Why Did the Fighting Chicken Cross the Road? (Logged in)
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by Mlnsports
Everyone who knows that I work in sports wants to know what I think about Michael Vick today, even though I work the minor league beat, and don't cover anything that has anything to do with NFL football. SInce this doesn't fit my column for the MAJOR BLOGS, and it isn't something that we would run at SZ, I figured that I would leave it here. Lucky you.
So what's my verdict on Vick? It's the Falcon's fault.
God, the Fates, or sheer dumb luck, depending upon what you believe, blessed Michael Vick with a cannon of an arm, and laser-guided eyes. Had his talent been all that we talk about, he would have been an Atlanta Hall of Famer who could stand with pride on the same stage as Hank Aaron at the end of a long, illustrious career.
His talent isn't all that we're talking about, and that dream career is damaged to shattered, because, along with the talented body parts comes a head with some serious sawdust drifting around in it. A fact which the Atlanta Falcons management, the NFL, and the Commissioner's Office should all know for a player of Vick's importance to the league's reputation and revenue stream.
When you pluck kids out of poverty, and make them overnight multi-millionaires, they need a little supervision. Think of giving tactical nuclear missles to a four year old. Fun? Maybe, but you have some responsibility to supervise their play.
In the other two-thirds of the planet where the term 'pee-ta' probably refers to a nice little pocket bread and not the animal activist, animal fighting is not politically incorrect. Chickens, dogs, crabs, and just about anything that will fight other members of the same species are put into combat and wagered upon.
Before the PETA folks start flaming me... RELAX... I don't condone it. I'm just saying that it's out there in a large portion of the globe, and that it's here in the US in poorer communities all over the country, white and black and asian and whatever.
Baseball players coming from the Dominican Republic, other parts of the Caribbean, and parts of South America and Mexico are apt to get pulled aside for the "chicken" lecture. As part of their indoctrination to the United States pro game, they are reminded that some of their standard operating m.o. from wherever they come does not fly well here in the U.S. Cock fighting, dog fighting, voodoo, and other practices that wouldn't raise too many eyebrows back home can cause ESPN to turn into the career Weather Channel: Continued shit storm today, with continued fireballs and career destruction throughout the rest of the week...
Baseball and Basketball are pretty good on the league-player talks on these kinds of subjects. The D-Leaguers know to stay away from dog fighting, so why doesn't a top-drawer NFL player know this stuff?
The NFL does have some clinics on drugs, and on conduct, but I don't hear much about the chicken lecture. Maybe they need more players from the Caribbean to jog their collective consciousness that PETA is not prevalent in a lot of corners of the world.
If someone had told Michael Vick, way back when you could tell him something, that some of his 'hood hobbies were going to cost him millions, the team millions, and the guy in Shanghai who sews, for .50 cents a day, VICK on to $3.00 worth of fabric that becomes a $200.00 No. 7 jersey, we wouldn't be here. The seamer from Shanghai wouldn't have to learn how to spell Mruczkowski, either.
If they did tell Vick to dump the dogs, and he didn't, it's still the Falcons' fault.
It isn't as if you needed a Little Orphan Annie secret decoder ring to get into Vick's dog fighting gig, and, as tight as teams are, someone on the club knew about this. Secrets like dog fighting are about as secret as a game of pass-the-gerbil at a Hollywood party. Leaving Vick to his own de-vices is that tactical nukes thing with kids...
The Falcons are banking on this guy for millions. I don't think that PA is going to want to be on the wrong side of their telling him to lose the dog fighting or lose the career. Not even the NFLPA can see any good in the six o'clock news and the celeb-giddy, news-seeking Feds crashing Mike's Scooby Shack. Who better, from their point of view, to make a point about dog fighting? Vick,the high-profile NFL quarterback, is the poster child for Stupid.
If the talk doesn't work, and the threats don't work, then buy them some new friends. A whole new entourage only goes for a couple of hundred grand for a whole career, whereas your souvenir losses on Falcons gear alone stacks into the millions.
The Falcons are trying to get out from under this, as is the NFL, but they owe the public a bigger apology than Vick does for letting the superstar implode. At least he was a man and stood up there and took responsiblity today.
My two...
