Mile High Report
That’s my bag, bro!
In all the hubbub of the season, sometimes minor sports stories fall between the cracks and are forgotten forever.
Do you remember the time former Broncos Tatum Bell jacked some luggage from another player when he joined the Detroit Lions? It happened.
From 2004 to 2006 and then again in 2008, Bell played for the Broncos, racking up 2,591-yards and 15-touchdowns on 525 carries. During his run with the Detroit Lions in 2007, he gained just 182-yards and 1-touchdown on 44 carries. With his time in Detroit a disappointment, the Lions were looking to move on. In 2008, the Lions signed former Bengals RB Rudi Johnson to a one-year deal.
According to NBC4 New York at the time:
So when Johnson came back [from meeting with the coaches] to get his bags, they were nowhere to be found. Johnson and Millen were stumped. Enter the eye in the sky.
The team checked the videotapes generated by the team’s in-house surveillance system, and they quickly identified the culprit.
So who might it have been? None other than Tatum Bell, who lost his gig with the Lions after Rudi arrived.
ESPN further noted that Johnson was less than pleased.
“Ricky showed me the tape Tuesday afternoon,” Johnson said. “What makes this crazy is that I’ve talked to him after games, and I talked to him a couple hours prior to this — I guess it was before he found out he was going to be released.”
Johnson said a woman returned the bags to the practice facility Tuesday evening, but that the contents were gone.
“I got the bags back — empty,” he said. “So he’s got a bunch of my underclothes. What he’s going to do with that, I don’t know. He’s got some socks and boxers.”
Johnson said he was also still missing about $200 in cash along with his ID and credit cards, but said that he did not plan to involve the authorities.
Needless to say, Rudi had nothing to say to Bell when Tatum reached out.
“I didn’t want to talk to him, but I let him know where I stand,” he said. “He knows how I feel about it, and it isn’t anything positive.”
At the time, this was a nominal story, but one that seems to have stuck with Bell. In 2010, Bell told the Oklahoman he blames the luggage incident for the end of his career.
“Man, I took the bag just being dumb,” Bell said on Thursday. “That’s the main reason I’m not still in the league, to be honest with you.”
Let that be a lesson to you. Don’t take things that aren’t yours... Especially another man’s underwear.
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