Michael Vick just got sprung from jail and is looking for a job quarterbacking an NFL team. Commissioner Roger Goodell is on the verge of deciding whether to let Vick back into the League and under what conditions given the fallout from sickening dog-fighting charges two years ago. Vick met with Goodell and, according to news reports, apologized for both his crimes and for lying to him when the allegations first surfaced.
Crisis management punditry has become the secondary symptom of contemporary fiascos, so it's not surprising that the airwaves and blogs have ignited with yammering about how poorly Vick managed his mess, predictably mistaking his original sin with the handling of its fallout.
Successful damage control rests on a plausible alternative narrative to what's being alleged and, contrary to the mystical powers assigned to spin alchemists, there is no way to credibly explain electrocuting, drowning and hanging dogs that have been brutalized by blood sport ("Please be patient, gentle public, while I give you my cogent reasons for hanging this schnauzer...")
Disturbingly, the American public is less forgiving of animal abuse (off-the-grid behavior) than we are the too-frequent violence that pro-athletes have been known to heap upon the women in their lives (on-the-grid, apparently). Women who tangle with mega jocks, it seems, are "playing with fire" while household pets better qualify as innocent victims.
Vick apologized and served almost two years in prison. His televised mea culpa, of course, was deemed insufficient by the pundits who only get to go on TV if they imply they know a "way" to do these things better. Perhaps if Vick had touched his finger to his nose, spun around a few times, sung Afternoon Delight, and worn a different tie, people would have been cool with animal torture...
No, an apology is only the price of admission to the Theater of Redemption, not the atonement itself.
Like Martha Stewart, who decided to go directly to jail rather than appeal her conviction in order to get the ordeal behind her, Vick did his time without incident, which was the best crisis management he could execute once his deeds became public. He lost an immeasurable fortune, his commercial endorsements, and his coveted quarterback position with the Atlanta Falcons. Now that he's free, the natural arc of his story is primed to swing back up, as it did for Martha, who was deemed a PR wizard upon her release. What did people expect when the bars closed behind her for the last time, that people were going so say, No, I think she should have been executed?
Vick's comeback will be tied to three variables: His athletic skill, his ability to keep his nose clean, and the passage of time, which tends to be surprisingly merciful. If he can pull these off, there is no reason why he cannot have a lucrative career and productive life. Will he ever win back blue-chip commercial endorsements? Certainly not to the degree he once had them, but the name of this game is "damage control" not "damage disappears."
Perhaps the most interesting aspects of the Vick affair is that it is one of the only recent sports scandals to cause quantifiable damage to an athlete, his team, and the business fortunes of each. Many scandals, be it then-Indiana Pacers star Ron Artest's brawl with fans, or Kobe Bryant's rape case, however sordid, did not end up bringing significant or lasting penalties.
From a crisis management perspective, it all comes back to business performance, not abstract concepts such as the integrity of the game or cultural forgiveness, which are, for the most part, separate debates.
Major League Baseball, once thought to be in mortal danger because of performance-enhancing drugs, is actually doing quite well. There are a few possible reasons for this. First, many fans like to watch jacked-up athletes smashing freakish home runs. Second, some of the drug violations were speculative, and those that were confirmed came after big records were broken leaving these milestones in the soupy domain of the asterisk.
Put differently, provided baseball fans didn't have the fraud thrown right in their faces, most didn't care to watch how the hopped-up sausage got made. Recognizing this, MLB implemented a penalty program and commissioned the Mitchell Report to placate fans by demonstrating they were doing something about the problem.
Vick may never be a Humane Society favorite, but the overlap of this demographic with football fans is limited or at least inoperative. The debate about the integrity of professional sports is an essential cultural one, but it has little to do with the successful resolution of a sports crisis. With his punishment behind him, Vick's benediction in the great American Theater of Repentance will occur on the grid.
Stuart Dezenhall contributed to this blog post.
