Dec 6th 2008 9:45AM by Ryan Wilson (author feed)
Filed under: Bears, Vikings, NFC North, NFL Fans, NFL Referees

The Vikings’ convincing win over the Bears last Sunday night didn’t come without costs. Specifically, defensive end Jared Allen was fined $10,000 for the unforgivable act of using the football as a prop: after registering a sack, he pretended to give CPR to the ball. Apparently, the league will not tolerate pretend-lifesaving on inanimate objects.

Allen, in his first year in Minnesota, has been successful at racking up both sacks as well as fines. He’s at 10.5 for the former and, well, substantially more for the latter: Allen has now been fined $90,000 by the NFL this season. He was fined $75,000 for hits on quarterbacks Matt Schaub and Aaron Rodgers, $5,000 for jumping on a pile late on a run against the Bears and now $10,000 for using the football as a prop during a celebration. A few Bears’ players also received invoices from NFL offices, but defensive end Adewale Ogunleye wasn’t one of them. Evidently, the league didn’t think enough of Gus Frerotte’s dive (see YouTubes above) to bother with fining Ogunleye, which probably explains why officials didn’t throw a flag on the play, either.

Actually, I don’t know that Frerotte was flopping. Maybe a bump in the back really did send him flying face-down to the turf where he lay motionless for a few seconds. He is 37 and prone to freak accidents, so who knows.