Friday, August 14, 2009

Welcome Back, Michael Vick?

Thursday night, news came that quarterback and NFL pariah Michael Vick has returned to the league, signed by the Philadelphia Eagles to bolster their chances of making it to the Super Bowl. And this development leaves me feeling deeply ambivalent.

Does a man like Vick -- a felon convicted of Federal charges stemming from his involvement in a horrific dogfighting ring, yet also a man who has paid his proverbial "debt to society" -- now deserve another chance to pursue a very, very lucrative football career?

I just don't know.

In a press conference Friday, he said, "I know I've done some terrible things, made a horrible mistake... We all have issues, we all deal with certain things..." But what he did to land behind bars was no mistake, no garden-variety accident. His actions, though truly difficult to fathom, were willful and deliberate. The brutality that Vick displayed in pitting his unwilling canine minions against each other in fights to the death, as well as in executing many of them, indicates a cruelty, a lack of empathy that is often found in incipient serial killers, not in your average citizen.

And such language makes me feel as though he really hasn't come to grips with what he did; instead, it seems as though he is sorry only that he got caught and had to pay the price.

Nonetheless, he has paid the price -- a terrible price that cost him years of his life in prison, years of his career and millions upon millions of dollars, driving him to bankruptcy. Should we now deprive him of the opportunity to make a future living, too?

Were veterinary medicine or animal husbandry his chosen work, perhaps we would be right in doing so. But now, I fear, we must simply hope that Michael Vick is able to live up to his own professions of rehabilitation. I wish him the best; perhaps he can actually get his life straightened out.

But I'm surely glad that he isn't trying to do so as a member of my beloved Vikings.

2 comments:

jiveturkey9000 said...

It looks like you'll be busy welcoming someone else to your beloved Vikings.

Fatherhead said...

Favre in purple? I am sickened. What else can I say?