The Time Ken Stabler Maybe Planted Cocaine On A Sportswriter He Hated
 
The Time Ken Stabler Maybe Planted Cocaine On A Sportswriter He Hated  

From DeadSpin.com 
 
Last Friday, we republished Pete Axthelm’s great old profile on Ken Stabler, the swashbuckling former NFL quarterback who died at the age of 69 last week. In that profile is an unbelievable anecdote about a “prank” that is impossible to imagine happening in today’s NFL.
From the story:
The only affair involving Stabler that brings no laughter, it seems, is the ugly incident after the 1978 season, when Sacramento writer Bob Padecky was set up for a cocaine bust in Gulf Shores. 
In Sports Illustrated, William Oscar Johnson wrote the Padecky “case ultimately involved the FBI, the attorney general of Alabama, the commissioner of the NFL and several excited and often error-prone reporters. It called into question the reputation and possibly the livelihood of a $342,000 quarterback, the honor of a small-town police chief, the judgment of a badly frightened journalist from The Sacramento Bee, as well as the economic stability and public image of a lush little Alabama resort called Gulf Shores.”

In 1979, Padecky was a Sacramento Bee reporter who had gone to Alabama to find Stabler, who had invited Padecky there after he stopped talking to him during a 1978 season in which the quarterback completed just 58 percent of his passes and threw a career-high 30 interceptions.
COMMERCIAL BREAK: SNAKE FOR PENZOIL 
 

According to Padecky, Stabler was angry about some of the interviews the reporter conducted in Gulf Shores. They had inflammatory exchanges in three restaurants that night, and then things got really weird. 
"I pulled out of the restaurant parking lot and onto the highway, and was hemmed in by two police cars and a motorcycle policeman. I was searched and placed in handcuffs while a cop went to my left front fender and pulled a magnetic key case from inside the wheel well. The key case contained cocaine.
I was thrown in jail, then taken from jail to my hotel room, where we waited for the bad guys who planted the cocaine. The bad guys never came. I was given a two-car police escort to the Pensacola airport, entering the Eastern Airlines passenger jet with armed officers on both my left and my right. The passengers looked at me like I was John Dillinger.
Great, I thought. I’m in the Battle of the Bulge. Can’t wait to see what happens next. Maybe I’ll get to interview Big Foot. I was trying to dial down the tension.
After those 90 minutes — as Maples pointed to a cop on the roof of the Holiday Inn — Gulf Shores Sheriff Cotton Long returned. 

“I don’t want to sell you a bill of goods,” Long said, “but I just learned your life might be in danger.”
Do you want a police escort to the airport in Pensacola, to fly back to Miami?
Thought you’d never ask, I said. 


Maples sat with me in my luxurious Bobcat, showing me his weapon resting on his lap.
“This is a submachine gun,” the chief said. “If anyone tries to stop us, you brake the car hard, swerve to the shoulder — and I’ll take care of them.”
 



But the fact remains that someone had executed a cruel and potentially dangerous stunt, and many observers felt that some of Stabler’s friends had participated—with or without his knowledge. When the subject is raised now, all the whimsical and piratical expressions dissolve into a look of abject innocence. “I just don’t know what happened,” he insists. “Maybe nobody ever will.” 
"I wrote a story about it for both the Miami Herald and the Bee. As a result, the NFL, the FBI and the state of Alabama investigated. After all, cocaine had been found. No one was arrested, although I imagine it wasn’t a pleasant time for Stabler"  
 
Attorney Leigh Steinberg contacted me and after some discussion with Hollywood and said Michael Douglas was interested in doing a movie and John Belushi was going to play yours truly.
All I needed to do was sign off on it. I didn’t. I didn’t want this story to turn into a “Smokey and the Bandit” remake. Stabler told me to buzz off the following training camp. That’s the nut of it.”

That’s insane! Think about the shitstorm that would happen today if, say, Dez Bryant planted some cocaine in Mike Florio’s suit pocket. You know, just for a laugh.
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The ‘70s were fuckin’ wild, man.