It’s been nearly four years since the “Love Boat” adventure several Minnesota Vikings players allegedly participated in on a Lake Minnetonka boat ride and nearly as long since the team instituted it’s “Culture of Accountability.”

The idea of this cleaned up culture exists to the degree that Rick Spielman, the team’s vice president of player personnel, told the Star Tribune two-plus weeks ago that the team eliminated 78 players from its draft board with “red dots” due to character and/or injury issues – a number he said could grow as the draft approached.

That’s all fine and good – but it makes me curious. If the guys the Vikings eliminated didn’t include Percy Harvin and Phil Loadholt, just exactly what did the 78 guys they took off the list have to do in order to earn the so-called “red dot?”

I’ve never met Percy Harvin. He is, reportedly and probably undoubtedly, incredibly talented.

But his alleged character issues are well reported, as well. He failed a drug test at the NFL Combine, a move many say – and I agree – proves that he is either heavily addicted to something or is too arrogant or unintelligent to lay off illegal substances for the roughly one-to-two months it would take to pass a test everyone at the Combine knows is coming.

On top of the drug issue, he’s been accused of being uncoachable, lacking respect for authority, and hanging around with a “posse” of negative characters, according to a story in Pro Football Weekly. The issues prompted one general manager to say Harvin would have to slip to the fourth round before he would consider drafting the Florida wideout and others to say they wouldn’t draft him at all.

Add these together with his injury history and I was fairly convinced that coach Brad Childress’ visit to Harvin this week was less due-diligence and more smokescreen – clearly I was wrong about that.

Loadholt has reportedly had two legal issues while attending Oklahoma: driving under the influence and disorderly conduct.

Now, perhaps none of these issues in and of themselves are enough to demonize a guy forever. These are college kids and probably, to a large degree, coddled kids who, when they do make mistakes, happen to do so in the public eye. I’m not immediately going to dismiss them as evil people – there are worse offenses committed by athletes and non-athletes every day.

Still, I was talking about the draft with some friends at a local bar after an event tonight and we got to talking about these two guys and how they managed to avoid the dreaded “red dot” – and what the 78 men the team supposedly eliminated from consideration must have done to have their names crossed off.

For a team that is still dealing with the fallout of the said Love Boat incident and then supposedly instituted a zero-tolerance character test afterward, it’s interesting that these two guys got through.

In fairness, coaches for both players have said they have never been problems off the field during their playing days for their respective universities (though what else are coaches going to say?). And also in fairness, the transgressions of the past may be just that – problems from the past.

But these picks also smack more than a little bit of hypocricy. That is to say “we have a zero tolerance policy for player malfeasance and we will take all offenders off the board … unless our coach is on the hot seat and we think these guys can help us win – at that point all bets are off.”

I’m not sure this is the message the Vikings wanted to send their fan base during their quest to fill seats and eventually win approval for a new stadium.