Michael Vick - In the Dog House

Photo - Getty/Jonathan Ernst
Michael Vick has found himself in the dog house of the National Felony League. According to Federal prosecutors, Vick and a couple of his buddies were running a dog fighting ring out of his Virginia kennel. The betting was in the hundreds and thousands of dollars. Pit bulls not deemed strong enough to fight were killed either by electrocution, hanging, drowning, or being slammed to the ground. The offence carries a 6-year sentence and a fine of $350 000 dollars.

First, the crime: it’s brutal. If guilty, Vick and his buddies deserve everything that they get.

The uproar from the community shouldn’t come as any surprise. There’s an old rule in the screenwriting business that if you want to show a villain as truly evil, don’t have him shoot the grandma. Show him shooting the family dog. The audience will hate him forever. Having NOW or Greenpeace on your case is as nothing compared to the angry hoards that make up PETA. These people want to burn you at the stake for eating a cheeseburger, let alone hurting man’s best friend.

Second, the penalty: Vick’s celebrity status might work against him on this one if he’s found guilty. $350 000 might sound like a hefty fine for some backwoods dude that runs a two-bit dog fighting ring. For Michael Vick, who earns about ten million dollars a year, that’s less than two quarters of football. By the time he hits the locker room at half-time, he’s earned well over half a million dollars. The judge, weighing this, might throw him a prison sentence just to make a point.

Third, the choice: I’ve heard a lot of people say, “Like he needs the money,” upon getting the news that Vick might be involved in this crime. But money has nothing to with it. Have you ever seen two dogs fight in the street? It’s scary. Carnal. The sounds alone are terrifying. Now imagine betting on it, cleaning up the blood, and hanging the dog that didn’t do as well as expected. Ask yourself what kind of man could do that, and you will have a better picture of the spirit that burns inside Michael Vick and others that breed pit bulls for battle.

It’s extremely dubious that Vick was doing this for any other reason than entertainment. He wasn’t forced to do it, and he didn’t need the cash. He simply likes dogfights.

We’re always looking for reasons to explain the activities of others. Why did they do it? Why do they feel that way? Sometimes, it’s simply because that’s the way it is. I’m already getting tired of hearing how Michael Vick should have stopped hanging out with his pre-football friends. They are the ones, this theory goes, that led him astray.

Michael Vick was the Atlanta Falcons’ number one draft pick in 2001. That’s six years ago. We’re not talking about some rookie who hasn’t had time to think about his ‘mistakes.’ We’re talking about an adult professional who likes his hobby. In this case, dog fighting.

Pit Bull
Vick could have dumped his friends, or put them through college, or ratted them out to the cops, or told them to go home, or bought them a house in New Zealand, or whatever. But he didn’t. Remember that this was going on at his kennel, not in some parking lot on the outskirts of town. Vick wasn’t caught up in anything. He was chiefly responsible for it. The dead dogs are buried on his property. The kennel, incidentally, was bought by Vick in 2001 for a little over $34000. With a flair for prophesy, these clowns named it Bad Newz Kennels.

The sycophantic sports writers are in quite a dilemma over this. Dog beats athlete for America’s heart every time, and the sports writers are in a pickle. They are, after all, writers, not reporters. There is no such thing as a sports reporter. Like me, emotions run their version of typing. They have steadfastly refused to investigate steroids in baseball (have you seen Jason Grimsley’s name lately), or football. While Barry Bonds cheats his way past Henry Aaron, the sports writers go whistling through the locker room as if nothing’s amiss. Now they have a problem: America likes dogs.

What to do? It’s easy. Become a mouthpiece for the other athletes, the ones that will protect Vick. Emmitt Smith, Allen Iverson, Michael Irvin, they’ve already had their press and their interviews. None of them have talked about crime, only ‘mistakes.’ Emmitt Smith is claiming that Vick is a target because of his fame. And yes, he might have made a mistake. Right. Vick made an ‘error’ in drowning dogs and watching them rip each other’s throats out.

I’ll give Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly a break on this. Years ago, in a face to face meeting, he asked Sammy Sosa point blank if he would take a steroids test. There was a great deal of controversy over whether Reilly should have asked the question. Not much controversy, though, over the fact that Sosa did not say yes or no. He still hasn’t. He just ignored it, it went away, and the sports writers let it, just as they let his corked bat slip from memory every time they discuss his homerun totals.

NBC’s Jim Gray also deserves a break. At the 1999 All-Star game, he asked Pete Rose if it was time to come clean about betting on baseball. Pete was not amused, players and fans called Gray a jerk, and the sports networks backed them up. Five years later, Rose published a book about…how he bet on baseball.

That is what is going to interest me about the Michael Vick drama. Not what penalty he pays for it (it will be too stiff for some; not tough enough for others), but how the sports writers spin it. Get ready. You’ll be dizzy by the time it’s over.

I guarantee you this: no matter what happens, if Michael Vick returns to the NFL and wins a Super Bowl, you will hear these words: “What a comeback for Michael Vick. Perhaps this will put the demons behind him.”

Dog beats athlete, but pigskin beats dog.