Among the other oddments in the nearly 200 pages of bounty evidence the league has revealed, there was a page devoted to fullback Mike Karney.
That was unusual, even to Mike Karney, who said he took it as a badge of honor.
“I’m not mad about it,” Karney told Jeff Duncan of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “I take it as a compliment. I love it.”
Karney played for the Saints for 2004 to 2008, the biggest part of his seven-year career. But when he was about to play against them as a member of the Rams in 2009, players were shown a slide with his image in a defensive meeting.
Under the frankly cartoonish heading “MIKE [EXPLETIVE] KARNEY,” the slide featured three photos of Karney and a paragraph of stats and a quote referring to whether he had hard feelings about being released by the Saints.
“I wouldn’t expect them to have my real middle name up there: Michael John Mario Karney,” he said. “That doesn’t do anything does it? I guess they just love me that much.”
Karney was careful to say he had no problems with the players involved, insisting he didn’t recall any cheap hits during the game. But he had strong words for Saints coach Sean Payton and general manager Mickey Loomis.
“Evil does not prevail,” Karney said. “Everything in life eventually comes back to you full circle. It brought them a Super Bowl championship [in 2009]. But it also brought them a lot of bad baggage. There’s a lot of evil in that organization.”
Maybe now we know why they didn’t use his real middle name.