NFL Socks Wyche With Record Fine : Football: The Bengals’ coach will lose almost $30,000 for barring a woman reporter from team’s locker room.

Sam Wyche was hit with the largest fine ever levied against an NFL coach today by Commissioner Paul Tagliabue for excluding a woman reporter from the Cincinnati Bengals’ locker room.

Tagliabue levied a fine equal to 1/17th of Wyche’s annual salary, estimated at $500,000. That would mean it would cost him nearly $30,000 for barring Denise Tom of USA Today from the locker room after Monday night’s 31-16 loss at Seattle.

Wyche was not suspended and will be on the sideline for the Bengals’ game Sunday against the Rams at Anaheim.

Wyche has been fined twice before--$3,000 by Tagliabue last December when he closed the locker room to all media after a game, and $2,000 in 1986 by then-Commissioner Pete Rozelle after the coach knocked a microphone out of the hands of a reporter in the locker room.

“The commissioner said last year that equal media access was a priority and I believe this emphasizes that point,” said Joe Browne, the league’s vice president for communications.

Browne refused to divulge the size of the fine, but said it was safe to say it was the largest against a coach in the history of the NFL.

Tagliabue also notified Wyche that the coach’s plan to open the Bengals’ locker room for a limited time was not acceptable and that the room was to remain open to all accredited media until the players have departed.

A meeting scheduled for today between Wyche and Tabliabue was canceled after Bengals General Manager Paul Brown asked the commissioner not to disrupt the team’s preparations for the Rams game, said Mike Brown, the team’s assistant general manager.

“We truly appreciate that he would listen to us,” Mike Brown said. “We think he did the right thing and we respect him for that.”

The Bengals have been practicing near Seattle for the Rams game instead of returning to Cincinnati.

Wyche had told the team Thursday that he planned to fly to New York that night to meet Tagliabue and put tight ends coach Bill Johnson in charge of today’s practice. He scrapped that plan when Tagliabue canceled their meeting.