NFL Is Investigating Vikings’ Coach Tice

The NFL is investigating Minnesota Coach Mike Tice for scalping Super Bowl tickets, which he admits he did as a Viking assistant but denies doing as a head coach.

Tice, in an interview with ESPN, said he told his assistants they could sell their Super Bowl tickets to a ticket agency in California.

Each NFL player has the right to buy two Super Bowl tickets at face value, which this year was $500 or $600 per ticket, depending on the seat location. Many team executives also are given the opportunity to purchase tickets. The league requires all players, coaches and club personnel who buy Super Bowl tickets to sign a release stating they will not resell them for profit.

On Wednesday, two investigators from the NFL’s security staff interviewed Tice and other Viking officials at team headquarters in Eden Prairie, Minn. The investigators also spoke with Dean Dalton, who coaches the Viking running backs.

Viking owner Red McCombs said he was not concerned about the investigation.

“I talked with Mike, and I’m very comfortable that it’s a non-issue,” McCombs told The Times. “I don’t think there’s anything there, so I guess it would go away.”

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said it would be up to Commissioner Paul Tagliabue to determine the penalty for a team employee caught scalping tickets.

The investigation into Tice was first reported Tuesday night by Sports Illustrated, which said on its website that the league was looking into the way the Vikings distributed tickets to their employees. Citing team sources, the website reported that players who gave their tickets to Tice this year received $1,900 per ticket, $800 more than they got for selling them to him last season. Tice denied to SI.com having anything to do with the re-selling of players’ tickets.

“I’m confident when the league finishes looking at this, everything will come out fine,” Tice told SI.com. “It’s a shame assumptions are being made about my role in this. I did not approach any player about Super Bowl tickets as head coach of the Minnesota Vikings.”

But hours later, Tice told ESPN that he had been involved in Super Bowl ticket scalping as an assistant coach -- “just as all the coaches in this league have done.” He also said he gave his assistant coaches the name of a person who purchases tickets for a California ticket agency.

Tice did not return calls from The Times.

“If I’m guilty of anything, I am guilty of telling coaches that it’s OK to sell their tickets,” Tice told ESPN.

Tice, who earns about $1 million annually, is among the league’s lowest-paid head coaches. In a conference call with the Minnesota media last week, McCombs said he nearly fired Tice during the second half of last season. Tice’s job security was an issue throughout the season, and insiders believed he might have been fired had the Vikings not upset Green Bay in the first round of the NFC playoffs.

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Associated Press contributed to this report.