KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- One by one, from every corner of the locker room, Chiefs players repeated the same line when the topic turned to teammate Dwayne Bowe: "No comment."
Coach Todd Haley took a similar mum's-the-word approach, calling his flamboyant wide receiver's latest distraction "an internal matter."
No one, at least inside the organization, wants to talk about Bowe's story, the one he told to ESPN the Magazine for last week's edition. He said teammates arranged for women they met on social networking sites to meet them at a hotel during a road trip to San Diego in 2007, his rookie season.
Calling it "importing," Bowe said the women were flown in three or four days in advance and took up the entire floor of the hotel. He said the women knew just about everything about the players.
Outside the team, it's caused quite a stir, a juicy plotline for an ordinarily run-of-the-mill part of the offseason.
"Dwayne and I did have a long conversation, and from this point on, we'll leave it that, that it was discussed, handled internally and we're moving forward," Haley said Monday. "We're worried about making progress as a team as we go forward, and that's what's really important to me now."
Kansas City's players and coaches wouldn't address the situation, and Bowe wasn't available.
Still, there's a sense around the Chiefs' training complex that Bowe's latest digression isn't something the tight-reigned Haley-Scott Pioli regime will tolerate -- not from a player who already has been in the doghouse several times.
A year ago, the fourth-year wideout showed up to offseason workouts out of shape -- a big no-no for Haley -- was benched for part of the preseason for lack of focus, continued to drop passes during the season, then was suspended four games for violating the NFL's ban on performance-enhancing substances.
Even before Bowe told his lurid tale last week, Haley called this a decisive year for the former first-round draft pick.
"Dwayne is no different than any of these other guys," Haley said. "He's another young player who's learning on the go, that we feel has a chance to be a good player and has to do certain things to be a good player and be talked about with other good players."
Given Haley's history with trouble-making players, Bowe's sex-on-the-road tale likely won't go over well. The in-your-face coach had a running feud with flamboyant Terrell Owens in Dallas, where he was the receivers coach, and had a sideline confrontation with Anquan Boldin during the 2008 NFC Championship Game as the Arizona Cardinals' offensive coordinator.
The previous Chiefs regimes put up with plenty of grief from Larry Johnson -- accusations of sexual assault, trade demands, playing-time grumblings -- over several years. Haley lasted barely half a season with the disgruntled running back, cutting him loose last November after Johnson questioned the coach's competence and used a gay slur on his Twitter account.
Haley has vowed to be calmer this season and remained tightlipped about Bowe.
"That's team business, family business so to speak," Haley said. "Just like you'd want to keep your family's business your business, that's what's happening here. I think the team wants to keep it that way."
Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press
