Pros and Cons (22 page)

“He was testing me,” Doe explained. “He was seeing what I would do. I stopped him.”

Hargrave would not be denied easily, however. From his office at the Vikings’ facility, he repeatedly called Doe’s home trying to convince her to sleep with him. Angered when Doe continued to rebuff him, Hargrave finally announced, “I guess you have to be the head coach.”

Hargrave’s careless slip of the tongue implicated Green. How else, Doe figured, would Hargrave know that Doe had a prior sexual relationship with Green?

When Doe informed her attorney, Lori Peterson, Peterson filed a breach-of-contract suit against Green. His lawyers responded with a countersuit. The judge in the case ultimately dismissed both suits. Meanwhile, Green’s lawyer, Joe Friedberg, filed an ethics complaint against Peterson, attempting to get her license revoked, for trying to sue Green. “It’s our contention that Lori Peterson tried to blackmail Dennis Green,” said Friedberg in an interview with the authors. “And we refuse to be blackmailed. We told her to take her best shot.

“The rap that Dennis Green has had, that he grabs women and that kind of thing, there’s never been an allegation like that. He’s really gotten a bad rap, which is that he’s a womanizer, puts the make on women, that kind of stuff. It’s never been true. There’s nobody that’s ever alleged that. As to whether a guy with a fractured marriage screwed around on the side, in contemporary society that really wouldn’t make much difference. And that’s really what was going on. There’s never been any sexual harassment or any of that kind of stuff.”

In Friedberg’s ethics complaint against Lori Peterson, filed at the Office of Lawyers’ Professional Responsibility in St. Paul, Minnesota, Green undergoes another makeover—he received a new name. Throughout the complaint he is referred to as “John Smith.” At the time this book went to press, the ethics complaint was pending.

T
he coincidence that two coaches pursued sexual relations with the same woman indicated the depths to which off-the-field misconduct had sunk. And Rollins’s willingness to pay money to a woman who aborted the child of the head coach demonstrated what the head of security’s position had degenerated to. Yet cheerleader Michelle Eaves was fired for “lascivious” conduct?

Meanwhile, the rash of Vikings players running afoul of the law led Headrick, in January of 1996, to begin publicly calling for a league-wide crackdown on lawlessness. More specifically, he instituted a termination policy for players who leave their hotel rooms after curfew and engage in after-hours activity that is not related to on-field performance. “The reason why it’s subject to termination,” Headrick explained to the authors, “is because if that is so important that you would allow yourself to participate in activity that would detract from your ability to play the game the next day, then you don’t have enough respect for your teammates to be around.”

Fortunately for Steve Rollins, the new policy did not apply to heads of security. On October 30, 1995, Rollins attacked KMSP-TV cameraman Dan Metcalfe following a Monday Night Football game between the Vikings and the Bears. According to court papers filed at the United States District Court in Minneapolis, Rollins and Metcalfe had an ongoing feud stemming from a previous game where Metcalfe was trying to get a close-up shot of Dennis Green as he was coming off the field. When Rollins spotted Metcalfe in the tunnel underneath the Metrodome following the Monday Night game, he ordered him to move and a dispute ensued.

“Rollins grabbed Metcalfe by the collar of Metcalfe’s shirt and hurled him to the ground,” according to court papers. Metcalfe also said that “Rollins shoved [him] against a wall causing Metcalfe to strike his head against the wall behind him.”

“Who’s pushing you now, motherf––er?” Rollins shouted at Metcalfe, according to court papers.

Minneapolis police officer Donald Banham, a close friend who also worked security detail for the Vikings, arrested Metcalfe and charged him with disorderly conduct. In his arrest report, Banham described
Metcalfe
as the aggressor:

“At one point Mr. Rollins placed his hand on the back of the defendant and asked him to just go up the tunnel at which point the defendant spun away from him abruptly and the camera fell off his shoulder onto the concrete floor. At this point the defendant became enraged and charged at Mr. Rollins. The defendant ran hands first at Mr. Rollins, pushing him in his chest. Mr. Rollins put his hands up in a defensive posture and attempted to push back. At this point I intervened, attempting to grab the suspect and push him up the ramp. The defendant began to resist at which time I placed him in a carotid neck restraint and began to apply pressure.”

Metcalfe’s arrest quickly grabbed headlines in Minnesota. Rollins, meanwhile, insisted to team president Roger Headrick that he never touched Metcalfe. As a result, the Vikings released a statement explaining that Metcalfe had refused repeated requests to move away from a restricted area underneath the Metrodome and was arrested as a result.

Within hours of releasing the statement, however, Vikings director of communications Dave Pelletier received a phone call confirming that a freelance photographer had captured the entire tunnel incident on video. The video showed a much different incident than that described in Banham’s police report. When Pelletier took the videocassette into the office of Roger Headrick, the two watched it privately.

“You lied to me, Steve,” Headrick said under his breath, as he watched footage of Rollins striking Metcalfe without provocation. The next day, November 1, 1995, the Vikings changed their tune. “Regardless of the provocation, there is no justification for the type of force used in the incident,” Headrick told the media. “Appropriate disciplinary action is being taken with those involved … to ensure that there is not repetition of this type of event in the future. We regret the occurrence of this incident and do not condone and will not accept this type of behavior.”

The criminal charges against Metcalfe were dropped. He then filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Rollins and Banham.

Why didn’t Headrick fire Rollins? A former Vikings security official who worked under Rollins had a hunch. “Because Rollins knows more dirt on the Vikings than anyone,” the official said. “Everything ugly that has happened behind the scenes for the past seven years, he knows it. And if he were fired by Headrick, Rollins would spill it. And Headrick would never risk that. Rollins is untouchable.”

Dennis Green, Steve Rollins, and Richard Solomon declined to be interviewed for this book.

On May 6, 1998, Carl Hargrave, after successfully delaying his DUI case from being resolved for over a year, pleaded guilty to the gross misdemeanor charge of refusal to submit to chemical testing. According to the prosecutor, Hargrave’s driving record in Minnesota now reflects a DUI offense. Hargrave was sentenced to 365 days in the Hennepin County Adult Corrections Facility, but 335 days were suspended by the judge. The remaining thirty days Hargrave was allowed to serve on work release, meaning that he would not be locked up. According to the prosecutor, Hargrave had to wear an ankle bracelet so the state could monitor him, and he was barred from leaving the state during the thirty-day period.

“His argument about the whole conduct issue is that he minimized what he did,” said assistant Eden Prairie city attorney Jennifer Inz. “I’m not someone who supports the idea that sports figures are role models or should be considered to be role models. The reason that people know who they are and choose to remember them and what they do is because of their physical and athletic abilities. That says nothing about their character.”

W
eeks before Hargrave entered his plea, the Vikings used their first-round pick in the 1998 draft on Marshall University receiver Randy Moss. His criminal history included a conviction and jail sentence for attacking a youth while in high school; smoking marijuana while on a work release program from jail; a conviction for domestic violence; and an additional arrest for domestic violence. His checkered past made him fodder for the predraft press coverage, sufficient to discourage many teams with first-round draft choices, who passed him up. How perfect then when Moss’s slide ended with the draft’s twenty-first pick, four hours after the start of the draft, by the Vikings. Dennis Green apparently overlooked Moss’s criminal past, wasting less than sixty seconds announcing the choice to Commissioner Tagliabue.

“This is old news, old news,” Green said in an interview moments after making the pick, making no effort to hide his defensiveness. “We’re not going to dwell on what some kid did in high school in West Virginia.” Green, of course, had every reason to understate Moss’s history and to be defensive, given the collection of criminals already assembled in the Twin Cities.

“I know deep down inside why I didn’t get picked in the top ten,” Moss said. “I’m not going to worry about that. I’m a Viking. I’m in the NFL now.”

Legendary
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
columnist Sid Hartman praised the choice, suggesting: “Vikings coach Dennis Green has proved he has complete control of his players and what they do on and off the field. And Green will have a great influence on Moss, who will give the Vikings the most potent passing offense in the NFL.” It remains to be seen what kind of influence Green has on Moss.

P.S. On May 18, just four weeks after being drafted by the Vikings, fourth-round draft pick Kivuusama Mays out of North Carolina pleaded no contest to assault charges.

10

Dirty Little Secret

Missouri City, Texas, July 18, 1995:

911 DISPATCHER
: 911 Missouri City. What is your emergency?

JEFFREY MOON
(
eight-year-old son of NFL quarterback Warren Moon)
: [Crying]

DISPATCHER
: Hello? What’s the problem?

JEFFREY
: It’s my … You need to come … Hurry …
DISPATCHER
: What … What’s the matter?

JEFFREY
: It’s umm … my daddy.

DISPATCHER
: Is he OK?

JEFFERY
: My daddy gonna hit my mommy. Please hurry.

DISPATCHER
: OK. You need to calm down. We’ll get the police there. Just a moment. OK?

JEFFERY
: They’re walking down the street. Please hurry up.

DISPATCHER
: OK.

JEFFERY
: Please hurry up.

DISPATCHER
: Hold on. Now your daddy hit your mommy, right?

JEFFREY
: Uh huh.

DISPATCHER
: And they’re walking down the street. Does she need an ambulance? Hello. Hello?

By the time the police arrived at the Moon home, Warren had sped away in his car. His wife, Felicia, according to authorities, fell into the arms of a female officer with whom she was a social acquaintance. “Mary, he beat the s–t out of me,” Felicia cried. Officers responding to the scene reported, “She had blood to the right side of her face and neck. She had scratch marks on her face and abrasions on her neck.”

When police asked her what caused the violent incident, Felicia, an ex–board member on the Fort Bend County Women’s Center, which runs a shelter for battered women, indicated that Warren had come home that morning and attacked her while she was reading on the grounds of their home. “Warren started to slap me on the head by my ears with his open hand,” Felicia told the police. “He choked me so that I couldn’t talk or breathe. When he choked me I thought he was losing control and that he wouldn’t know when to stop choking me. I was afraid for my life.”

For the NFL, it could not get any worse than seeing Warren Moon, of all players, charged with wife beating. Moon was hardly known for volatile outbursts or criminal behavior. Nor was he some obscure, third-string lineman. Rather, the Hall of Fame bound quarterback was a former NFL Man of the Year who was widely perceived as one of the league’s most exemplary citizens away from the field. After enduring a year of questions about NFL players and domestic violence following O.J. Simpson’s arrest for murdering his ex-wife, the league now saw one of its most revered current players implicated for spousal abuse.

However, the spotlight ultimately did not shine on this, the NFL’s most cowardly of crimes—the beating of wives and girlfriends by men who are idolized because of their strength and size. Instead, the Moon case became notorious for the conduct of Felicia Moon, the alleged victim. After filing her complaint, Felicia tried to persuade prosecutors to drop the case against her husband. When the state rejected her request, Felicia refused to testify. The state then threatened to cite her with contempt and jail her. Reluctantly, she finally took the stand and told jurors that she was to blame for the incident. She denied knowing the source of the bruises and injuries depicted in the police photographs, telling the jury, “They might have been self-inflicted.”

On February 22, 1996, the jury deliberated less than thirty minutes before acquitting Warren Moon. Jurors were not aware that a restraining order had been issued against Moon in 1987 for allegedly threatening his wife. Nor did the jury learn that Fort Bend County records indicated that Moon had physically attacked his wife on at least three prior occasions during their marriage. According to court records, in one incident Moon “beat [Felicia] with close fists in the presence of the children.” Each of the complaints was later dismissed “for lack of prosecution.”

“The charges weren’t true, but they were charged,” Warren Moon told the authors, acknowledging that his wife had accused him of domestic violence in the years leading up to his arrest in 1995. “They [the allegations] had to do with a problem my wife had.” Although Warren Moon did not discuss the particulars of his wife’s previous allegations or the incident that led to his arrest and trial, he insisted that the intense media scrutiny of his case indicates why other players plead guilty rather than fight domestic violence charges in court. “Sometimes players plead guilty just so they don’t have to go through what I went through during my trial,” Moon told the authors. “But the reason I went through all that was because my wife and I were adamant about what happened in the case. There was no way I was a criminal in that whole process. We wanted that to become public and for the record to be clean.