Vikings Territory: A Retraction And Apology To John Randle, Daunte Culpepper And Tommy Kramer

Press release from Vikings Territory:

July 1, 2021

We failed in our core mission. We failed our fans. We failed three stand-up guys. We can and will do better.

Hello.

I like to believe that the reason we’re not only the largest source for Vikings news but the largest single sport news network in the world, is that I’ve largely accomplished that. I believe in treating people the way I would want to be treated. That extends to our interns, our senior writers, and our columnists internally and the myriad of former players and coaches we work with externally.

The article in question was about the cancelled/rescheduled boat party on Lake Minnetonka that I’m sure you’ve heard about and seen a lot of jokes about, as well. One of our senior writers had seen a couple Vikings Twitter entities that have a decent following saying they’d heard rumors that Daunte Culpepper, Tommy Kramer and John Randle were going to be attending the rescheduled event.

The Vikings media market is surprisingly small. Reputation is everything. With one article last week we not only harmed the reputation we’ve worked over half a decade to build, but much more importantly we potentially harmed the reputation of some of the former players that I’ve sacrificed over half my prime earning years on this crazy dream because I watched them as a child.

That boat party is something we’ve been promoting and planned on covering in person. Bryant McKinnie cohosts a podcast we promote on our network. I know the writer made an honest mistake, but it’s something that is why we don’t trade in Twitter rumors.

The other reason is something my mentor and co-host of my radio show, Joe Oberle, taught me years ago after I submitted an article calling for a player to be cut.

The article that covered the above rumor may have said “rumor has it”, it may have been up for 20 minutes, it may have not been done with any semblance of malice behind it.

Our process wasn’t followed and our site gave people the impression that Culpepper, Randle and Kramer were part of a boat party that seems like a bad idea at best. Our site implied that they’d co-sign an event that, while not being promoted as Sex Boat 2.0, is how everyone is interpreting it.

This isn’t why I started this network, and it’s something that I and we will strive incredibly hard to make up to those three but also to show Culpepper, Randle, and Kramer and our audience that we are taking this seriously. We are sorry. And we will do better, and forever be in debt to those guys.

This press release was produced by Vikings Territory. The views expressed here are the author’s own.