Isn't there something in the Constitution about separation of pro athletes and state?

Being a long-suffering fan of the Minnesota Vikings has multiple downsides, but none so great as that — however briefly — we were forced to like Herschel Walker and Brett Favre.

Although it wasn’t his fault, Walker wrecked the Vikings in the 1990s. They were, it was felt, one dynamic piece (in the dehumanizing world of the NFL, “piece” refers to what most people would call a “player”) away from winning the Super Bowl.

So when the Dallas Cowboys dangled Walker under their nose, the Vikings traded away their future by showering Dallas with the draft picks that would supply the backbone for the Cowboys three Super Bowl victories in the 1990s.

Herschel Walker was like a bachelor party — there is extra pressure to enjoy it while you can because you know you’ll be paying for it the next morning, and possibly, depending on how debauched things get, for the rest of your life.

Walker was OK, but not transcendent. After two years he was gone, along with all those draft picks necessary to keep your team in future contention.

Obviously, we also listened to a lot of Herschel Walker post-game interviews and if you had told any of us that we were listening to a future U.S. senator candidate … it just wouldn’t have computed at all. The only reference that is even close is the final scene in "Animal House" when Bluto and Mandy Pepperidge drive off under they where-are-they-now subtitle of “Senator and Mrs. John Blutarsky, Washington, D.C.”

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Will Rogers said, “Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what's going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?” That one-fiftieth of our most august political body could be made up of Herschel Walker and Tommy Tuberville bring you to the sobering reality that a meaningful part of our destiny is dependent on two men with the mental firepower of almond butter.

Which, frankly, is a good segue into Brett Favre. Vikings fans’ relationship with Favre is more complicated, because for most of his career he quarterbacked the hated Green Bay Packers. Yet when he came to the Vikings, he had enough juice left in the tank to make a difference.

He was the transcendent piece, and Minnesota might well have won a Super Bowl had he not been knocked out by what became the New Orleans Saints’ Bountygate scandal.

But we listened to his post-game interviews too, and Lord have mercy. You never sensed any malice; you never sensed much of anything at all. He came across as a good-natured goof — Terry Bradshaw without the intellect.

Even later when we learned he had texted photos of his hm-hm to a female sports reporter, it seemed —  to me, anyway — less an act of aggression than the act of someone who doesn’t have one of those little voices in his head that tells him to think.

So when he got caught in a scheme to defraud poor Mississipians, I can't say that we thought enough of him to be disappointed. To a morally well-adjusted person, his text to government insiders, which essentially said, “I won’t get caught, will I?” would have been only slightly less obscene as his hm-hm. But of course, the government was in on the fraud as well, so, I guess, it all seemed perfectly rational to them.

I’m pretty sure James Madison must have included something in the Constitution about a wall of separation between athletes and government — it’s there in the back, where nobody has noticed it yet.

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This is why I have always been solidly against post-game interviews. I never enjoy it as my heroes step to the mic, and sit on my hands muttering to myself, “please don’t say something stupid, please don’t say something stupid.”

It’s not their fault, it’s a different skill set, is all. Remember, there is a reason no one asks poets to play quarterback.

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Walker, Tuberville, Favre show why athletes should avoid government