Only in Wisconsin

By Eric Lear
Co-Sports Editor

Sports obsession gone too far

If you haven’t heard by now, a Wisconsin man was arrested Monday, Jan. 14, after his wife told authorities that he restrained his 7-year-old son with tape for an hour and taped a Green Bay Packers jersey on him.
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Matthew Kowald’s, 36, of Pardeeville, Wis., actions have written the book on how not to raise a cheesehead.

Kowald’s wife filed a restraining order after he paid a $186 fine on Wednesday, Jan. 16. She took pictures of the event on her cell phone and turned them into the authorities.

I am as crazy about sports as the next guy, but this gentleman took the term sports “nut” literally. Perhaps taking his son to the frozen tundra of historic Lambeau Field to watch Brett Favre in action would have been a healthy option. Maybe reading him some quotes from the legendary Vince Lombardi would have inspired him to wear the green and gold. But no, this cheesehead decided to restrain his son with tape for an hour and tape on a Packers jersey.

“I didn’t mean no harm and he knows that, but I haven’t been able to tell him that,” Kowald so eloquently said in an article written by the Associated Press. Now, I don’t recall much about my days as a 7-year-old, but I’m sure the last thing my parents were worried about when raising me was what sports teams I pulled for. That poor child is now probably scared to death of the Packers.

What could have possibly been going through Kowald’s mind when restraining his child via tape? Did he think that taping a Packer jersey on him would make him jump on the bandwagon? Maybe he considered taping his cheesehead hat on him.

We can only hope that Kowald has learned from this situation, because he is now in a mess that tape cannot fix. I can only hope that he acted more civilly after watching his Packers go down to the second-best Manning in the NFL.