The Vikings radio booth had a surreal experience with an inebriated Commanders fan wearing a John Riggins jersey on Sunday.
Paul Allen, who has called Vikings games since 2002, joined “The Power Trip” on KFAN in Minneapolis on Monday morning to discuss his experience with an unruly heckler.
As Allen explained it, the Commanders fan was increasingly boisterous throughout the game, dropping an estimated 30 f-bombs during the second half, and heckling Allen upon seeing a Vikings sticker on his laptop.
In the first half, the guy was taking photos of Allen’s computer. “In the third quarter, the drunker this fool got, I thought he was trying to reach into the booth and pull the sticker off.”
During a commercial break, Allen told him, “Don’t touch my stuff.”
Meanwhile, the frenetic, back-and-forth game continued to get more intense.
Allen was fine with it when the man was screaming into the booth at them — he’s experienced things like that all over the league — but more aggression was on the horizon. As the Commanders finished a touchdown drive, Allen was on his binoculars with the action at the far end of the field.
“I felt things hitting me. Like little parts of a hot dog bun. Not, like, batteries or anything. But things were hitting me! When I was on my binoculars calling a play, the guy was flicking things at me,” Allen recounted.
“Then we go to break, and I flipped up my headphones so I wasn’t speaking into the mic, and I used language — vociferously, loudly, directly — and just got right in this guy’s face. I was like, ‘I don’t know who the F you think you are, but we’re trying to do a bleeping job here. If you respectfully could let us do our job, we’d appreciate it, so get the F out of [our] face.'”
It was shortly thereafter that security showed up — and it was not run-of-the-mill event staff, but apparently beefy S.W.A.T. team figures with big guns.
“I turned around and three S.W.A.T. members in full garb, toting assault rifles, came into the VOX box,” Allen said. “Just envision those cartoon characters with the chiseled faces, and then the army generals or whatever, and he was just mean-looking!”
The fan was then removed by the guards — and Allen called the Vikings’ comeback victory, as Minnesota improved to 7-1.