The NFL season may well have already began. Late Monday afternoon, NFL commissioner Roger Goddell conditionally reinstated convicted felon Michael Vick, who is now eligible to return to the gridiron after a two year absence.
Vick’s return is a point of contention for many individuals, both inside the football community and among the public at large. Michael Vick was a guy that had everything: a starting gig as an NFL quarterback, millions of dollars in endorsements, and a physical skill set that had nowhere to go but up.
Everything changed for Vick on April 27, 2007, when law enforcement officers came to 1915 Moonlight Road in Smithfield, Virginia, looking for Vick’s cousin. It was then that police stumbled into quite possibly the highest-profile criminal case involving a sports figure since one O.J. Simpson in 1994.
Whatever you think the authorities found, it was probably worse. Dog fighting pits were found, along with kill pens and pools. Perhaps most damming, however, were dozens of graves for canines, with authorities uncovering an estimated three dozen during the investigation.
There have been several NFL players (Leonard Little being the most obvious example) that were convicted of much more serious crimes than dog-fighting.
As terrible as Vick’s crimes were, he didn’t kill a human being, or violently assault a single person. His crimes were reprehensible and easily worthy of the public outcry and ridicule that followed. If convicted murderers have been allowed back into the league, it makes no sense to leave Vick to waste without the only thing he has ever been trained to do: play football.
That said, Vick has paid his debt to society. He served some twenty-three months in jail, not in a white-collar cupcake prison, but rather at Leavenworth in Kansas. Vick missed two years of football, lost everything, and worked for an astonishing twelve cents an hour during his jail stint.
Ultimately, sports are about redemption. Second chances come and go, but fans of all sports remember the guys that capitalize on their second opportunity. It’s impossible to deny the horrible nature of Vick’s crimes, but it is quite possible to accept that everyone deserves a chance to re-enter their life once the debt to society has been repaid.
Michael Vick will probably never garner votes for the NFL’s Man of the Year, but that isn’t what his reinstatement is about. Vick’s return to the NFL isn’t even about the glory of the gridiron. No, if and when Michael Vick takes the field on a Sunday this season, he will do so knowing that he’s had his second chance. In most lifetimes, second chances are a singular occurrence.
Ultimately the NFL is a business, and not one person would protest games or stop watching if the NFL had not reinstated Vick. The same can't be said about a league with him. I suppose Goddell looked at the numbers of a league with / without Vick and reinstated him based on that. I will not watch any regular season game which he plays in this year (with the exception of any involving the Titans). I will not get caught up in the hype of his return. As with Manny Ramirez earlier this year and undoubtedly Plaxico Burress next year, the sports community will celebrate the return of yet another unsavory character to it's ranks. Where else in the professional world does a suspended worker get a hero's welcome when they return?
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking about this a lot. And I've now decided that I was wrong to lump in Michael Vick with Manny. Manny is a cheater. Michael Vick's mistakes came away football and he's served his time, not a light sentence because of celebrity, but a hard one because of it. The U.S. Attorney's office was making an example of him. Even as a dog lover, I will be open to forgiving Michael Vick, as long as he demonstrates his commitment to excellence both on and off the field.
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