Former Vikings offensive lineman Artis Hicks landed in the news last week after an excerpt from Jeff Pearlman’s new biography of Brett Favre featured a quote from Hicks talking about bounty programs in light of the punishments handed down to the Saints for allegedly having one in place when they beat up Favre during the NFC title game after the 2009 season.
Hicks called them “part of the culture” and said he had “coaches start a pot and all the veterans put in an extra $100, $200, and if you hurt someone special, you get the money.” The Vikings and then-Vikings head coach Brad Childress denied there was any such program and now Hicks says that he wasn’t talking about the Vikings.
“No, I never told him any specifics,” Hicks said, via the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “I never named names, I never said ... Only thing I told him as far as specifics was I had been part of a meeting where players were amongst ourselves as part of a unit. We kind of felt like the last time we played the team, they kind of did some dirty things to our running back or quarterback. When we played them again later in the year it was, ‘Hey, when you get a chance to get this guy, dinner is on me.’ That was as detailed as I got. Again, it was never any specifics on what team I was with or anything like that.”
Hicks also played for the Eagles, Redskins, Browns and Dolphins over the course of his career and said the meeting he’s referring to is not the one from 2008 that Pearlman’s book alleges featured a Vikings coach offering $500 to anyone who injured Packers linebacker Nick Barnett. He adds that he has “no problem” with how Pearlman interpreted his quotes despite his insistence that they were mischaracterized in the book.
