Of Mutts and Men

Today I offer a few thoughts on the whole Michael Vick killing dogs situation. I'll do my best to keep it non-preachy. I forewarn, though, it's hard to keep this light.

- If Vick doesn't take a plea agreement then he's even dumber than I thought. From what I understand, he's being offered 1 year in prison and reduced charges. Against, supposedly, a mountain of evidence, and the testimony of his cohorts, who themselves will likely get more than a year in prison, despite being mostly pawns in Vick's game (financially speaking). If he refuses the deal it will be because of his pride and arrogance, and the Feds will go after him hard, and it probably won't end well. Then again, there's tons of precedence where celebrities and athletes get preferential treatment, and Vick's lawyers doubtless know this. So maybe he's smarter than I thought?

- As a Falcons fan, I expect and hope that his days in Atlanta are over. (And no, I don't look forward to the Harrington Era.) Completely independent of these latest allegations, I've never thought Vick was that great a QB. An extraordinarily gifted athlete? Yes, without question. He's probably one of the greatest of our generation. But his game seems much more suited for the college ranks, where outrunning everyone can compensate for an inability to accurately throw anything beyond 10 yards. For the NFL game, he's really a back or receiver that happens to have a strong arm. Not that those guys can't be successful, it's just usually at a position other than QB, even if that's what they happened to play in college. Like this guy. The Steelers /learned/their/lesson/the/hard/way. And, for the record, I tire of hearing the "Vick's never had any good WR's" statements, also. That's really just yet another invented argument to justify the endless hype machine. Falcons receivers were middle of the pack last year in drops, consistent with the past three years. Hardly cause for alarm.

- Having read and heard some of the accounts of what Vick did to those dogs--allegedly--I'll stop just barely short of calling him a despicable human being. I'm not by any means a PETA apologist, nor a vegatarian. I understand that the killing of animals for our sustenance goes on in droves everyday. I accept that, and it's within the law. What I don't accept is the senseless killing of animals in some sort of depraved and perverted form of entertainment. I'm glad to live in a country that rightly has laws prohibiting such actions.

- My thought on how the media is handling the situation is this: Media companies are, ultimately, just businesses out to make a dollar. They will report on and analyze that which they feel will bring the most in advertising revenue. Michael Vick has been, at various points in his career, both very marketable and very divisive--in other words, extremely media friendly. To a company like ESPN, he's great "journalistic" fodder, not unlike other celebrathletes they drool over. The extent to which the media is covering this story "fairly" will extend only to materially reporting the facts, as they are available, in an accurately and timely manner. To expect anything more from them is asking too much.