He claims to have run with the bulls in Pamplona, he’s obsessed with trying to make baskets in the Nerf hoop in the Minnesota Vikings locker room (even if he’s not very good) and he insisted on being announced as a graduate of the fictional “Culinary Academy” at the start of two NFL games last month — simply because he thought it was funny.
Jared Allen, the Vikings’ star defensive end, doesn’t take himself too seriously off the field, but when it’s game-on, he is focused. He’ll no doubt be in it to win it when his team squares off against the Dallas Cowboys in the divisional playoff game Sunday, where he is expected to be a key player.
Sort of like Chad Ochocinco, whom we told you about last week, Allen, 27, seems to almost have a split personality. On the field he is a menace to quarterbacks league-wide. He’s one of the league’s leading pass rushers who racked up 14 1/2 sacks in the regular season, second in all of the NFL.
But before and after the game he is a bit of a lovable goofball, an adrenaline junkie who claims to indulge in hobbies like bungee jumping in New Zealand, white water rafting and, especially, hunting. He’s reportedly felled an elk with a spear, taken down a buffalo with a crossbow and killed a wild boar with a hunting knife. Yikes!
He loves hunting so much that when he proposed to his girlfriend, Amy Johnson, he did so in his truck just before leaving on a hunting trip.
“I’ve been on a few (hunting trips) with him,” Vikings linebacker Chad Greenway told The New York Times. “He’s a great guy, though. He works hard and wants to be a good player, and sometimes that gets lost in the fact that he’s a little bit of a nut.”
Nut or not, the fact is he’s the highest-paid defensive player in NFL history, and is two years into a six-year, $74 million deal — which certainly pays for a whole lot of hunting trips. Furthermore, the NFL and the Vikings in particular are relieved that he cleaned up his act and hasn’t repeated his off-field performance of 2006, when he racked-up two drunk driving arrests in five months.
And in particularly non-nutty fashion, Allen seems to have a rather healthy world-view, one that extends far beyond a football career that won’t last forever.
“In the football world, you want to be known for your football,” Allen told the Times. “Life is different. Fifty years from now, if I’m still alive, I could care less if I played football. Football is just a part of what I do. I just enjoy life. I’m young. I’m able. Might as well have fun.”
Photo courtesy of Multi National Force – West/Cpl. Triah Pendracki via Wikimedia Commons.
