AMERICA AT LARGE:The world's most famous dog-torturer is back on the roster of an NFL team, writes GEORGE KIMBALL
ON THE morning Michael Vick was introduced as the newest member of the Philadelphia Eagles, the front-page headline in Philadelphia Daily News bore the message “HIDE YOUR DOGS!” Outside the team’s practice facility, representatives of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, headed by Jenn Utley, the wife of the world champion Phillies’ all-star second baseman Chase Utley, had thrown up a picket line protesting the signing of the world’s most famous dog-torturer.
Having spent the better part of the past year-and-a-half at the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, where his name was added to a roster of distinguished alumni ranging from Bugs Moran and Machine-Gun Kelly to Gennaro Angiulo and James (Whitey) Bulger, New England crime figures of a more recent vintage, Vick was deemed to have paid his debt to society when he was conditionally reinstated by National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell in July.
Vick was available to the highest bidder, but initially there were none.
That NFL teams did not exactly beat a path to his doorstep was unsurprising. Under the terms of Goodell’s reinstatement, a team signing the erstwhile proprietor of Bad Newz Kennels would be allowed to use him in its final two exhibition games, but he would remain suspended through the first six games of the 2009 regular season.
The cool reception was understandable. Throwing money at a 29-year-old quarterback who hadn’t thrown a pass in anger since 2006 would have been a dubious proposition even in the absence of the negative baggage certain to accompany Vick wherever he went, but in short order Jesse Jackson was attempting to turn L’Affaire Vick into a racial issue. The Rev Jackson rather preposterously compared Vick’s situation in 2009 to Jackie Robinson’s in 1947, and ascribed the lack of enthusiasm to “collusion” on the part of the NFL owners.
In truth, the Cincinnati Bengals made a run at Vick even before the Eagles did, but Jackson will probably claim credit for it anyway.
The spin doctors had already been at work, and the 60 Minutes segment depicting a tearful and (in his own description) remorseful Vick which aired on Sunday night was already in the can even before the Eagles trotted him through the picket lines for last Friday’s press conference.
There had been some who had attempted to ascribe racial motives to Vick’s 17-month incarceration, advancing the argument that dog-fighting was entrenched in the culture of the African-American world of the old south in which Michael Vick grew up. This argument tended to overlook the fact that it wasn’t just bankrolling the operation of Bad Newz Kennels that earned Vick a stiffer sentence than his co-conspirators. The presiding judge at his federal trial also determined that he had been an active participant in the extermination and torture of underperforming dogs, which were routinely drowned, shot, electrocuted and even hung from trees around Vick’s Virginia property – presumably as a warning to their fellow canines to perform more diligently in future bouts.
Coach Andy Reid and owner Jeff Lurie were careful to note that Vick had not been signed to replace incumbent Donovan McNabb. While Reid declined to elaborate on the subject of exactly how he does plan to utilise Vick’s skills (assuming they still exist), the Philadelphia coach is one of those innovative football minds who no doubt already has an entire suite of plays designed to confuse defences confronted by a two-headed quarterback offence.
Dealing with Vick’s off-field image may be another matter – and that’s assuming he keeps his nose clean. The Rev Jackson didn’t bring this up, but in the calendar year that preceded the raid on his dog-fighting operation, Vick had (a) reached an out-of-court settlement with a woman who had accused him of infecting her with herpes, (b) been fined $10,000 (plus another $10,000 he was obliged to donate to charity) for making an obscene gesture to booing Atlanta fans as he came off the field in a 2006 loss to the Saints, and (c) been apprehended attempting to board a flight in Miami while in possession of a water bottle that contained a false bottom for his marijuana stash.
Michael’s smoking habits are his own business, but would you want somebody that dumb playing quarterback for you?
Until the constabulary showed up at Bad Newz Kennels in April of 2007, replicas of Vick’s No 7 Atlanta jersey had been the best-selling item of sports apparel in the US for three years running, but even before he went on trial Reebok announced that it would no longer sell or manufacture the Vick jerseys. (Those already in stock at stores around the country continued to sell, and neither did the company have a bonfire with its existing inventory: the No 7 jersey, with a “Falcons” patch sewn over Vick’s name on the back, were flogged at a reduced price.)
The player might still be under conditional suspension, but the Reebok seamstresses in El Salvador, South Korea, and China are apparently working around the clock to make up for lost time. By yesterday morning both Reebok’s online store and, significantly, nflshop.com, the league-operated website, were offering Vick’s No 7 Eagles jerseys – in your choice of green, white or black – for a mere $109.99.
Take that, Jenn Utley.
