I got the honor of interviewing Chris Kluwe. I would like to send a special thanks to Chris Kluwe for taking time out of his busy day to do an interview with me.
Cole: Can you tell us a little about yourself to get started?
Chris Kluwe: Well, I’ve been playing football for the Vikings for
seven years now. I’ve been punter and it’s been good.
Cole: Once your contract is up in 2013, do you think you will
be staying with the Vikings?
Chris Kluwe: Yeah, I’ll try to stay with the Vikings. They’ve been
great. I’ve had a lot of great memories here. But, the NFL is always changing.
It’s going to be one of those situations where I hope the Vikings and I work
something out, but there’s always that chance that something won’t happen, and
you have to go to another team. But, I’m hopeful that the rest of my career
will be with the Vikings. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
Cole: Are there any records you will be pursuing this year,
team or NFL?
Chris Kluwe: I think I’ve broken every such team record that they
keep track of, and I would like to break the NFL one. That might be a matter of
playing eight or nine more years, so we’ll see if I get those.
Cole: As a fan I’m
furious just as much as you are about the bounty gate. I think is disgusting
what they did. But do you think Sean
Payton got too harsh, or too light of a punishment?
Chris Kluwe: I think he got about right. A year is enough to where
it shows people the commissioner is serious about enforcing the rules of the
game. It all gets down to; he’s not going to be coaching for a year. He doesn’t
get paid for a year either, so that’s almost six million dollars that he’s
losing. That’s a pretty significant amount of money. I think punishment was
just right. I think the main thing now will be to see what the punishment for
the players that were involved with it, because I think the NFLPA should make
the same statement that stuff like that is not tolerated in within the game of
football.
Cole: Do you feel the Vikings could have won the 2009 Super
Bowl if the “bounty” program didn’t exist?
Chris Kluwe: I don’t know. It obviously played a part, because Brett
[Favre] did get hit in the ankle. I’m sure that played a part in the rest of
the game. But, at the same time we had chances to win that game. We turned the ball over five times, and we
didn’t score touchdowns a couple of times when we had to settle for field goals.
You can’t change the past, and we have to continue trying.
Cole: How do you feel this year will go for the Vikings?
Chris Kluwe: I think we’ll be pretty good. Christian [Ponder] is a
very good, and young quarterback. Hopefully he’ll have learned from all the
experience he got on the field last year. We’ve got a pretty good draft
position, so ideally we’ll pick up some guys that will help us out. You never
know what each year is going to be like until you go out and play the game. So,
I’m hoping for a good season.
Cole: Are you happy with the coaching staff changes since Brad
Childress?
Chris Kluwe: I think coach Frasier has done a pretty good job. This
year with the ability to have a full off season to train in we’ll be to implement
his game plan a lot better than we did last year. I think it should a pretty
good year.
Cole: Are there any new updates with your band, Tripping
Icarus?
Chris Kluwe: We do have a CD coming out at the end of this month.
This will be our third one. Then we’re recording our fourth one in May, but I
don’t know when that will come out. I’ll be doing updates on twitter.
Cole: I think that wraps it up! Thanks for doing the interview, I
really appreciate it! I would like to
wish you and your teammate’s good luck this season and hope it’s a healthy one.
Hope to talk again soon.
Chris Kluwe: Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
Again, he's a really nice guy. I can't thank him enough for taking time out of his schedule to do this. I hope all the readers of Daily Leisure Vikings enjoy this. I hope he's right when he said he thinks the Vikings will have a good year!
