Victory Is Mine

Vikings' Super Bowl ticket scalping

Mike Tice is coming under fire now for potentially arranging for Vikings players and assistant coaches to scalp Super Bowl tickets. One former Vikes assistant noted:

"A lot of teams do it," the assistant told SI.com. "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.

Later, we learn that Mike Tice, though one of the NFL's lowest-paid coaches, still makes $1mm a year. So let me get this straight: leaving aside the CLEAR ethical issues of blatantly violating NFL rules - regardless of "everyone else" doing it - these guys are all doing this to augment their income by, what, max 10% a year? I'm pretty sure Tice himself isn't banking a $5k profit on each of 20 tickets (=$100k), so it's far less than 10% for him. Maybe he somehow gets 5 or 10 tickets. What the hell is wrong with these people? I really don't give a rat's ass that the refrain about professional athletes making too much money has become cliched, or that we're dealing with coaches here, this guy is an idiot (and don't even get me started on his incompetence on draft day).

posted by Publius @ 9:35 AM