Writing the Pine

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I didn’t really have an interest in touching on the subject of Michael Vick, but Anderson said I should so I am.  I didn’t watch the 60 Minutes interview when it aired because those athlete interviews are just too predictable.  Athletes aren’t the most eloquent or intellectual dudes and rarely are they ever both.  Public perception is huge for professional athletes so it’s easy to understand why teams (and sometimes the players themselves) invest so much time and money into making sure these guys are presentable to the public and say the right things.

I figured though, if I was going to write something about the player formerly known as Ron Mexico, I should watch it.  So I did.  (You can watch it above.)  And there was nothing that surprised me.  I mean, c’mon.  What can you really learn from these nationally televised interviews?  Think about when you go on job interviews.  You prepare yourself to exhaustion and get ready for anything in hopes of landing a $50k/year gig.  You scour the Internet for potential interview questions and read countless articles telling you how you should act at the interview.  You even research how you should dress to it.  You study your resume, the company, the position, current events, and potential technical items that may be asked of you.  Again, all for a job you’ll probably end up hating in the future.

Now imagine you’re going to get interviewed on a television program that is watched by millions of people around the world.  But not just that.  You’re a superstar athlete with a multi-million dollar contract in one hand and millions of dollars in endorsements in the other.  You have thousands of strangers around the world wearing your name on their backs because they “love” you.  Multi-billion dollar businesses can thrive or fold because of what you do.  There are a bunch of people who rely on these athletes for their own well-being.  They’re not going to let them blow a 15-minute interview with so much riding on it for so many people.  There is so much to lose and usually, not much to gain (though in Vick’s case there was).  It’s no secret professional athletes (or celebrities in general for that matter) aren’t the most educated or well-spoken guys so of course they’re going to have media coaches and public relations people up the ass.  It’s why all athletes sound exactly the same and why there are so many damn cliches in sports.

(Plus in this case, I wonder if it was Michael Vick’s people who sought out 60 Minutes for the interview.  I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how these things worked.)

But that’s all pretty obvious – which boggles my mind why people watch these interviews like they are going to find the secret to eternal life or something.  Michael Vick said he’s sorry and that he’s disgusted by what he did?  No way!  He realized (after sitting in prison and losing everything) that dog-fighting is an awful, awful thing?  Shocker!  And I don’t get these stupid questions like “Is this Michael Vick speaking or is it his team of lawyers and agents?”  What the hell do you think he’s going to say?  I would sacrifice my baseball card collection to hear someone say his publicist was telling him what to say.  (It’s not worth anything anymore anyway.  Thanks a lot you hulkamaniac, juicing bastards.  You’ve ruined the value of baseball card collections across the country.)  And just like during direct examinations, interviewers should not be allowed to ask leading questions.  Nor should they give them answer choices in the questions themselves.  You get the most from these interviews when the interviewee answers with long, drawn-0ut answers where cliches and standard replies only take them so far.  I appreciated James Brown’s question about what “gripped” him to dog-fighting, even though Vick evaded the question, the same way he used to evade linebackers.  (Sorry I had to throw that in there.)  I also appreciated when he basically called Vick out for only being remorseful because his career was hurt and not because he actually realized what he did was wrong.  He seemed a little flustered at first, but came back with an impressive answer, even if he may not actually mean what he said.

There were a few other things that I actually was able to take from the interview.  Like when he said he thought the culture was cool.  I believe that’s 100% the reason why he got into dog-fighting.  I think this whole idea of “cool” affects kids (and sometimes adults) way too much.  I mean, it’s why teenage smoking is so prevalent in the world.  Same goes for more and more kids having sex at younger and younger ages.  It’s cool to smoke and it’s cool to fuck and you’re a loser if you don’t.  In Vick’s case, you can include dog-fighting in that too.  (And I don’t want to go into race right now.  Maybe another time.  I think it’s definitely a factor.  I bet even Tony Dungy will say that.)  I’m not using this “cool” factor or the fact that kids are impressionable as excuses for Vick but they’re reasons.  The reality is that people just do weird shit that others don’t understand.  I can’t imagine some of the weird things people do when they’re alone.  If also what he said was true about cops actually witnessing the dog-fighting and not doing anything about it, that’s just absurd.  I was about to go into how at some point he would’ve thought that making dogs fight each other to the death might be illegal, but if cops weren’t even saying anything about, that’s a whole different problem.

Vick did go a bit overboard with this whole operation though.  I mean, aside from the whole electrocuting and shooting dogs thing.  But getting all this dog-fighting paraphanelia and running an inter-state operation.  And even giving it a name and getting t-shirts and headbands promoting it?  Did Manuel Noriega wear shirts that said “Hi I’m a Drug Lord” or Al Capone wear fine, Italian suits that said “I Engage in Organized Crime”?  Vick deserved at least two months in prison for being that dumb.

Matt Rourke/AP Photo

What I feel most strongly about though, is Vick’s “second-chance” at playing in the NFL.  He absolutely should be allowed to play football again.  He paid his debt to society by going to prison and that’s that.  The NFL should ban him for life?  Ridiculous.  They didn’t ban Leonard Little and he killed an innocent woman while driving drunk, much the same way Donte Stallworth killed an innocent man.  Leonard Little only got three months in jail and suspended eight games.  (He also got arrested six years later again for driving drunk but was acquitted.)  Stallworth gets 30 days in jail and suspended a year.  Really?  Those two killed people and got less severe punishments than Vick.  Although Michael Vick lied to everybody, including Commissioner Goodell about this whole thing, could you really blame him?  He was scared about his career (and all that $$$$$) and once you tell a lie to one person,you have to tell it to everybody.  (Just ask Roger Clemens.)  He ended up screwing himself over by doing that but I’d imagine at least 98% of us have lied and lied to not get in trouble.  So he lied and that probably got him a greater jail sentence so there was no reason for Goodell to take that personally and give him a more severe punishment and I’m glad he didn’t.  I also have to give the Philadelphia Eagles credit for signing him.  It was a huge risk for them and they still did it.

My point is, who really knows if Michael Vick is actually remorseful?  We certainly won’t be able to tell from any kind of interview.  You don’t get anything from those.  Look at Kobe Bryant.  He seems like a great guy in all these interviews I see him on TNT, ABC, and ESPN.  He actually does have that rare combination of eloquence and intelligence.  But we all know he’s a complete douche.  My honest feeling on Vick?  I think he regrets what he did and now realizes that it was wrong.  Do I think it’s just because he lost a $135 million contract and two years of his life in prison?  That’s absolutely part of it.  In fact, it’s probably most of it.  But is that such a bad thing?  He still learned his lesson and I would be shocked if he so much as killed an ant.  Will there be a time when he truly does see the horror in the things he did?  Only Michael Vick knows and we can only make an educated guess through his actions off the field.  In the meantime, you can hate him all you want for the things he did.  You have every right to.

Just let him play some ball.