Pros and Cons (21 page)

And what about Eaves’s account of what happened in the hotel room with Moon? Roger Headrick insisted that the team is governed by strict curfews that are enforced by automatic termination if players are not found in their rooms—alone—when bed checks are performed. According to a security officer hired by Rollins and assigned to monitor the players’ hotel floor at night, there was an unspoken rule that filtered down from Rollins exempting Moon from the curfew. “I would sit in the hallway until six in the morning making sure none of them try to leave and that no women are invited up,” said the official. “It was an unofficial policy that if you worked the hotel, the players were to stay in their rooms after eleven o’clock bed check, nobody on the floor, nobody off the floor—except for one player, Warren Moon. And he had a room to himself.”

The authors asked Moon whether he received preferential treatment from security. “They just knew me,” he said. “Whenever they checked my room I was lying in my bed or on the telephone or watching television. With some of the players, the security might check behind their curtains or under their bed, especially with some of the younger guys who may have had problems with people being found in their rooms. But I had never had any problems like that, so the security people just knew how to deal with me. I got checked every night like everybody else, but I didn’t get my room searched. I never have anybody in my room and I never leave my room, so the security people gave me my privacy.”

The security guard who spoke to the authors conceded that the timing of Eaves’s lawsuit presented an appearance of revenge seeking on her part. “It sounds like sour grapes—that Eaves was fired and went after somebody,” the official told the authors. “But there’s more smoke to that fire.”

The security officer is not the only one who disputed the Vikings’ insistence that Eaves filed her suit as an act of revenge for her dismissal. “That’s total bullshit,” said James Harris, who claimed he was friends with Moon when they were teammates at Minnesota and who was familiar with what transpired in Tokyo. “I believe Michelle and I’m a player. The bottom line is that if you’re expendable, you’re screwed.” And cheerleaders are expendable. The franchise quarterback is not.

I
n the months surrounding Moon’s legal travails, the
Minneapolis Star
reported that in January of 1995, a woman who had worked under Dennis Green when he was the football coach at Stanford University had reached an out-of-court settlement in a sexual harassment suit filed against the school. According to the
Star,
while his team was in Hawaii to play in the Aloha Bowl, “Green allegedly grabbed” the woman “on a Honolulu hotel balcony after she refused repeated sexual advances.”

Reporters descended on the Stanford campus in hopes of interviewing the woman following the announcement that the university had settled a lawsuit that apparently involved Green. However, the woman was reluctant to participate in interviews. She did, however, place a call to Dan Endy after reading a press report that referred to his affidavit detailing the hotel employees’ complaints against Green.

“Around mid-morning one day I was sitting in my den and the phone rang,” Endy recalled. When Endy answered it, the female voice on the receiver was unfamiliar.

“Is this Dan Endy?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he replied.

“Is this the Dan Endy that worked for the Vikings?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t know me, and I’m not going to tell you my name. But I just wanted to say thank you.”

“Okay,” he said, puzzled. “But what did I do?”

“I’m the woman from Stanford.”

Having read the vague press reports of a woman at Stanford who claimed she was sexually harassed by Green, the woman’s announcement on the phone sent a chill over Endy’s body. “Well what are you thanking me for?” Endy asked, unsure of what else to say.

“For two years I’ve felt I was dirty, slimy, and gross,” she said. “Now that you’ve come forward in your affidavit, I know that I’m not the only person.”

According to Endy, the Stanford woman described sexual advances by Green that resembled the reports that had come from the hotel sales representative. “She said, ‘I tried everything. I tried to ignore it. I tried to be mean. Nothing stopped him. He would just smile coldly. He was like the Terminator. He only knew coming forward.’”

A
s allegations continued to dog Green, his players were becoming increasingly out of control. Steve Rollins’s job as full-time director of security required he work serious overtime. Below is a list of the players who were involved with the police in the midst of Green’s off-field problems:

• November 30, 1992, defensive lineman James Harris was arrested and charged with fifth-degree assault after Bloomington police were dispatched to his home on a 911 domestic violence call. He pleaded guilty on December 15, 1992.

• October 6, 1993, running back Keith Henderson was arrested for raping a woman just weeks after being released by the Vikings. Green had previously signed Henderson away from San Francisco. Ultimately Henderson was convicted for raping three women in an eight-month span. He was sentenced to six months in jail and placed on ten years’ probation (see Chapter 13).

• March 3, 1994, defensive back Joey Browner was indicted for third-degree criminal sexual misconduct. The complaint alleged that Browner raped a thirty-four-year-old woman in her home on January 15. On the eve of his jury trial, charges were dropped.

• July 20, 1995, linebacker Broderick Thomas was caught with a handgun at the Houston Intercontinental Airport. Charges were later dropped.

• July 21, 1995, quarterback Warren Moon was charged with assaulting his wife in Fort Bend County, Texas. A jury acquitted him in February 1996.

• August 16, 1995, lineman Esera Tuaolo was arrested on drunk driving charges. The case was later dismissed.

• December 29, 1995, James Harris was arrested on a felony assault charge for beating his wife. He pleaded guilty on January 25, 1996, and was sentenced to ten days in the Hennepin County Adult Correction Facility.

• January 11, 1996, linebacker Broderick Thomas was again arrested, this time for drunk driving and carrying a gun without a permit.

• March 8, 1996, defensive back Corey Fuller was arrested for domestic violence and resisting an officer with violence. He pleaded no contest on April 15, 1996, and received a suspended sentence and was placed on probation for one year.

• March 13, 1996, Corey Fuller entered a pretrial diversion program in Florida after he was charged with larceny and petty theft.

• May 7, 1996, defensive end Fernando Smith was arrested on a felony count of failing to make court-ordered child support payments. Despite earning $712,499 in salary from the Vikings and receiving $500,000 in signing bonuses, Smith had not made a single payment to support his five-year-old daughter, leaving him $42,182 behind. He previously was convicted of a felony for carrying a concealed weapon in Michigan.

• July 22, 1996, rookie free agent cornerback Jamie Coleman was investigated by Bloomington police in connection with the alleged sexual assault of a twenty-year-old woman in a hotel. No charges were filed in the case.

• September 12, 1996, ex-linebacker Walker Lee Ashley received a stayed jail sentence for stealing public funds after pleading guilty to taking money from the city of Eagan, Minnesota, by forging checks issued by the city in connection with youth development programs he supervised.

• April 30, 1997, running back Moe Williams pleaded not guilty to first-degree rape charges in Lexington, Kentucky. The alleged victim was examined at the University of Kentucky emergency room and diagnosed with contusions on her back. Charges were later dropped. In November of 1994, the year before Minnesota drafted him in the third round, Williams was charged with fourth-degree assault and threatening to kill his girlfriend. After Williams was released from jail on a $10,000 bond, the victim dropped the charges.

• June 29, 1997, safety Orlando Thomas was arrested, charged with starting a riot outside a bar in Crowley, South Carolina.

• September 2, 1997, offensive lineman Korey Stringer was investigated by Eden Prairie police after they responded to a 911 domestic violence call placed by his girlfriend. She declined to press charges.

• October 14, 1997, center Jeff Christy and tight end Greg DeLong pleaded guilty to carelessly operating a watercraft after being arrested in August for boating under the influence of alcohol.

• January 3, 1998, wide receiver Chris Walsh was arrested for drunk driving while returning home from a playoff game. He later pleaded guilty to careless driving and was sentenced to thirty days in jail. The judge, however, stayed the jail time.

Former defensive end James Harris, who was sentenced to ten days in jail after his second conviction for domestic violence while playing for the Vikings, argued that as players’ lawlessness increased, Green and his coaches were in no position to lay down the law. “Everybody knew about the shit Dennis Green was doing,” claimed Harris, who praised Green as one of the best coaches he ever played under. “Everybody knew what Solomon was doing. At that time, the Vikings were getting in a hell of a lot of trouble. Players getting in trouble. But Green never talked to me about my criminal cases. He wasn’t in a position. He was f—in’ up himself.”

Nor was Steve Rollins in a position to stem the tide of player problems. He was too busy, according to a KSTR-TV report, doing Green’s bidding to get involved with the players. On September 4, 1996, KSTR’s investigative reporter Robb Leer, after acquiring a sealed court file detailing a secret lawsuit filed against Green back in 1992, reported that Green had paid a Minneapolis-area woman, identified in court papers as “Jane Doe,” to have an abortion. Shortly after Green was named head coach in 1992, he began a six-month relationship with the woman, whom he would meet at his private apartment in Eden Prairie. According to Leer’s report, the woman claimed in her lawsuit that Green urged her to “have an abortion because otherwise it would ‘ruin’ his career.”

In their civil settlement, both Green and Jane Doe entered into a binding contract that barred either of them from ever discussing their affair or the abortion with anyone. However, in the summer of 1996, Jane Doe wrote Green an angry letter accusing him of violating the contract. Enter Steve Rollins, who Green dispatched to deposit $5,000 cash in Jane Doe’s bank account in hopes of stifling the matter.

When the authors asked Green’s lawyer, Joe Friedberg, about the abortion charges, he replied with a hypothetical. “Let’s assume for a second that the guy had a relationship and she got pregnant,” Friedberg began. “That she wanted an abortion and that he paid at least part of, probably all of the expenses of it. So what?”

Friedberg’s position was that it’s really no big deal, which begs the question: Why all the effort to keep it secret? Green’s lawyer tried to get an injunction from a Minneapolis judge blocking KSTR from airing its report of the whole incident. The petition was denied.

In an official statement released by Green on September 5, one day after the television report aired, he said, “I today instructed my lawyers to go into court and seek to obtain an order from Judge Danielson which would permit me and my attorneys to disclose the true facts surrounding this regrettable incident to representatives of the Minnesota Vikings.” Neither Green nor the Vikings, however, ever disclosed the “true facts” to the public. Why? Because it is a little more complicated than the hypothetical.

In an exclusive interview with Jane Doe, the authors discovered that the second lawsuit (for breach of contract) would never have been filed if the Vikings’ coaches—two in particular—could have kept their libido under control.

In June of 1995, Jane Doe was having dinner at an Applebee’s in Eden Prairie, just minutes from the Vikings’ practice facility. A single mother, Doe was accompanied by her nine-year-old daughter, her seventy-three-year-old mother, and numerous other relatives. During dinner she noticed that a man sitting at the bar was staring at her. Smiling and repeatedly making eye contact with her, the man got up from the bar when Doe went toward the ladies’ room. “I really hate to interrupt you,” he said politely. “And I know you’re with your family. But I would love to see if you are interested in maybe going out to dinner or going out for a drink with me sometime.”

“Where do you live?” asked Doe, who is both attractive and outgoing.

“Right down the road at Eden Place,” answered the man, who then introduced himself as Carl Hargrave.

After a pleasant conversation and discovering that they lived practically across the street from each other, Doe agreed to meet Hargrave a few nights later for drinks. Unbeknownst to her, Hargrave was Green’s running backs coach. Unbeknownst to Hargrave, Doe was the same woman whom Green had impregnated and entered into a binding agreement with to never discuss the matter.

When Doe met Hargrave for drinks a few night later at Ciatti’s, an Italian restaurant in Eden Prairie, he wasted little time informing her that he was a coach for the Vikings. According to Doe, he seemed pretty confident that this would impress her. He could not have been more wrong. Afraid that she might inadvertently violate the gag order she was under, Doe desperately tried to think of a creative way to prematurely end the evening. Hargrave made her job easy, however, when he admitted to her that he was married with children and that his wife was expecting in two weeks.

“I have to go,” Doe snapped, angered that Hargrave, like Green, expected that she would be interested in a sexual relationship with a married man merely because he coached in the NFL. “I have to go pick up my daughter.”

“Where does this stop?” Doe asked in her interview for this book, disclosing her disgust with Hargrave’s attitude. “I could not believe it. You can see the mentality of not only the players, but the coaches. It’s just all part of the little game. They feel they can, so they do it.”

As Doe stood up to leave, Hargrave grabbed her hand and placed it on his crotch.