Robison expects fine for kick

Brian Robison won’t be surprised if the NFL responds to his kicking of T.J. Lang in the groin by issuing a fine later this week. But the power of Twitter had Robison seeing hundreds of responses against him, despite his public apology.

Minnesota Vikings defensive end Brian Robison issued an apology to Green Bay Packers guard T.J. Lang on Twitter and early Monday morning Lang accepted the apology – via Twitter, of course – after receiving Robison’s cleat to the groin area during Sunday afternoon’s game between the two NFC North Division rivals.
“All joking aside I think @Brian_Robison is a heck of a player.. just caught up in the emotion of the game.. apology accepted,” Lang tweeted at 1:22 a.m. Monday.

Though the players are ready to kick the issue to the curb, Robison was still fielding questions Monday about the issue.

“Any time you do something like that, you regret it,” Robison said. “But it’s kind of like I explained to him, I wasn’t going for the (groin). It happened to land there. It’s something that I wish I could have back.”

The players ended up lining up across from each other after the incident — it followed a second-quarter field goal — but Robison said Lang didn’t say a word about it after tempers had cooled on the field.

A review of league data confirmed Robison’s contention that the incident was the first unsportsmanlike penalty assessed against him in his four-plus NFL seasons. In fact, Robison said he hasn’t had an unsportsmanlike penalty against him in his entire football career, dating to his Pop Warner days.

Still, when a kick to the groin is televised nationally as Robison’s was by FOX, the NFL world responds. He said he received more than 500 responses on Twitter and “probably 87 percent of them were Packers fans, telling me how much of a piece of crap I am.”

Robison seemed to understand why his actions drew such reaction.

“If you don’t know a player, that’s the first thing they saw of me, especially on national TV, that doesn’t help at all,” Robison said. “It’s like I tried to explain to (Lang), I’m not a dirty player and I think he knows that. It’s something that’s out of character for me. I don’t plan on repeating it in the future.

“I apologized and said I did not maliciously aim for genitalia. There were some people that came back and said, ‘Well, I guess if a guy shoots a gun and accidentally hits (someone) then it’s not murder.’ I’m like, ‘How do you even compare that to murder? Whatever.’ ”

Whatever Robison’s heat-of-the-moment intentions were — he said he wasn’t aiming for Lang’s privates and didn’t even think he hit him there until one of his teammates informed him — he is expecting to hear from the NFL offices about it.

“Actually, at the time, I thought I had hit him in the leg. Then, of course, later on somebody proceeded to tell me, ‘Dude, you hit him in the (privates).’ I’m like, ‘Great, this is going to be fun.’ “

And likely expensive. How will his wife, Jayme, react?

“She probably won’t be too happy on Thursday when she sees a little money missing out of the check,” Robison said.

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Tim Yotter is the publisher of Viking Update. Follow Viking Update on Twitter and discuss this topic on our message boards. To become a subscriber to the Viking Update web site or magazine, click here.

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