At the beginning of the 1992 training camp, coach Don Shula decided he wanted to reward his veteran team by allowing veterans to go home a couple of nights a week rather than sleeping at the cruddy St. Thomas University student dorms.
Well, nose tackle Alfred Oglesby decided not to go home on one of those nights and instead headed out to a strip club in Liberty City. Seems he picked up a dancer, and headed back to her place, and one thing led to another, and next thing he knew it was 10 a.m. the next day.
He had missed meetings. He had missed a practice. He was in deep do.
Oh, did I mention Oglesby also crashed and abandoned teammate Richmond Webb's shiny new BMW 5-series that night?
Anyway, Oglesby shows up at camp and fabricates a story about being kidnapped by people who forced him to go to several ATMs and withdraw cash, then drove him to the edge of the Everglades and told him to start walking home.
Shula bought the story. Club Security Investigator Stuart Weinstein wasn't so sure. "He could have walked backwards back from the Everglades and the timing of the story still didn't add up," Weinstein said years later.
The problem for Oglesby is that Weinstein called Miami-Dade police to report the kidnapping. And upon arriving at Dolphins camp, they were going to take a sworn statement from Oglesby. And upon a professional police investigation of a high-profile person surely showing Oglesby to be a liar, Oglesby was going to face jail time for filing false police reports, perjury, etc ...
Weinstein made this clear to Oglesby who wisely confessed. Except that Shula had already given the media the player's concocted story. And Shula wasn't about to take the fall for Oglesby. So Weinstein and Oglesby had to go before the media and basically say that Oglesby fibbed.
That night, during the team meeting, an angry Shula informed his veterans their go-home privileges were rescinded because of Oglesby. The veterans were livid. And led by Mark Clayton, they grabbed Oglesby after the meeting and tied him to a tree.
If fellow nose tackle Shawn Lee had not untied Oglesby two hours later, he might still be tied to that tree. Not surprisingly, Oglesby was cut during that training camp.
