By Mike Wise
Tuesday, August 28, 2007

RICHMOND Ookie was gone. The alter ego of Bad Newz Kennels, the brutal benefactor who perpetrated animal cruelty, disappeared before a phalanx of cameras and microphones. On the day he pleaded guilty to a dogfighting conspiracy charge, an ashen-faced Michael Vick, his eyes moist, stood before a no-nonsense judge in a mahogany-walled Virginia courtroom.

"Guilty," he said, solemnly.

The cocksure, blinging Pro Bowler who once boasted of his impending exoneration was nowhere to be found. Along with the diamond-stud earrings. The scully. The cornrows. Any hip-hop affectation was abandoned for a blue suit, matching patent-leather shoes, a white shirt and a patterned tie.

Beneath the goatee and the Italian wool now was a 27-year-old defendant in Case No. 00274, who humbly answered, "Yes, sir" and wiped away a tear when he saw his fiancee openly weeping. He then moved from the courtroom to a podium in a hotel, speaking so softly you could barely hear his voice amid the camera shutters.

"I totally ask for forgiveness and understanding as I move forward to bettering Michael Vick the person, not the football player," he said. "Dogfighting is a terrible thing, and I did reject it."

Ookie, the nickname his co-conspirators called him, was gone. The rehabilitation tour had begun.

Walking across 1000 East Main St. here, between the chanting and the jeering, Michael Vick's contrition became just part of a surreal afternoon. It was a day in which supporters sparred verbally with protesters in a racially tinged standoff, one that that grew uglier after the courtroom appearance.

Everybody chose sides in a sordid case dividing even households.

"I'm not here to support Vick," said Sheila Dodson, whose husband, Shawn, wore a white No. 7 Atlanta Falcons jersey into the courtroom. "I'm a hell of a dog lover. Whoever did this to those dogs should be punished severely. I'm here to support my husband, but I don't agree with how he feels. What Michael Vick did was wrong."

A man of maybe 50 held up a sign directed at the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals: "People Evilly Treating Africans," it read.

PETA protesters jeered Vick a few feet away. They held up stomach-turning placards with enlarged photos of a disfigured and bloodied pit bull.

Shawn Dodson, a cook from Lynchburg, asked if he thought Jeffrey Dahmer was less reviled than the quarterback he had come to support. He could not get an answer.

Ten yards behind Dodson stood John Goodwin, the animal-fighting expert for the Humane Society of the United States. He described some of the most gruesome facts about cockfighting imaginable.

"When people say this is cultural, they're saddling a lot of decent people with unfair baggage they want no affiliation with," he said. "Just because you live in a poor, urban neighborhood doesn't mean you endorse cruelty to animals."

"If this had been Brett Favre," he added, straight-faced, "you would have seen the same reaction."

On the divide went. In the former capital of the Confederacy, they all posed for a disturbing snapshot of America.

"We like Mike!" maybe three dozen Vick supporters chanted across the street from the courthouse in what can only be described as misplaced solidarity. When they were shouted down by the animal-rights activists, they morphed into a passionate "We love Mike!"

Sports is one of the more forgiving subcultures in this country. Latrell Sprewell's pit bull bit off his daughter's ear and he originally resisted having the dog euthanized. He choked his coach and was suspended for an entire season. But after a year of public relations work, he came to Madison Square Garden in 1999 not as America's thug, but instead as an offensive weapon sorely needed by the Knicks and their fans. After his first three-pointer, the general attitude was, "All net, all forgiven."

In that vein, Michael Vick took the first small step toward clearing his badly tarnished name Monday and, maybe, one day regaining his livelihood.

Did he genuinely get it? Did he understand that pitting domesticated animals, who rely on their owner's compassion and care for survival, against each other is inherently wrong? Most of the animal-rights spokesmen were convinced Monday was a good start, though some wished he would have gone farther in his remarks to denounce dogfighting.

And yet, when Vick walked into the hotel ballroom, the sense of regret and remorse sounded authentic. After all the packaged television clips of his career, Vick seemed to grasp the meteoric fall. It's a loss of income, reputation and eventual freedom by a well-known athlete rivaled by only a few others, including perhaps Mike Tyson when he was convicted of rape.

Before admitting to lying to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, his owner, his coach and his teammates, Vick prefaced his remarks by saying, "For most of my life, I've been a football player, not a public speaker, so, you know, I really don't know, you know, how to say what I really want to say." Vick's words came across as unscripted, from within, and he indeed seemed to understand how far he had fallen -- how he now needs the NFL more than it needs him.