I was petrified that if any of these women filed a lawsuit against the organization, I’d be fired in a heartbeat if the team discovered that I knew about these women’s complaints and never passed them along to executive management. The team would have been justified, in that case, in saying, ‘Here’s a guy who knew things that could have helped the club protect itself from liability. But he didn’t bring it to our attention.’ That was my real reason for forwarding the complaints against Solomon and Green to Jeff Diamond. I was trying not to get fired down the road. I was trying to cover my butt,
not
be Mr. Hurrah for Women’s Rights.”

Endy’s calculated risk resulted in precisely what he was trying to avoid. As soon as the season was over, President Roger Headrick directed Diamond to terminate him. Endy’s dismissal prompted a backlash against Headrick in the press. Endy was formerly a public relations assistant for the Vikings and had a well-respected reputation among the local media. “This is a matter that nobody can understand except me and the people involved,” Headrick insisted to the press, when asked what prompted the decision. “I don’t think it’s appropriate to make my case in the press. We’re doing what we feel is right for the organization.”

In fact, even individuals at the highest level of management did not understand the decision to fire Endy, even the guy who had to do the firing. “You know everybody around here loves you and thinks you do a great job,” Diamond said, unable to look Endy in the eye as he paced around Endy’s office. “But two people around here [Headrick and Green] don’t share that opinion. And unfortunately, those are the two people with the power.” Diamond declined repeated requests on the part of the authors to answer questions regarding Endy’s dismissal.

When the authors met with Endy in Minneapolis in early 1998, he turned over folders full of letters and cards he received following his dismissal (over 100 in all). The sentiments of the letters ranged from a bewilderment over his firing to rage. Many of the letters were from Vikings players and personnel. Most notably, there was one from Diamond himself, written on Vikings letter-head, crediting Endy with being “a diligent, hard working, employee who was dedicated to the team.”

There was also a letter from Vikings owner Wheelock Whitney, who had been part of the decision to hire Headrick. Whitney’s letter, dated May 22, 1992, was written to Minneapolis mayor Donald Fraser, in behalf of Endy, who was then searching for a new job. Below is an excerpt:

“I want to put in a good word for my friend, Dan Endy. Dan is applying for a new position as Media Specialist with the Minneapolis Police Department—and I’m sure he’d be someone you’d be proud of as an employee of the city. …

“And I’ll keep my fingers crossed that Dan gets the job. He’s a
good
one [emphasis in the letter].”

H
eadrick was probably right in his speculation that people would not understand the reasons behind his decision to fire Endy, not to mention that full disclosure would unleash a serious investigation by the press into the allegations coming from the hotels. By firing Endy, the allegations would be silenced. It was a good bet that the two sales representatives were not going to go public on their own (they wanted the business). And in Endy’s severance package, the Vikings made him agree not to discuss anything negative about the Vikings as a condition of the payout he received from the team (worth approximately $75,000).

Endy was not the only apparent casualty of Green’s and Solomon’s alleged sexual exploits. When others within the organization raised allegations of sexual impropriety, they also were terminated and paid off.

On the heels of Endy’s dismissal, the Vikings held a mandatory sexual harassment seminar in May of 1993. Shortly thereafter, an attractive intern who had been assigned to work with the Vikings alleged that Solomon had been harassing her and pressuring her into a sexual relationship.

Days later, the intern was let go by the organization. She retained Minneapolis attorney Lori Peterson, who specializes in litigation involving sexual harassment in the workplace.

In preparation for suing the team, Peterson obtained a sworn affidavit from Dan Endy. The intern, having worked with Endy for nearly a year, suspected the reasons behind his dismissal and asked if he’d state them under oath. In his affidavit, dated September 1, 1993, Endy detailed the series of sexual harassment reports made to him. He also confirmed that each report he had received was passed on to Jeff Diamond. His affidavit also included the following particulars:

“Green frequently phoned a woman during the middle of the night and once even offered to come over and help keep her warm.”

“Coach Green often made suggestive remarks to a woman. He told her he and his wife had an ‘arrangement.’”

“Coach Green repeatedly told her ‘You want me’ and ‘You’ll realize you really want me.’”

Shortly after Peterson secured the affidavit, the Vikings offered the intern $150,000 to settle the matter out of court. According to Peterson, she had yet to file the lawsuit when the Vikings made their offer. The conditions of the settlement required, among other things, that the intern could never discuss her allegations, and the documents pertaining to the case, the affidavit chief among them, were placed under seal.

“We have a very clear and very well-defined policy on sexual harassment,” said Headrick when discussing the issue with the authors. “And that can be anything from language to physical contact or anything—even innuendo. But I’m getting a little bit callous to just wildly alleged ‘I feel uncomfortable’ in this essentially male environment. When somebody knows that this is going to be 90 percent male and they don’t like to hear people swear, go work for a church of some sort.”

Yet, the crux of the complaints coming from the intern and the two sales representatives had nothing to do with swearing. Nevertheless, his point is well taken: sexual harassment is a broad term with ill-defined parameters. But in April of 1995, Headrick received word that the team had been sued again. This time, the allegations, if true, described a clear-cut case of sexual harassment. Former Vikings cheerleader Michelle Eaves, eight months after being fired, sued the team and franchise player Warren Moon. In her suit, Eaves, who was an exotic dancer before being hired by the Vikings, claimed that shortly after she was hired by the Vikings in April of 1994, Moon began making unwanted sexual advances, and that she had consulted with her husband on how to deflect them.

Then, according to the suit, while the team was in Tokyo to play the Kansas City Chiefs in an exhibition game in August of 1994, Eaves said that Moon summoned her to his hotel room. She asked fellow cheerleader Amy Kellogg to accompany her, but Eaves insisted that Moon made her leave the room. Once Kellogg was gone, Moon “insisted on having oral sex with [Eaves],” according to the lawsuit. “Without consenting, [Eaves] finally relented to Moon’s insistence on oral sex. Defendant Moon then attempted to coerce [Eaves] into sexual intercourse, but [Eaves] refused and finally succeeded in leaving his room.” In court papers, Kellogg corroborated Eaves’s account.

“That is total nonsense,” Moon said in an exclusive interview for this book. “I actually knew Michelle and her husband before I became a Minnesota Viking. She became a cheerleader on the squad the same year that I came to the squad. Then she got fired from the squad when we were in Japan because she and another girl [Kellogg] were caught fraternizing with a member of the opposing team at the Hard Rock Cafe.

“She came to me and was crying to me about everything that had happened. At the same time, while the team was in Tokyo, her grandmother passed away. So she had to go back home early. So they fired her from the squad. In April of the next off-season, all of a sudden this sexual harassment thing comes up against me and the Vikings, claiming that she wanted this money. There was never nothing involved with me as far as harassment or anything like that. It just was convenient to go after me because I was the highest paid player on the team.”

Despite Moon’s adamant denial, he did nonetheless reach an out-of-court settlement with Eaves. Shortly after Eaves filed her suit at the Hennepin County District Court in Minneapolis, Moon’s lawyer, Clayton Robinson, won a temporary restraining order on May 18 which blocked the media from obtaining copies of the complaint. However, on May 23, cheerleader Amy Kellogg’s lawyer, James Wicka, surprisingly filed court documents in connection with the case and attached Eaves’s complaint to his filing. By that afternoon,
Minneapolis Star Tribune
reporters had read the allegations against Moon and informed Robinson that they intended to publish them in the following day’s edition of the paper. That evening, Moon and the Vikings settled their case with Eaves by paying her $150,000. She was barred by the terms of the settlement from ever discussing her complaint publicly.

“I wanted to fight them because I knew I had done nothing wrong,” Moon told the authors. “But my attorneys pretty much told me that they didn’t think I needed the publicity.”

Moon told the authors that Steve Rollins had conducted the team’s internal investigation into the merits of Eaves’s allegations, which resulted in the club determining that Eaves filed the suit out of revenge for her firing. It was Rollins who also handled the investigation which led to Eaves’s and Kellogg’s firing in Tokyo. The Vikings cited “inadequate skills and lascivious conduct” for the reasons which led to the two cheerleaders’ dismissal. Rollins’s investigation determined that both women had fraternized with two Chiefs players while at the Hard Rock Cafe. “Absolutely, we have a very strict policy keeping cheerleaders away from players on a social standpoint,” Vikings vice president of marketing Stewart Widdess told the Minneapolis press. “Cheerleaders sign an agreement that they will not fraternize with the players. We are very strong on them. If the policy is not followed, they are terminated.” Unfortunately, as Eaves pointed out, players aren’t fired for “fraternizing” with cheerleaders.

Yet one security officer who was assigned to escort the cheerleaders while the team was in Tokyo has a different recollection of what Eaves and Kellogg did. Eaves and Kellogg were indeed at the Hard Rock. But so were all the other cheerleaders. They had been booked to make a public appearance there. While there, they were asked to go around to all of the tables and pass out cheerleader calendars to the patrons. Two Chiefs players happened to be in the Hard Rock at the time, and they momentarily conversed with Eaves and Kellogg. “But the team’s claim that the girls had to be fired for fraternizing is bogus,” the security official told the authors. “And there was no investigation. Rollins wasn’t even at the Hard Rock. And he didn’t interview any of the security officers who were. There were four of us assigned to be with the cheerleaders that day, and not one of us was ever questioned by Rollins or anyone else about what happened between Eaves, Kellogg, and the Chiefs players. It was a bogus firing.”