Banned for Life

This whole thing with Michael Vick. I was a Michael Vick fan. The only thing that would have been more fun than watching him play football would be to watch him play it in a Chief's uniform.

If you're not a fan of the sport: lots of college teams run the 'option' where the Quarterback can, on planned plays, make a break for it. For the most part, even gifted QBs just can't do that at the pro level. It's dangerous, for a start, and teams are loathe to subject a multi-million dollar investment in a starting Quarterback (very hard position to fill) by subjecting him to the risk of injury associated with Running Backs (a less difficult role to fill).

Michael Vick could do it, though. I remember years ago, the Chiefs drafted a RB who seemed like hot stuff in college, and after his first pre-season game, he told a reporter, 'These guys are a lot faster.'

Said player had not been on the losing side of a football game until college. Ever. He was that dominant, that all the way back to Pop Warner ball, he could carry the team. He got to the NFL and he never really amounted to much. His name was Greg Hill.

So Michael Vick not only wasn't humbled when he got to the NFL, he was wildly successful.

Plus, for whatever reasons, there's still not too many brothers getting the QB job in the NFL. I'm not saying teams are employing racist standards, because pro football is one of the purest meritocracies ever conceived. In fact, the proportion of pro footballers who are black is part of what makes the scarcity of black QBs so noticeable. But for all the complicated reasons our prisons are full of harmless black guys (and black guys who were harmless before they were incarcerated for things any white guy would have outgrown without interference from law enforcement), our football rosters tend to get white when you get to the rarefied world of quarterbacks.

So now the NFL says they'll let the courts decide all this. But consider:

The NFL is suspending players like Jared Allen simply for showing up on police blotters too often. No consideration of whether a conviction is entered on the books, the NFL has an image problem and they know it. If you want to pull a Dale Carter, they want you out of the game.

But who are the NFL? Well, largely they are a club of 32 multi-millionaires/billionaires, one of whom owns the Atlanta Falcons and thus has $10 million a year coming out of his bank for Michael Vick's salary (and counting toward the Falcon's salary cap). So why won't the NFL suspend a player accused of electrocuting dogs that failed to win illegal dog fights? Hmmmm? Could it be the money?

These cases take years to litigate. Michael Vick could retire from the game before a verdict comes. And he has the OJ-like resources to make sure it's not a guilty verdict. Remember Johnny Cochran? He summed it up that you're innocent until proven broke, basically saying 'Of course OJ was guilty, but if you've got that kind of dough it doesn't matter.'

So there's not much chance Vick will go to the joint (and if he does, it'll be in the Martha Stewart suite). But what can be taken away is his football career. The NFL could suspend him, but this isn't a DUI. They can ban him for life from the game, let him share a table with Pete Rose.

Because these dog fights were on his land, and he had to know. And even if he didn't, he'd be responsible for it. Where's the pictures of Vick taking dogs he bread to AKC shows? Why pit bulls, a breed unfit for intentional breeding?

If a player is accused of rape, the woman might have changed her mind retroactively, or she might be digging for an out-of-court settlement. A player's boat is stopped with one of his old chums holding dealable quantities of drugs, the DEA will confiscate that boat, no due process. And he'll probably get suspended.

But dog skeletons and tools for running dog fights? What's the innocent explanation that makes it all okay?