Viking coach paints house in PACKER colors
sports.yahoo.com
[Man do these writers need filler or what?....bring on the damn season already.I'm Jonesing for some football.]
The exterior of Mike Tice's house used to be tan and brown. Very drab. A year ago, he and his wife, Diane, decided a fresh coat of paint was needed. They went with new colors. They went with what Tice described as a "kind of yellowish, canary Packer goldish" on everything but the shutters, which they painted green.
"You pull up to my house and say 'Holy ——,' " Tice said. "You say, 'Look at this idiot. His house has got Packer colors.' "
Now, why would the Vikings' coach paint his house with the team colors of the Green Bay Packers? Isn't that a form of heresy, sort of like the president of Coca-Cola having nothing in his refrigerator but Pepsi?
"We liked the colors. Actually, it looks good," Tice said. "We certainly knew when we picked out the color for the shutters, we'd have Packer colors."
Well, he does and he doesn't.
The color of the shutters does resemble Packer green, but the rest of the house isn't exactly Packer gold.
Tice's next-door neighbor, Everett Dale, described it as "a kind of pale ivory." Another neighbor, Steve Smithson, called it beige. After some investigative reporting that included a drive-by of Tice's home, you would have to agree that the primary color of the house is the way Tice described it, a kind of yellowish, canary Packer goldish. Only it's a pale kind of yellowish, canary Packer goldish.
It certainly looks more like the color of a house the Packers' coach would live in, not the Vikings' coach.
"We could have stayed away from it, but I took it and ran with it," Tice said. "Now that people know, it's this year's Randy Ratio."
He better hope not. The Randy Ratio sort of backfired last season.
When Tice and his wife picked out the colors last July, they didn't think the paint job would last long. The plan then was to eventually put steel siding over the cedar exterior of their Edina rambler. The plan has changed.
"The house is staying like that. We decided not to put steel siding on it," Tice said. "So, every time I pull into my driveway in daylight, it reminds me of the Packers."
In football, teams have been known to put the jersey of the opposing quarterback on a tackling dummy and have at it. Vikings defensive tackle Chris Hovan takes it even further. He keeps Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre's jersey in his locker for motivation. Tice swears his decision to go with a Packer color scheme on his house wasn't driven by a desire to always be reminded Green Bay is the team the Vikings have to beat to win their division. It was a lot more innocent than that.
Anyway, he claims it was a lot more innocent than that.
"I have no hate for the Packers. I have nothing but respect for them. I didn't paint my house those colors because I have animosity toward the Packers," Tice said. "We were having a house party. I said to Diane that it'd be a great thing that when people pull up they see Packer colors. It would be an item of conversation."
It was an item of conversation Wednesday for Brad Thompson, a landscaper Tice hired. Thompson noticed right away that the house wasn't the only thing on Tice's property that could have people seeing Packer colors. The day lilies that rim the sidewalk leading to Tice's front door are gold and green.
"Those are Packer colors," Thompson said. "We're planting some purple dome aster to offset it. Now isn't that perfect? Purple. Dome."
Meantime, everything seemed perfect for Tice until he learned he might be without running back Michael Bennett, whose surgically repaired left foot could keep him sidelined the entire season. Even with that possibility, Tice is antsy for the July 25 start of training camp and hardcore preparations for the season opener Sept. 7 against the Packers themselves.
"I'm ready to get going. We've put in such a hard offseason. Now it's time to see what we've accomplished," Tice said. "I heard Diane telling one of the coaches' wives on the phone that she's sick of it, too." So there's no confusion, Diane Tice was talking about wanting the season to begin. She wasn't sick of the colors of her house.
"She kind of chuckled when we picked out the colors," Tice said. "Now she says maybe we should paint it a different color."
Apparently, Diane is concerned now that word is out about the color of her house that somebody might want to deface it because of the Packer tint. Chances are, that won't happen. There's a better chance of something else happening, something Tice brought up.
"Maybe some paint company will pick up on this and will want to paint our house orange and black for the second week of the season because we're playing the Bears and silver and blue the third week because we're playing the Lions," Tice said.
An orange and black house? A silver and black one?
Maybe he should stick with the colors he has. |
