TOM HOFFARTH’S ON AND OFF THE WALL: Former Super Bowl MVP Rypien caught up in …
December 18, 2011 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
You know, that’s someone’s daughter you’re ogling in that skimpified Lingerie Football League uniform.
It might even be one who belongs to former Super Bowl MVP Mark Rypien.
“Eventually, you’d like to think she could be the face of this league,” the former NFL quarterback says of 21-year-old Angela Rypien, quarterback of the LFL’s Seattle Mist.
The face. The frontside. The backside. Whatever else might be visible in that Victoria’s Not-So-Secret get-up that includes a hockey helmet, padded bra, tight shorts, knee pads and a garter belt for accent.
She could definitely be the league’s poster girl, wearing her father’s No.11 right over her, well, close to her heart.
“She’s physically tall and striking,” dad continued without getting any arguments. “She’s got a good pedigree. She does see that she could be very marketable.”
Even better, if she was playing more.
Mark flew into Southern California on Friday from the Seattle area to watch Angela’s team face the L.A. Temptation and got a group to drive over to Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario for the contest.
Problem is, Angela spent the whole game on the bench.
In the Mist’s season opener, she threw three touchdowns in a 42-8 win over Green Bay. In the next game, she had three interceptions in the first half of a 28-24 loss to the Las Vegas Sin and was replaced.
After the Temptation laid a 27-24 loss on the Mist, dad and daughter
huddled at a nearby Denny’s to talk things over.
“I’m just so frustrated that I wanted to play, and I got real angry about it,” Angela said Saturday. “He had to reassure me that, hey, I’ve only been playing eight months, I’ve got a lot to learn and just celebrate the good times and learn from the hard times.”
Mark Rypien has already learned life in the LFL isn’t all LOL. It has, believe it or not, helped his kid with self-esteem issues.
“I’ve gotten over the fact that she’s running around in a bra and panties, because I see the essence of what this has done for her from a character standpoint,” said Mark, 49, a two-time Pro Bowl pick who played his first eight years in the league with the Washington Redskins before retiring after 2002.
“No doubt, she has matured. She’s always been a bit of a free spirit anyway. She realizes this can bring some direction and make her feel good about how she’s giving back to the community.”
And they do it of their own free will, essentially. LFL players earn no salary. Their motivation varies as to why they take time off from full-time jobs, learn the game in limited practices, and play four games a season with the hope of making it to the championship.
Angela, the single mom of a 2-year-old daughter, grew up playing all kinds of sports. Dad was her hockey coach for fiveyears. She missed the team camaraderie and competition.
Flipping through the channels one day, she came upon the LFL on MTV.
“It looked like a lot of fun,” she said.
Granted, if she wanted to play real football –
on a 100-yard field, outdoors, with all the heavy gear – she could have joined another kind of women’s pro league. The LFL is reduced to a indoor, 50-yard, 7-on-7 contest.
With reduced protection.
“In some ways, it’s kind of sad that we have to do something that calls attention to ourselves by calling it a `lingerie’ league,” said Angela, who graduated from the Paul Mitchell School in L.A. to start a career as a stylist. “It’s a great marketing scheme.”
Playboy helped spread the word in a recent spread under the headline: “Hit the Showers with the Lingerie Football League: The Sexiest Show on Turf.” Angela wasn’t part of it.
But then, when Sports Illustrated ran an item on the LFL a couple months back, it was in reference to Angela’s participation as Mark’s offspring as being “a sign of the apocalypse.”
Grin and bare as much of it as you can.
“At the get-go, I was more, `You’re kidding me, right?”‘ Mark said about seeing his daughter in the get-up. “Do I totally agree with that? You know, it’s her call.
“I’m a dad, not too tickled about it, but I understand the hook. There is a fine line to it. Maybe if they started wearing a thong, then they’d be crossing that line.”
