As though the Vikings' season couldn't get more embarrassing: the Star Tribune reported today that investigators are looking into whether Minnesota Vikings players were involved in criminal sexual misconduct aboard a chartered boat on Lake Minnetonka.
A woman who apparently was working as a hostess on one of the boats called Mound police about 7:30 p.m. to report possible prostitution, drugs and sex acts, according to police reports. The information was coming from her brother’s girlfriend, who was working as a hostess on the boat, the report said. The girlfriend said the boat was chartered by the Minnesota Vikings.Wow, I had no idea Michael Irvin was now employed by the Vikings.
No players were named in the Star Tribune story, although it reported that "more than 40 people" were on the boat. The story is eerily similar to the 2003 scandal in which a Vikings-sponsored "snowmobile rally" deteriorated into a festival of drunkenness and debauchery, leading to an alleged sexual assault and the arrest on DWI charges of a team vice president.
Ironically, the player accused (and later cleared) in the alleged "snowmobile" sexual assault, backup quarterback Todd Bouman, is now with the New Orleans Saints, and played in a game Sunday for the first time in years. The alleged assault had taken place in a hot tub; the year before Bouman had appeared in a hot tub in a local TV commercial.
And last but not least, according to the Strib, Mound police received a call later that night that "six or seven men pulled up in a shuttle bus limo and urinated on [the caller's] front lawn. Although that, I'm sure, was just a coincidence.
Posted by Stephen Silver at October 11, 2005 10:34 PMIt is now known that DB Fred Smoot paid for one of the boats...not that that makes him responsible for the lap dances and oral sex that took place...but he was the only player named in the 10pm news story tonight.
Posted by: at October 12, 2005 02:24 AM