More on Michael Vick

"What Vick did wasn't a mistake. It was a way of life."
--King Kaufman

Here is a telling excerpt from Salon sports columnist King Kaufman's take on the Michael Vick story:

Vick's lawyer announced Monday that the Atlanta Falcons quarterback will plead guilty next week to conspiracy charges in the dogfighting case against him. He'll avoid more serious federal charges, but will likely do some prison time. Speculation ranges from 10 months to something close to the five-year maximum, though most observers are guessing 12 to 24 months. He'll enter the plea Monday.

"Mr. Vick has agreed to enter a plea of guilty to those charges," lead defense attorney Billy Martin said in Monday's statement, "and to accept full responsibility for his actions and the mistakes he has made."

Mistakes? Driving drunk is a mistake, a bad decision. Pulling out a gun instead of walking away from a bar fight. That's a mistake. What Vick did wasn't a mistake. It was a way of life. The illegal interstate dogfighting and gambling operation he's pleading guilty to having run was a going concern for five years.

If we wanted to, we could get into a deep, layered discussion here about cultural values. We could talk about the role of race in attitudes about dogfighting, rural vs. urban sensibilities in the way we look at animals, why it is that this country is home to both a multibillion-dollar pet-pampering industry and entire subcultures built on cruelty to animals, why it is that an athlete's violence against dogs garners a sharper public rebuke than other athletes' far more common violence against women.

We could talk about the cult of celebrity and the cult of the athlete, how someone in Michael Vick's position has been getting his way since he was about 10, how nobody ever stood up to him and told him that he needed to check himself.

But we're not going to. We're just going to talk about what a knucklehead Michael Vick has been.

Vick made Pete Rose look like Albert Einstein here. He has thrown away a career that, even after six years of exciting and occasionally brilliant but overall frustratingly inadequate play, still counted as "promising." He has thrown away the millions he would have made over the rest of his football life, and the Falcons will be coming after some of the millions they've already paid him.

And for what? A dogfighting business. Interstate gambling and cruelty to animals. An enterprise that any idiot -- almost any idiot, evidently -- knows is flamboyantly illegal, that would wreck a professional career nearly instantaneously if uncovered, and that Vick and company took so few pains to hide that authorities collected enough evidence in a raid to get four guilty pleas in less than four months, which is almost fast enough to create a sonic boom.

I don't care about the cultural implications that I can't understand, being a middle-class urban white guy who hasn't been influenced by gangsta hip-hop. Culture can be overcome. If Michael Vick wasn't smart enough to say, "I wish I could do this, but it would cost me my whole career if I did, so I won't," then he just isn't very smart.

It really doesn't matter if his cronies were afraid to speak the truth to him. Some things are just obvious. Vick knew enough to always, except for that one moment when he flipped off a hostile crowd last year, put on a pleasant, smiling face and a charming persona when the cameras were rolling.

If he could figure that out, with or without some Henry Higgins putting him through his social paces, he could have figured out that electrocuting fighting dogs if they didn't fight hard enough, that killing them by slamming them against the ground or hanging them, that training them for the barbarous fights to the death in the first place, was going to end his football career and possibly send him to prison once it got out, and that it would get out.

Vick, who is from Newport News, Va., grew up poor in public housing. He had it rough, but anybody making excuses for him, claiming that he couldn't escape his upbringing, is indulging in the worst kind of noble-savage patronization.

What a rotten shame this is. Not because Vick might have turned himself into an effective quarterback someday and now he won't, but because of the stupidity, cruelty and waste of potential that has become the story of his young life.

What Should Happen to Michael Vick?

Michael Vick is the Atlanta Falcons quarterback recently indicted by a federal grand jury on criminal charges associated with running an illegal dogfighting and gambling business from some of his property in rural Virginia. Some who were involved in this business have admitted their guilt and testified that not only did Vick know about the business and support it, but he also personally participated in the drownings and electrocutions of dogs that failed to sufficiently impress with their fighting ability. Now it is rumored that Vick is on the verge of pleading guilty and that he could spend several years in prison. People are wondering what should happen to him afterward. If he serves time in prison, should he be allowed to return to professional football after he is released?

Former Green Bay Packer general manager Ron Wolf believes that he should. "Maybe I don't understand something in all of this," he says, "but you're supposed to get a second chance in this country." He goes on to argue the following:

"We've had a lot of people in this league do a lot of bad things, and they still got a chance. Leonard Little killed someone (while drunk driving). Jamal Lewis went to prison (in connection to) selling drugs. Are you telling me that killing eight dogs is worse than killing a human being? … Yes, this is bad, but are you really telling me that he doesn't deserve a chance to play again when other people have committed crimes and come back?"

Some pro football executives apparently agree with Wolfe, but they are said to be in the minority. I do not care much for football at any level, and I know very little about it. However, I love animals and take an extremely dim view of those who abuse them. It sounds to me as though Vick personally abused and destroyed and indirectly participated in the terrible abuse and destruction of many dogs as part of an awful business that profited from horrendous bloodsport and suffering. My emotional reaction to this is, "Fry the jerk, or at least lock him away for as long as possible and never, EVER let him return to football!"

But my more considered response is one motivated by a deep-seated belief in compassion and redemption. I am not sure I agree with Ron Wolf that Vick's apparent crimes were no worse than the others he cited. For instance, it could be argued that, while the life of one human being is worth more than the lives of any number of dogs, inadvertently killing a human being in an automobile accident while driving drunk is, in some ways, not as bad as running a depraved dogfighting business and personally drowning and electrocuting dogs in unspeakably brutal fashion because they aren't vicious enough to kill other dogs in savage bloodsport. I am inclined to make that argument myself.

Nevertheless, depending on the type and length of Vick's sentence, I am not unalterably opposed to him being granted a second chance. But, first, I would like to see him step up and publicly confess to what he did with his business and those dogs, express what appears to be a genuine understanding of the wrongness of it all and genuine contrition for his involvement in this monstrous enterprise, ask the public to forgive him, and actively participate in campaigns for the humane treatment of animals and against animal cruelty.

If he serves his sentence and does all of this, I believe that he deserves a second chance, and I would hope that he would get it.