There are sports fanatics and there are sports fanatics. And then there's whatever you'd call Mathew Kowald. The 36-year-old father has pleaded guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct after he allegedly forced his son to wear a
Green Bay Packers jersey to support his team in Sunday's NFC championship match.
That doesn't sound like much of a crime until you hear how he did it. When his 7-year-old refused to wear the shirt, the enraged father physically restrained the boy and literally taped the jersey to his body.
His outraged mother begged her estranged husband to let the child go, but Kowald refused for at least an hour, holding the youngster and forcing him to parade around in the sweater. She phoned police in their hometown of
Pardeeville, not far from Madison, and they carted him off jail. He pleaded no contest to the accusation and paid a $186 fine for his actions.
It won't surprise you to learn that this marriage is all but over. There's a history of problems between the pair and Kowald's wife has now filed for a restraining order to keep the gone-too-far football fan away from his family.
Authorities admit they didn't believe the story at first, but his wife was smart enough to have taken cell phone pictures of the incident and presented them to police, preventing her husband from denying what happened.