Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Don't Get it Twisted


Just because I sometimes spell Vic Damone, Jr. "Vick," please don't think I started that to have any affiliation with the idiocy that is now known as Michael Vick, veteran quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons and currently No. 1 enemy of PETA.

If you haven't heard about Vick's latest mishap, you've been hiding under a boulder somewhere, maybe in Colorado.

Vick, for all intensive purposes, is done. He may play football this season, but he may also find himself playing for the gridiron gang in the federal penitentiary. He was indicted yesterday by a federal grand jury on charges surrounding his alleged ties to the dog-fighting subculture.

I was watching ESPN when the news came down. My first thought: "Man would it be hilarious if ESPN had given him a slot in its Who's NOW bracket. He certainly would get ousted by the fans because he's done."

But he wasn't a part of the bracket. But that I checked to see should tell you how majorly crazy this is. In Black America (especially the South), this is the equivalent to Martha Stewart being indicted and heading off to the slammer.

Mike Vick is the Atlanta Falcons. He personfie(d)s a sense of cool. He's one of Nike's front men. He's on the cover of one of the past editions of Madden. It makes little sense that he got himself in such a precarious situation. I guess this saying is true, an idiot with money is worse off than an idiot without.

When you make that much money and are as high-profile a name and figure as Mike Vick, there are things you just cannot do - and being involved in illegal dogfighting is one of them.

When you get his type of notoriety you go to work, red carpet events and then home. That's it. You don't go Nate Newton and get caught with nearly as much marijuana as your playing weight.

You don't make it rain in strip clubs and cause unnecessary drama to unfold ala Pacman.

And you surely don't, especially if you're as big as Mike Vick is, get brought down like this. That said, there's a better chance that Barry Bonds get to 850 home runs than Mike Vick runs for another 1,000 yards in his NFL career.

The Feds are going to make an example of him, and it sucks. But then again, maybe the ignorant sector of Black America wakes from the slumber its been in since Laurence Fishburne's character in School Daze yelled at the top of its lungs.

"WAKE UP!"