Golden Tate has heard the rumors. And he wants to set things straight.
Tate, the Lions receiver who was the subject of a couple of stories about his interactions with teammates Russell Wilson and Percy Harvin during their time together in Seattle, says that what people have heard is not correct.
“I did not have an affair with Russell Wilson’s wife, nor did I have anything to do with his divorce,” Tate writes in an essay at Medium.com. “That is laughable for anyone who knows us. His ex-wife, Ashton, is still best friends with my girlfriend. Russell and I were good friends when I was in Seattle, on and off the field — he knows the rumors about me were unfounded, damaging to my reputation, and an attack on my character. Anyone who circulated that rumor was just plain irresponsible.”
It’s a little surprising that Tate would even dignify that rumor with a denial, but he apparently felt it was damaging enough to his reputation that he needed to let people know it didn’t happen. (Whether Wilson is OK with Tate discussing this publicly is not clear from Tate’s essay.)
Tate has also addressed, for the first time, the talk that he and Percy Harvin got into a fight before last year’s Super Bowl. Although Tate acknowledges that the two of them had an altercation, he says it was much less than it was made out to be, and that people saying Harvin punched Tate and gave him a black eye are wrong.
“To set the record straight, I was not punched by Percy during Super Bowl week last year, nor did I have a black eye, as was speculated on by various Internet reports,” Tate writes. “I even saw a photo of my face that was photoshopped with a mark on it! Percy and I did have a confrontation, yes, but no punches were thrown, and it certainly never rose to the level that was erroneously reported by certain outlets. I highly respect his level of play. He’s one of the best in the game!”
Tate says he was motivated to write because he wanted to counteract inaccurate media reports, although the reality is that few media outlets touched the rumors about Wilson, and most of the media reports about Tate’s confrontation with Harvin came after other teammates confirmed the incident. These two stories weren’t so much an example of irresponsible reporting as an example of the way that the Internet allows rumors to spread beyond the traditional media. At least Tate has an outlet to deny those rumors.