Now that Michael Vick is a convicted felon, another notch for the Eastern District of Virginia's famed rocket docket, we can now turn -- as ESPN has been doing incessantly since Vick's plea deal was announced Monday -- to the future, to the Atlanta Falcons quarterback's eventual release from federal prison. For NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who's had -- David Stern's NBA referee/gambling controversy, Bud Selig's MLB steroid controversy, and professional cycling's comically doped-up cheaters controversy notwithstanding -- one of the rougher crime-and-punishment summers among sports executives (see: Adam "Pacman" Jones and Tank Johnson), and for Falcons owner and CEO Arthur Blank, Michael Vick's future should be clear: provided he can still perform, he ought to be back on the field as soon as the Federal Bureau of Prisons deems him rehabilitated and a coach deems him ready.
Animal rights activists want -- and they really can't be blamed, considering the case's horrific (and no longer merely alleged) offenses -- Vick's head on a pike (banmichaelvick.com is still up for sale, but users at free sites Blogger and The Petition Site have set up open letters for the outraged to sign in the hopes of forever ridding football of the quarterback-cum-dogfighter). For some, the twelve to eighteen months in federal prison recommended to judge Henry Hudson by the U.S. Attorney's office aren't enough punishment, and with the confession and conviction in the bag, vengeance is nigh.
Vick left Virginia Tech after his redshirt sophomore season in 2001 and was the first player selected in that year's NFL draft. In 2004, he signed the most lucrative contract in league history, worth (until recently) up to $130 million, and he appeared on the cover of the world's most popular video game, Electronic Arts's Madden NFL. Born June 26, 1980, in Newport News, Vick is the first superstar I can recall who is younger than I am (by five months), the first of us "eighties babies" to really make it big. I supported him out of solidarity for my generation, for my decade. His embarrassing, sloppily handled, and extremely public encounters with venereal disease and marijuana took some of the bloom off the rose, but the man could play football, could play it electrifyingly well in fact and, given his myriad brushes with the law and his sometimes petulant attitude, it's not clear what he would have been doing if he couldn't.
When he's released from prison, most likely sometime in or after 2009, Michael Vick will be an ex-convict and a college dropout; on his resume, the bullet points under "previous employers" will be headed Bureau of Prisons and Atlanta Falcons, a combination adding up to a rather non-transferable set of skills. As an African American, he'll encounter a demonstrated and documented discrimination of black ex-convicts when it comes to employers' hiring practices. And should he choose to remain a resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia, he'll be ineligible to vote unless he asks for the governor's permission. Even if his sentence leniently includes a stint of probation, depending on the terms determined by the judge, he could still be subject to various obligatory intrusions by the state, including urine tests (not unlikely considering his record with marijuana) and periodic pop-ins to make sure he's being a good citizen. In short, Vick's post-prison life will be cut anew from a much tighter cloth. To deprive someone in that situation of the activity he's better at than just about anyone else on the planet, well, borders on cruel and unusual.
If we're to apply the labels of "correction" and "rehabilitation" to our prisons, then it's only natural to wonder what is being corrected, and for what purpose prisoners are being rehabilitated. If, ostensibly, the idea is to "fix" a broken individual into a contributing member of society, then it seems ludicrous to have the National Football League whack ex-convict athletes on the kneecaps by not allowing them to pursue their livelihoods after they've completed their court-ordered punishment. Considering the size of today's contracts, banishment from the sport is equitable to an extrajudicial fine of tens of millions of dollars and, essentially, the subtraction of one of society's most productive members. It would certainly be a shame to see a talent like Michael Vick reduced to wearing a scarlet letter on his chest instead of a jersey number.
Vick is a criminal and will be, for better or for worse, treated as such. But whatever that treatment may be, it ought to be handled by the state, not the sport.
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Posted August 21, 2007 | 03:16 PM (EST)