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Chiefs’ tiffs lead to court, not to camp
By ELIZABETH MERRILL
The Kansas City Star
RIVER FALLS, Wis. — The wait staff at Bo’s N’ Mine is wearing Chiefs polos, scrambling to feed the lunch crowd.
The clientele is typical John Cougar Mellencamp material — a young man in a T-shirt on break, a family eating greasy food under a giant American flag.
At nightfall, the scene will change at this quaint bar/eatery. Pro football players will stop in and mingle with the locals.
For 3½ weeks each summer, the Chiefs invade this idyllic Midwestern town for training camp. They watch film, they tackle teammates, and, on a rare day off, they hit the town.
“For the most part, behavior isn’t a real big issue,” said Lisa James, a Bo’s employee. “We look forward to them coming. It’s a boom for business.”
The 2005 training camp has been more of a boom for the legal industry.
When the Chiefs break camp and leave this quiet town of 15,000 on Friday, a few will take a string of court dates with them. Within roughly 30 minutes in Sunday’s early hours, three Chiefs were involved in skirmishes that ended in charges against the players. Kicker Lawrence Tynes was charged Wednesday with one felony count of substantial battery and one count of misdemeanor battery in connection with an altercation at Boomer’s, a River Falls nightclub.
According to a River Falls police report, Tynes struck a bar patron in the face and later hit a bouncer, Brian J. Roquette of River Falls. Police said medical reports indicated Roquette had a broken nose.
About the same time Tynes was charged, defensive tackle Junior Siavii’s lawyer was entering not-guilty pleas in a Minneapolis courtroom on charges of disorderly conduct and misdemeanor assault. Siavii and safety Greg Wesley were arrested Sunday morning after an incident at a Minneapolis hotel. Wesley has a Friday court date on a charge of misdemeanor disorderly conduct.
Minneapolis police said Siavii was belligerent and had to be restrained with handcuffs and a spit hood.
This is not exactly the camp Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil had hoped for when he brought his 91 players to River Falls last month to bond. Vermeil prides himself on a family, team atmosphere. On Wednesday, he took a stern, fatherly tone but called the incidents isolated mistakes.
“We need tough guys,” Vermeil said, “but we don’t need people getting tough off our field. It’s just an unfortunate incident. It’s not a trend; it’s not even their profile. But sometimes those things happen.”
It happens when a team is more than six hours from home, living in dorms, following 11:15 p.m. curfews and 5:45 a.m. wakeup calls. It happened on just the second day off in 2½ weeks of camp. While most NFL teams have opted to stay close to home for training camp in recent years, the Chiefs have returned to River Falls.
Vermeil said he had no regrets about giving the team Saturday off, with no curfew or bed check. When asked whether he planned to change his practice of cutting the team loose for a couple of days during camp, Vermeil said no.
“Hey, they live at home seven nights a week as soon as we break training camp,” he said. “There are a lot of NFL teams now staying at home, and maybe we’re better off staying someplace else where they aren’t singled out.
“You put 90 guys and work them like we work them and give them a full night off, sometimes, there’s a problem. And I know guys even right here in this town over the last few years that have shown tremendous poise in not allowing a disaster to happen. They’re targets.”
The Chiefs have easily had the most active police blotter of any NFL team during training camp this summer.
When Vermeil gives the team a day off, he says they can go anywhere, as long as they’re back within 24 hours. When he met with the team after the weekend incidents, Vermeil had one message.
“He told us to be professionals,” said linebacker Boomer Grigsby. “Just be a professional athlete. You’ve got to look out for yourselves and look out for each other.”
As the Chiefs went through their normal two-a-day routine Wednesday, some said the weekend trouble was blown out of proportion.
“I think people are making way too big of a deal of it,” said tight end Jason Dunn. “I really don’t think we’re the bad boys of the NFL. They were isolated incidents. I’m sure they won’t happen again.”
At Boomer’s, the site of the Tynes incident, owner Teddy Roughton kept his giant Chiefs helmet in the window right next to the sign that said, “Welcome Chiefs fans.” Roughton said in the five years he’s owned the bar, he’s never had problems with unruly Chiefs before Saturday night. He affectionately refers to Tynes as “L.T.”
“You walk around town (before the Chiefs come) and you’ll hear some people say, ‘Here comes the circus,’ ” Roughton says. “And we say, ‘Here come some people who are supporting our town.’ Their friends, their families, their fans are spending money and helping our economy. They’re making it a little more exciting in the summer.”
Maybe a little too exciting.