With National Football League training camps about to open next week, the saga of former superstar quarterback, Michael Vick, just moved to front burners in news rooms all over the country.
The convicted dog-fight boss of Bad Newz Kennels has done his time.
Monday the electronic monitoring device Vick has been wearing on his ankle was removed. In his two months of home confinement in Hampton, since his release from a federal prison in Leavenworth, Kan., Vick has toiled as a construction worker and in a program at a Boys and Girls Club. Now he’s free to pursue whatever legal work he wants, which to Vick means resuming his professional football career.
At this writing there’s been no official announcement of when, or even if, Vick will play another down in an NFL game. The debate over whether Vick ought to be allowed to return to the NFL is going to get noisier as we enter the season some call the "dog days" of summer.
Many dog-lovers see Vick as the epitome of evil. Other people say he‘s just another numbskull, spoiled jock who was doing as he pleased; he just got caught. Plenty have done worse. There are also tireless Vick defenders who view him as the victim in this saga. This angle usually pushes race into the story.
There are diehard football fans, too, who just want to watch him play ... they don’t care about whether his remorse is genuine.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has indicated that the quality of Vick‘s remorse will be part of what he considers after he has met with Vick. In August of 2007 Goodell suspended Vick from the league indefinitely and he can summarily lift that suspension, or not, whenever; it’s his call to make.
Obviously, there are also millions of people who will continue to do all they can to ignore the Vick story. They don’t care about football celebrities.
Still, it’s a story so bizarre -- we’re talking about torturing dogs, we’re talking about killing dogs for recreation! -- that it is much more than just another sleazy sports scandal. As they’ve been detailed in news reports many times, there’s no need to rehash Vick’s crimes.
Of course crimes of violence against human beings are worse than the same against dogs, or any animals. But that’s probably not what will ultimately determine whether Vick gets a chance to play in the NFL again.
Vick’s fans ask: If boxing and tough man competitions are legal, why is dog-fighting so wrong? Can't dog-fighting be seen as just another bloody sport, like hunting? And, if animals are shamefully abused all the time by the millions in torturous conditions, to eventually be food for us, then why did Vick have go to jail for slaughtering a few pit bulls?
Those questions seem to score debating points but they don’t speak to the heart of what Goodell must weigh.
And, neither does Vick’s remorse, however genuine.
Goodell has to think about what is good for the whole league, and the NFL is by far the most buttoned-down of all the professional sports overseeing bodies. Largely due to its network broadcast contracts its teams all make money, because, unlike Major League Baseball, they share the pot of gold that advertising fills up for them each football season.
The NFL’s advertisers certainly doesn’t want to see PETA activists dressed up like tortured dogs, howling and barking at games, for the networks’ cameras and fans' cell phone cameras to record.
Imagine a NFL game's opening day broadcast beginning with a series of corporate logos flashing up over the pictures of anti-Vick demonstrators in front of the stadium, waving placards. If Vick is on one of the teams playing it will surely happen. With that image in mind, it’s not hard to then imagine the boycotts of companies that sponsor such broadcasts.
Remember, while other sports celebrities have committed crimes that might properly be seen as worse than Vick’s, none of them were quite as bizarre ... even unthinkable to the average Joe, who loves his pet dog.
That’s most likely what Madison Avenue executives are telling Goodell as you read this.
After his meeting with Vick, the most likely thing Goodell will say is that it’s too soon to make a decision on lifting the suspension. Kicking the can down the road for a year will be easy, because the NFL doesn’t need the still radioactive Michael Vick.
Goodell may face the press and say he needs more time to determine whether Vick seems truly sorry for his involvement in the dog-fighting business, which included illegal gambling. But it says here that Goodell will actually be looking out a lot more for the owners’ pot of gold, which depends a good deal on good will.
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