Folks Too Obsessed With Michael Vick

ATLANTA -- Nearly every moment I'm in this area, where I've lived for the past 25 years, I encounter somebody who wishes to discuss No. 7, usually in a highly emotional way. It doesn't matter whether I'm in a church service, sitting in a barber's chair or rising for a set of crunches at the gym.

Michael Vick, Michael Vick, Michael Vick.

When does he get out of prison?

Where is he going to play?

Why don't they leave him alone?

This local obsession with Vick always has been cult-like, especially among African-Americans, and that obsession has grown with no end in sight. I mean, here we are in the heart of the Bible Belt, but some are threatening to switch their memberships from wherever they are now to the Latter-Day Church of Michael Dwayne Vick.

For many reasons, this makes no sense.

"Actually, it does," said Andrew Young, an old acquaintance, who has other claims to fame. He was one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s top lieutenants. Plus, he was an Ambassador to the United Nations and a former Atlanta mayor when he wasn't serving as a congressman or a pastor at a real church. He still lives in Atlanta , where he is among the board of advisors for Vick's old Falcons team. So Young has watched every millisecond of this Vick drama up close and personal.

Added Young, "He was the spark plug that brought the Falcons back, and if you notice, I don't think there was an NFL stadium in the country that had as high of a percentage of black fans present as Atlanta (columnist's note: That's true). It always amazed me, and it made me feel very proud, because frankly, I took some of the credit for it, because Atlanta is one of the few places where blacks truly participated in the economy.

"So I was proud, because whole black families came to the stadium to see Vick and the Falcons play. I had never seen that in other stadiums or on television. Plus, in this regard, it wasn't just blacks: Everybody in town wore No. 7. And since we're also a town of animal lovers, and since I've always owned a couple of big dogs, well, it was just the initial shock of it all."

That shock involved Vick's dog-fighting issues. That shock has subsided, though, which is why this ongoing obsession with everything involving Vick throughout the Atlanta area makes no sense. Not only that, he hasn't zipped a pass with his strong left arm or zagged by a defender with his magic feet in three seasons. That's because he has spent the last year or so as a guest of the feds in Leavenworth .

Vick also isn't from around here. When he did play for the Falcons for six seasons through 2006, he did little-to-no philanthropy in Atlanta . He even flipped off a group of booing Falcons fans (thrice) at the Georgia Dome after a game. In contrast, he spent much of his time, money and love in his native Newport News, Va., where he currently is finishing the last few weeks of his sentence in home confinement.

None of that has mattered to Vick's unofficial congregation in northern Georgia. Neither has the fact that Falcons officials did what they suggested they would do after Vick's dog-fighting issues became horrors. They suggested they would end his spectacular but controversial career with the franchise. They did so last Friday by preferring to eat more than $7 million worth of salary-cap money through the release of their former quarterback of the present and future.

Such a move has caused Vick's unofficial congregation to hug its leader even tighter, and for many reasons, this actually does make sense.

There is that piling-on thing. "Way too much has been made of all of this, and it's gotten to be too much," said Young, who is correct. For instance: The media has much time to fill these days with its 24-hour news cycle, and that's why it has kept the world ridiculously informed of everything from Vick's financial woes to his every breath after he leaves his Virginia house to those cries from animal groups who want nothing less than to rip out his heart and feed it to a German shepherd. You also have the feds using Vick as the poster child for ending dog fighting.

There also is that fanatical thing. After all, "fan" is a derivative of that word, which brings us to this: The traditionally woeful Falcons haven't managed back-to-back winning seasons since their inception in 1966, and they've also had only a Deion Sanders here and a Jamal Anderson there. So more than a few Falcons "fans" are fuming to see "them" -- as in the NFL, the media, the feds, the haters in general -- take away the player that they view as their ultimate football messiah "over nothing but some dogs," which has become their constant mantra.

Then there is that deeper thing, and this applies mostly to Vick's African-American supporters. He is one of them. They know him (or at least they think they do), because they either are like him in their minds, or they know somebody like him. They see him as their brother, their cousin, their neighbor, their son.

"I look at him as my grandson," said Young, 77, laughing, recalling the times that he has tried to help Vick through the years.

I tried to help, too.

Once, during the summer of 2002 in Greenville, S.C., where the Falcons used to gather for training camp at Furman University, Vick huddled for the longest time with Young after a practice. Their duet eventually became a trio after Young waved for me on the far side of the field to join them. Our chat wasn't about how to avoid a zone blitz. Our chat was about what Vick needed to do to not become another knucklehead with lots of money and notoriety along the way to embarrassment. Our chat was about how Vick needed to use professionalism on and off the field.

Our chat was about how he needed a spiritual rebirth.

We tried. Others also tried, but Vick still became a knucklehead.

You had Vick present when one of his friends stole a Rolex watch from a security table at the Atlanta airport. You had Vick's trick water-bottle that supposedly reeked of marijuana at Miami International when it was confiscated by security. You had that photo of Vick holding a blunt on the Internet. You had that time he blew off a bunch of congressmen in Washington after he said he missed a flight from Atlanta . You had Vick using the alias "Ron Mexico" in a legal matter involving venereal disease.

Then came the dogs.

Even so, there was shrugging inside of Vick's unofficial congregation and among Falcons officials until near the end, and it all gave their guy even more reason to believe that he could become a knucklehead without consequences. It also didn't matter to the true Vick believers that the Falcons rose from four victories in 2007 to 11 last season with Matt Ryan, the exceptional rookie quarterback who became the new face of the franchise to replace Vick.

"Well, you have a lot of things, but I don't think they will make any of us in this town forget Michael Vick," said Young, telling the truth.

Terence Moore is a national columnist and commentator for FanHouse. He is a frequent panelist on "Rome Is Burning", an ESPN show hosted by Jim Rome, that is seen Monday through Friday at 4:30 PM ET. Moore spent more than three decades working for major newspapers, including 26 years as an award-winning sports columnist for the San Francisco Examiner and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He resides in Atlanta .