Minneapolis ? When he was finished stumping for Zygi Wilf’s world-class stadium, new NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell spent some quality time with the Vikings’ players.

The message: If you thought Paul Tagliabue was tough on you knuckleheads, wait ’til you get a load of me.

“Well, I don’t lecture a lot of people,” Goodell said, “but I do think, and I made this very clear in every meeting I had today, the NFL is held to a higher standard.”

Ask Titans defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth, who received a record five-game suspension for stomping on the unprotected head of Cowboys center Andre Gurode. Or Raiders defensive end Tyler Brayton, who was fined $25,000 for kneeing Seahawks tight end Jerramy Stevens in the groin, and probably would have been suspended if not for the fact Stevens was fined $15,000 for trying to kick Brayton where the sun doesn’t shine first.

Or how about Steelers owner Dan Rooney, the gentle little man who essentially made it a slam dunk that Goodell, Tagliabue’s top assistant for years, succeeded Tagliabue? Goodell slapped him with a $25,000 fine after Rooney said the officials in the Steelers’ overtime loss to Atlanta “should be ashamed.”

“You’re seeing a zero-tolerance policy, and you have to have that, I think,” Vikings cornerback Antoine Winfield said. “Guys who act up should be punished.”

Headlines seem to roll by so nonstop. Monday, it was “Jaguars’ Barnes is benched, fined for DUI.” Apparently, Khalif Barnes, Jacksonville’s left tackle, took the Koren Robinson Express – 101 miles per hour in a 60-mph zone – while possessing enough blood alcohol to fail not one, but two Breathalyzers on Saturday.

Jaguars coach Jack Del Rio already fined Barnes. No doubt Goodell is lurking with his itchy ticket-finger.

“Me, I’m smart about it,” said Winfield when asked about the seemingly insane number of drunken driving arrests among NFL players. “If I’m going to go out, I’m going to get me a driver. Be smart about it. We have the money to do that.”

Some argue that arrests among NFL players isn’t proportionally higher than society. Colts coach Tony Dungy told the Associated Press this summer that he had tracked offseason arrests the past 10 years and found that the amount was less than 1 percent of the players.

“I don’t worry about the league’s image because it’s not everyone who is doing this stuff,” Vikings receiver Travis Taylor said. “Plus, every little thing we do gets put in the paper and on ESPN.”

Asked if the “good guys” ever felt the need to pull aside the “bad guys” and talk some sense into them, Taylor just laughed.

“The good guys are just the guys who haven’t got caught yet,” Taylor said. “Everybody does something wrong. And not just players. You probably did something too, right?”

Ah, as Brad Childress would say, “That’s between myself and me.”