Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9928490/

...with some of the Vikings players now threatening to boycott a local TV station after the station aired a follow-up news segment about the boat party, with evidence apparently recovered from the trash bins of several Vikings players.
It seems that the Vikings organization, and more particularly the coach and some of the players just do not understand some basic realities. If a group of highly-paid high-profile professional athletes go out on the town and behave like a bunch of out-of-control rampaging sex maniacs (which is what appears to have happened), and news of this "event" gets into the public domain, those athletes are in deep doo-doo. Like it or not they are public figures. The amount of money they are being paid assures that. They are also playing under contracts which always contain clauses obliging them to adhere to certain defined standards of behaviour on and off the field of play. Failure to adhere to those standards can be cause for termination of their contracts.
The first law of holes says "stop digging".
The word "accountability" also comes to mind.
So let's see what has been said by Vikings management thus far:

1. The Vikings said they were prepared to cut any player who had brought the club into disrepute.
2. Mike Tice said he would bench any players found to have misbehaved.
3. Mike Tice said he was considering reducing playing time for players found to have been involved

Do you see a pattern here? Three specific promises of action were made concerning the intent to discipline players found to have misbehaved. None of those actions, as far as I can tell, has been taken. You will also notice that very few Vikings players will discuss the incident, and there have been no real public expressions of regret or contrition.
The impression that is now reaching the public (and the media) is that the Vikings players involved obviously do not feel that they owe the public any form of confession, apology or contrition, and the club is unable or unwilling to discipline them. The effects are already being felt locally; a local Best Buy cancelled a signing session by several Vikings players last month.
The best analysis of the situation was provided by Vikings center Matt Birk, who is currently on injured reserve. In an interview with Sports Illustrated, Birk eloquently expressed his amazement and irritation with the events. Here's an extract from what he said:

"I'm not going to sit here and tell people morally what they should do. But there are basic principles of human decency at play here, as well as the law, and it's not too tough to figure out that if you're going to engage in that type of behavior, it's something that absolutely should happen in private.
Things like this just wear you out. It's frustrating because every two months we seem to have a scandal around here, and then the people involved decide they won't talk to the media. That leaves the rest of us, who aren't involved, to have to answer for them publicly, and it's not a whole lot of fun. But, hey, some guys are just selfish. They don't think about anybody else."

It appears that Daunte Culpepper does not understand or accept Birk's point of view, because they subsequently had an exchange in the Vikings locker room where Culpepper asserted that Birk should mind his own business. What Culpepper clearly does not understand, and Matt Birk does, is that if you become involved in an incident of the type alleged to have occurred, and it becomes public, it is no longer just your business, It just became a public incident, and as a public figure, you cannot run away and hide from that.
Since the players involved will not fess up, the result is that neither they or the club are able to draw a line under the incident and move on. Nobody will accept accountability, and so the media are digging into the incident further, probably working on the hypothesis that the real truth must be far worse than the rumours and information so far available because nobody will talk about it.
Threatening a media boycott won't get the players anywhere. That is merely a petulant, childish response to a media intrusion.
The players need to wise up, banish the lawyers from their discussions, collectively own up to the indiscretions, and take a punishment on the chin. If they do not do that, they will continue to be regarded as a bunch of whining, cowardly weasels, and they can expect more media investigation of what really happened in on that boat trip, and continuing negative impacts on their reputation and that of the Vikings. Given that NFL contracts are not guaranteed, they might also want to start talking more frequently to their agents just in case they are invited to go play somewhere else in the not-too-distant future.
I am damned sure that a coach like Bill Parcells or Bill Belichick would have already sorted out the fallout from the incident, probably by a combination of actions involving depth chart demotions, lightening of wallets and a significant amount of invective. If Mike Tice wants to show that he is capable of continuing as a leader of men, he should be twisting arms right now to get players to own up.