Mike Vick: NFL star? Hip-hop thug? Both?

[viktor_haag]

Roger Goddell's worst nightmare just keeps getting worse, increment by increment. It really makes you wonder whether Paul Tagliabue saw this puke-ochre thundercloud on the horizon and decided that seventeen years was an innings (despite the fact that his predecessor had soldiered on for almost thirty) as principally a matter of self-preservation more than anything else.

Last night on the FAN 590 (PTS:2007-07-18 podcast; 1:06-18:00), the roundtable kicked around the issue and Brent Schrotenboer of the San Diego Union-Tribune pointed out that the criminality stats in the NFL population where not really any greater than society at large. I really don't think that the NFL player rosters are at all a representative group of "regular society", for a number of reasons (wealth for one, decades of indoctrination into a self-entitlement ideology for another). I would have thought that the very fact that criminality stats are "consistent with the numbers for regular society" should be thought of as an indictment and not exculpatory.

Jason Whitlock has a somewhat thoughtful piece on the subject, and what might be behind this kind of behaviour from Vick and others in similar positions ("prison, hip-hop culture" in brief). In the end, Whitlock seems to come down on the most reasonable solution for the league and for the Falcons (no surprise): "Vick needs a paid leave of absence to sort out his legal problems."

While most other media outlets I've seen seem to want to falsely polarize this issue ("He should be suspended!" versus "He can't be suspended!"), Whitlock sees past this dichotomy and suggests the real price the Falcons should pay is the most damaging to them. They need to keep paying Vick, but remove him from the front lines: they must pay him to stay home, or more properly, in federal court.

Given the long history of dubious behaviour from Vick's brother Marcus, I can't say I'm terribly unwilling to think the worst of Vick and what he might have done over this issue, or in the past.

Comments

[waiwode.livejournal.com]

Seeing the headline, I had hoped, however briefly, that Mike Vick was guilty of buying a couple tricked-out crop-dusters, strapping on some high-tech "laser-tag" equipment, and then flagrantly breaking FAA flight protocols by performing Immelmanns and such while trying to "shoot" his fellow pilots out of the sky.

Because if I was payed the kind of money A-Rod gets? I'd have my (currently non-existant) pilot's license revoked so many times I'd need to wear a long silk scarf around it to prevent chafing!

Then I found it was animals. That's no fun at all.

Doug.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Ha! You and I had similar gut reactions to the article! As is so often the case with "real life", the truth seems to be so much more sordid and sad.

(PS -- my copy of Reign arrived on my doorstep early this morning. yay!)