Clinton Portis just made his weekly appearance on the Mike Wise Show on 106.7 and had an awful lot to say about a number of topics, including the accusations of sexual harassment that sprung from the way Jets players treated a female reporter in their locker room recently.
"You know man, I think you put women reporters in the locker room in positions to see guys walking around naked, and you sit in the locker room with 53 guys, and all of the sudden you see a nice woman in the locker room, I think men are gonna tend to turn and look and want to say something to that woman ...
"And I mean, you put a woman and you give her a choice of 53 athletes, somebody got to be appealing to her. You know, somebody has to spark her interest, or she's gonna want somebody. I don't know what kind of woman won't, if you get to go and look at 53 men's packages."
The hosts seemed to agree with him, if can assume their laughter was a form of co-signing. They also claimed the reporter should have been more professional and not go into the locker room dressed scantily. But nobody assigned any blame for the Jets. It's going to be interesting to see if Portis catches any flack for this.
More quotes from Portis' interview after the jump.
- "It's a different program, and we have belief in it," Portis said. "I feel good about what we've been doing compared to the strength program we did have." Portis went on to say that in the past, he would leave the weight room with a sore back, or sore legs, and that could have potentially led to some of the minor injuries he has suffered over the last few years. "When you come out of the weight room, you're supposed to feel good."
- He believes the media is blowing the whole Haynesworth situation out of control. " They single out haynesworth standing on the sideline not in the meeting, but there are actually five or six lineman standing right across from him that nobody even mentioned." Says he spoke to Haynesworth and explained that he was in a similar situation, and that no matter what goes on with the front office, he needs to keep playing hard for the rest of the guys in the locker room. "They want to turn on him and give up on him, but nobody in the locker room will."
- said he had an excellent relationship with Mike Shanahan in Denver, and that he was traded only because he asked out when it appaeared Denver wouldn't be willing to pay him the money he felt he deserved. Called re-uniting with Shanahan later in his career, "a blessing in disguise."
- On the team not running a lot in Sunday's win over Dallas, " We don't have to go out and show people we can run ... Everyone in the nfl knows what this system is capable of producing, and what I'm capable of doing. As long as we get W's I don't think it will matter."
- He found it difficult to find a groove when he was playing for the previous coach. "Two touches here, a touch there, another touch here," he claims he just wants consistency. It's not the number of carries he gets, but the frequency that enables him to find his rhythm on the field.
- Portis didn't give up on the team last season, but he might have stopped believing. "You can only run your head into a wall so many times before you realize that wall ain't coming down ... Now I feel like that wall is ready to fall."