What they're saying about Michael Vick
Steve Hummer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
As Falcons supporters look back on the arc of the Vick story now, how can they not classify it as the cruelest entry yet in their team's tormented history?
So deep is the disappointment in how this once charmed tale turned ugly that the Falcons general manager at the time of Vick's drafting, Harold Richardson, won't discuss any facet of the rise and fall. Not even the best part of the story, because Richardson knows how it ends. In the road-building business now, he steers clear of human potholes. …
Athletes fail themselves all the time. In the line of great flameouts, Mike Tyson was done in by his reckless libido, Pete Rose by the need for action against the spread, Dwight Gooden by that old standard, drugs.
But who ever heard of a career death by dogfighting? The player who was going to re-invent the quarterback position ended up instead inventing a whole new way to blow it all.
Jason Whitlock, Kansas City Star: Not long ago, the man did have the world by the tail. He owned a $130 million contract in a city, Atlanta, that adored him, and he was labeled a "franchise" quarterback.
He threw it all away because he bought into the self-destructive, immature, hip-hop model of "keeping it real."…
For athletes and other people who experience professional success, keeping it real should mean offering your lifelong friends and family members an opportunity to acquire the skills necessary to join the mainstream. …
Helping a friend or family member wallow in stupidity or self-destructive behavior is not keeping it real. It's enabling a problem, a problem that could eventually engulf you. Ask Michael Vick.
Michael Wilbon, Washington Post: Like most people who are arrogant but not particularly smart, Vick overplayed his hand. To get back into pro football - and there's no guarantee - Vick is going to have to repeatedly and convincingly demonstrate a level of humility I doubt he's felt a single day in his life. And it has to start between now and Monday's appearance in Richmond.
If he says what arrogant athletes in trouble usually say, that this is behind him and it's time to move on, his penitence will be insufficient. He'd better take the approach, and publicly, that his god isn't finished with him yet and there's a better man at the end of this regrettable process than at the beginning. Vick, clearly a man used to taking what he wants without fear of consequence, had better start begging quite literally for mercy and forgiveness. In public. Every chance he gets. We may be a forgiving culture, but only if people believe the sinner is genuinely contrite.
If he just remains the same old Michael Vick, he's got no chance.
Mike Lopresti, USA Today: We expected to see Michael Vick one day in the Super Bowl. But not prison.
The details have been shocking. The twists and turns riveting. The unraveling stunning, as Vick's cohorts rolled one after another. In these last days, he must have felt like a quarterback in the pocket, trying to survive a blitz, and suddenly no one was there to block.
In the end, there was also nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Perhaps the adulation and trappings of his enormously successful past deluded him. He thought he could scramble away from anything.