Bucs general manager Mark Dominik apologized for his off the record inference that Donald Penn should utilize Valerie Bertinelli's dietician.

Joe thought it was interesting that at FanFest Saturday night with a small gaggle of reporters, Mark Dominik apologized on the record for a remark that he made off the record that seemed to be on the record.

Or something like that.

If you are scoring at home, Dominik spoke to an invitation-only group of season ticket holders and prospective season ticket holders last week at One Buc Palace. There Dominik told the gathering that last season, Donald Penn’s physique did not transform in a way that would mirror Valerie Bertinelli’s weight loss practices, so reports Tom Balog of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

“That was insensitive and that’s why I apologized to him,” Dominik said. “Donald is an important member of this football team and a guy that I’m extremely fond of. We had a good heart-to-heart conversation.”

Dominik thought that he was speaking in a private gathering when his conversation was recorded and put out on the Interwebs. As the old saying goes, you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, though the recording was taken down.

Was the gathering a private setting (in which Dominik had no reasonable expectation of his comments being recorded)? It’s a gray area. The Poynter Paper, the bastion of American journalism ethics, apparently thought not, running with the story last week. Joe, after a few phone calls and e-mails, determined Dominik was recorded without permission, so Joe voluntarily took his link to the recording down.

Joe later received several calls from MSM people — both radio and print — telling him that in fact Dominik was on the record, despite what the Bucs media relations office proclaimed. One call Joe received was from a former Bucs player unaffiliated with Joe in any way who told Joe that every year, players and NFL team executives are instructed that any time they speak to any group, that they should expect their words to be picked up by a reporter.

In short, a public forum is when anyone has access to a speaker. When the Bucs paraded to various chambers of commerce gatherings last week, anyone willing to pay for a ticket could walk off the street and listen. That is a public forum.

Joe was instructed in college if a setting is not a public forum, and if the speaker is not asked if he can be recorded or if the speaker does not know what the recording will be used for, then it is off the record.  

(Joe’s journalism ethics professor even went so far as to say getting a free hot dog while covering a game is unethical because you are being paid off. Seriously. Frankly, Joe’s not that easy. It takes more than a hot dog to pay him off.)

So even though Dominik’s little incident is a bit of a gray area regarding whether he should have expected a degree of privacy, Joe chose to err on the side of caution, which is why he removed his posted quotes from the audio.

Now that we have that straightened out, anyone wishing to bribe Joe for a comfortable sum of money can e-mail him at joe@joebucsfan.com.

Speaking of the aforementioned Ms. Bertinelli, Joe once had a massive Rachel Watson-like crush on Valerie Bertinelli when he was a kid. In her day, she was the hottest brunette on TV. Then she went off and married Eddie Van Halen. Man, talk about a dude having a golden touch!

Though the two are no longer a couple, to this day when Joe tries to blow out his eardrums by cranking out Van Halen’s Unchained on his iPod, often a twentysomething Valerie Bertinelli comes to mind (sigh).

Since Joe brought up Eddie Van Halen, he’s still getting the job done in his 50s.