More Mike Vick and some other stuff

I'm kind of surprised that this Michael Vick story has become as big as it has. I figured it would be big in this country especially among sports fans. And I wasn't surprised to see links to Canadian newspapers about the case, but there were a surprising number to Australia and Europe. I don't think the Rae Carruth story got this big. Granted, he wasn't a star like Vick, but he was accused of having his girlfriend murdered which seems to be a bit worse than fighting dogs (although I'm willing to bet some of the PETA crowd would disagree). Of course, it didn't hurt that a United States Senator, Robert Byrd, ripped Vick on the floor of Congress. You know it's bad when a former Grand Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan is critical of your morals and ethics. Of course, the Pride of West Virginia (along with that house in Clarksburg with the flush toilet) was probably angry because they didn't have a burning cross while hanging the dogs. Plus, Vick was hanging white dogs with black ones. I'm sure Vick can get Byrd on his side as soon as he renames the kennels the Robert C. Byrd Memorial Dog Training Center. Now another Senator is jumping on the bandwagon and promising to make illegal dog fighting illegal. Since it's John Kerry, I fully expect to support the legalization of dog fighting in order to support a ban on it.

Nike is feeling the pressure over Michael Vick as they announced they would not release the new Vick Zoom shoe. The Humane Society says they aren’t going far enough, and wants everything pulled. I've already said Vick needs to be shut down for the season, and I don't like Nikes. However, I can understand where they are coming from. They have a lot of money invested in Vick, so they obviously don't want to make a rushed decision just based on an indictment. It's real easy to tell someone to possibly piss their money away without thinking on it first to satisfy your principle. His boss is playing the wait-and-see game, but I think it's because the Falcons have to decide which is the bigger crime: dog fighting or letting Joey Harrington start for them.

Common sense says that dumping Vick will be celebrated everywhere, but you have to remember we're talking about Nike. They've never shied away from thug marketing. Besides, the expected backlash to the Vick backlash is beginning. Let's see. Rich Hoffman goes with the "innocent until proven guilty" when he says Vick should have the right to work until convicted. Mike Sando and Stephen A. Smith both caution against a rush to judgement (and both cite the Duke lacrosse case) with Smith even indicating that even if Vick is found guilty, it's somehow the fans' fault. Well, I've always maintained that Smith is stupid beyond belief, so I'll ignore him. Comparing this to the Duke case is garbage because that was a rogue prosecution based on a single source with creditability problems that continued in spite of all the evidence (physical and otherwise) going against her. They were digging up dead dogs on Vick's property. But let's look at the other arguments because they run together in the sense that Vick is being denied due process.

Sportswriters should stay out of legal pronouncements because they tend not to be very bright. Sando seems to think that the 90% plus conviction rate of federal indictments is inflated by defendants not fighting in court because they feel overmatched. So, innocent guys plead guilty because fighting the case is too much of a hassle? Genius. The NFL is not bound by legal rules like that. Plenty of people have been fired from jobs because they got indicted, and the NFL is a league dependant upon fans which means it has to try to protect it's image. While it's Vicks first criminal indictment, it's not his first run-in with trouble. Even if acquitted, I don't see how anyone can think that he didn't at least know that his property was being used for dog fighting. Smith mentioned OJ Simpson in his article. Simpson was acquitted of murder, but in real life, he is treated like a criminal (because rational people know he is).

Then, Mike Freeman played the race card. Whites will think Vick is guilty because white people are bigots, while black people will think he's innocent because he's black and poor black people are constantly being convicted of crimes they didn't commit. What that has to do with rich blacks who commit crimes, I don't know. Apparently all the whites who helped make Vick one of the highest paid football players now want him in jail because of cornrows, not because the feds dug up a bunch of dog cadavers in his backyard. Oh, in a twist of irony, a man who normally believes every indicted black man is part of a white conspiracy, Al Sharpton, has called for Vick's suspension.

Then the NBA comes along to take some heat off Vick as referee Tm Donaghy resigned while being investigated for taking money from gamblers to affect the outcome of games. I had never thought about it, but in hindsight, bribing a NBA ref is brilliant. Unlike college basketball, you can't bribe players because they make so much, it wouldn't be worthwhile. There were so many bizarre calls in NBA games that a lot of people already suspected them of affecting the outcome of games to help star players. Everyone else just figured they were incompetent. Plus, unlike football referees or even baseball umps, they have more opportunities to affect a game. In other sports, officials have a more defined area to monitor, but in basketball, I've seen referees on the other side of the court make a call. There are so many other judgment calls that you can keep an underdog in the game or make sure they get blown out. If you're smart and keep your betting amounts relatively low, you could get a 60% win rate.

Then steroids popped up again. Barry Bonds is closing in on the all-time home run record, but it's seen as tainted because he might have used steroids (he's either juiced or ate two teammates). I love how it's pointed out that he's never failed a steroid test. Of course, he got involved in the whole steroid scandal when he was connected to BALCO which conveniently was in the business of making a designer steroid that didn't show on tests. And old golfer Gary Player insists that steroids are becoming a problem on the golf tours. One columnist ripped him for causing such a ruckus by not naming names to protect a source (a reporter would never use an anonymous source). I remember when Jose Conseco named names in his book on steroids in baseball, and he got crap for that. Make up your mind. Do you want to know who or not? There was a positive test for performance enhancers in the Tour de France, but since the only American in contention (Levi Leipheimer) is pretty far back and has a foreign sounding name, so no one cares. The biggest news to come out of that was a German biker crashing into a dog. That dog did more to stop a German than the entire French army in World War II.