By Colbert I. King
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Until Michael Vick and three other men were charged last month with running a dogfighting operation, the Atlanta Falcons quarterback was, to me, just another physically gifted, highly paid athlete in the National Football League who, through his behavior on and off the field, was helping to ruin the game.
Some of Vick's supporters may have thought it was funny when he gave the finger last year to Atlanta fans who were booing his performance. The NFL didn't think it was funny; neither did I. His out-of-court settlement with the young woman who accused him of knowingly giving her genital herpes didn't amuse me either.
But not being a Falcons fan, I don't have to watch him play.
Besides, there are plenty of Washington pro football players going out of their way to bring low comedy to the sport with their asinine showboating on the field. They are enough to keep my mind off Michael Vick.
Dogfighting, however, is another matter. "Depraved" is the right word for it. Dogfighting is not, as some animal rights folks have declared, the same as eating bacon.
Starving dogs to make them more hungry for the other dog; filing their teeth; leaving them scarred and malnourished; killing losing dogs by drowning, electrocution, strangulation, hanging or shooting -- that's barbaric.
Thus the seriousness of the federal charges filed against Vick, Tony Taylor, Purnell A. Peace and Quanis L. Phillips on July 17. The indictment put Vick in the middle of a conspiracy that may cost him the enormous fortune he's accumulated since joining the Falcons in 2001.
Which gets us to that April day when authorities raided Vick's property in Surry County, Va., and found blood-soaked floors, dozens of neglected dogs and evidence of dogfighting.
But first, a stipulation.
Few of us have led lives of such purity and innocence that we would be pleased to have all of our personal history published on the front pages of newspapers or broadcast on the news. Faced with that, most of us would end up in bed with the covers drawn over our heads, contemplating a hefty swig of hemlock.
Who, after all, likes shame and ridicule?
But saner heads realize that we humans fall short of the glory of God, with some of us (moi included) falling farther than others.
The best advice when called out for something that you've done or have failed to do: Swallow your pride, own up to it, take the medicine, pick up what's left and move on as best you can.
Michael Vick did not do that. Instead, he resorted to deception and lying.
When the story broke, Vick assumed the persona of a trusting and generous young man who had been exploited by family.
A May 22 story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution quoted Vick as saying at the time of the NFL draft on April 28: "I'm never there. I'm never at the house."
"I left the house with my family members and my cousin," Vick said. "They just haven't been doing the right thing. . . . It's unfortunate I have to take the heat behind it. If I'm not there, I don't know what's going on."
Vick maintained that he had let a cousin live at the house and didn't know how a large kennel on the property could be involved in criminal activity.
On July 26, Vick and his three co-defendants pleaded not guilty to the charges filed in the indictment.
Within weeks, his three companions had changed their pleas to guilty and agreed to testify against him.
On Monday, Vick's lawyers said he had decided to plead guilty, and he did so yesterday.
What caused Vick's flip? A desire to come clean or the prospect of a jury conviction?
He could have owned up sooner. In April, Vick reportedly told NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell that he had no knowledge of what was alleged to have occurred on the Surry County property. Vick said as much to the Atlanta Falcons, too.
He had a chance to show a change of heart during a radio interview with an Atlanta station on July 30. He didn't, avoiding comment on the charges on the advice of his lawyers.
Casting himself as a victim, Vick said: "I would like to thank all my fans and all my support and all the people that are praying for Mike Vick and are in my corner right now. It's a crisis situation for me, but I'm going to get through it and I feel, by the grace of God, that's the only way. I believe in the outcome at the end, and that's why I put my faith in the man upstairs."
No contrition or repentance for his involvement in animal cruelty. Not when you're trying to put one over on people.
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