Why the Rush to Prop Up Vick?

PHILADELPHIA -- I don't know, I mean, I guess it's a nice story if it works out the way they'd all have you believe it can/will/should. Everybody loves a good redemption story, and Michael Vick is surely set up to be an all-timer. Few have ever started from deeper behind and with a more complete and devoted public support system, that's for sure. If the man is truly reformed, truly dedicated to being an active, positive societal force for good, there are plenty of people around to steer his efforts in the right direction.

But I don't know. As I stood there today, listening to all of these people talk about how Vick had convinced them he was a changed man, I couldn't shake this Emperor-Has-No-Clothes feeling. Why should any of us buy this? What has this guy done to deserve this much support? I'm not in the camp that says he shouldn't be allowed to play -- I actually think he should. But what I don't get is why he gets all this help. Of all the people who have screwed up royally and threatened to fall through sport celebrity's cracks, why does this particular person deserve this much benefit of the doubt?

"I think his sense of humanity was awakened during his time in prison in a way that, the way he'd lived his life, it hadn't been before," Philadelphia Eagles president Joe Banner said.

Well, that's a nice start. The actions that landed Vick in prison were sub-human. Something human is missing from a person who can electrocute, drown and string up dogs without realizing there's anything wrong with what he's doing. So this is a nice starting point Banner has laid out -- the awakening of a previously dormant sense of humanity.

But there's still a long way to go from there, and the most bizarre part of the scene that played out today in Philly wasn't the fact that so many people are buying into this as much as the extent to which they were. Vick is not a sincere or convincing person, and yet all of these people claim to be convinced of his sincerity. The idea of people as serious and respected as Tony Dungy, Andy Reid, Jeffrey Lurie and Roger Goodell staking their reputations on Vick's potential to be an active agent for social change is incomprehensible. And yet they all are.

"I want Michael to be one of the NFL's success stories as an individual and as a football player," Goodell said in a printed statement.

Fine. But what I can't figure out is why this particular individual merits such a powerful collective effort in that direction. By all accounts, Vick was an arrogant ass his first time through the league -- the kind of guy who blew off OTAs, stayed aloof in the locker room and generally carried himself as though he was better than everybody else. Before anybody knew he was a serial killer and torturer of dogs, nobody liked him.

Yet, the players in the league have lined up uniformly and vehemently in support of Vick's right to return to the league he embarrassed. And the Eagles have gone ahead and hired him, at a mildly significant cost. And Goodell has issued the most compassionate and open-ended discipline of his tenure as commissioner. And Dungy is walking around telling everybody that he's bought in and they should too.

Why?

From the players' standpoint, there's a feeling that Vick got something of a raw deal -- that the punishment he received was excessive in relation to the crime. The players don't think Vick should serve any additional suspension beyond the two years he had to miss while in prison. This feeling is based not so much on love for Vick as hatred for the Goodell-controlled discipline policy. Players are fed up with the fact that they don't have any say in the way discipline is administered, and they're starting to become vocal about it in ways they never have been before. Vick's situation and the widespread attention it's received has provided a platform.

But what a weird time in history to rally on this. Had players been able to stand together on issues like this 20 and 30 years ago, there might be a reasonable, independent-arbitrator system in place by now. The Vick case seems to be galvanizing players on this one issue, but you're still left to wonder why? Why for this guy?

From the league's standpoint, Vick represents something scary. His jersey was the top-selling jersey in the league for three years when he was in his prime. He was one of the most exciting, explosive and popular players in all of sports. He had legions of fans -- many of them, young, African-American fans -- and he still does. You could imagine why the idea of alienating that portion of the fan base would scare to the people that run the NFL.

But the NFL should be stronger than that. There's no way Goodell's compassion can completely be tied to a fear of alienating young, African-American fans. The NFL is an $8 billion-a-year industry, the most popular sport going, and could certainly withstand whatever discipline it imposed on Vick or anybody else. So while it's nice that Roger Goodell is acting with compassion, we're still left to wonder why. Why for this guy? What is it about this guy that's making everybody take so much care?

"I feel he can be such an impacting person with our young people," Dungy said. "Mike Vick resonates with young people in a way that a lot of other people will not. If he's up there telling them things like watch who you hang out with and watch the way you live your life, young people will be listening."

This was a recurring theme at the press conference -- the idea that Vick, because of his celebrity and because of how horribly bad his crimes were, is someone to whom people will listen when he talks about staying out of prison, or taking care of animals. And that is true. If Michael Vick appears on a PSA for PETA, you're not going to change the channel.

"He's got the opportunity to be a valuable member of society, and that's the goal here," Lurie said.

But as to whether he actually will, aren't they all just guessing? And why is this guy worth placing a bet like that on? Why this guy?

It matters to Dungy that the star athletes who can function as positive role models in African-America society pull it off. It matters that someone like Michael Vick doesn't go down. It would matter so much to see him make one of the greatest P.R. comebacks of all time. And of all the people in this, I believe Dungy's motives to be the purest. I believe that he's done similar work with other players in far less public circumstances. I believe he really wants Michael Vick to redeem himself, because the good that would come from that redemption really does have the potential to outweigh the bad that led him to Leavenworth.

But I still sit here and listen to Vick and wonder what he could have said to convince Tony Dungy that he's capable of that redemption. What is Vick telling these people that isn't coming through when he opens his mouth in public?

The most revealing thing Vick said today was this, in answer to a question about when he realized what he had done was wrong:

"Once I went to prison, I had time to think about what I did, and I saw people's reaction. Until that point, I never really paid attention to it. Now I realize that people really care about their animals and want to protect them. And now I do too."

This is revealing not because of the last part or the first but the middle -- the part where he said it had never occurred to him to care about the animals he was torturing and slaughtering. That tells us there was something missing in this person that's basic to most (I would imagine) of the rest of us. That tells us just how long the journey is from where he was two years ago to where he, Dungy, Goodell and the Eagles believe he's going to be by the end of the 2009-10 NFL season.

So why? Why does Michael Vick deserve this level of compassion and support? In the end (and maybe I'm a cynical jerk), the only thing I can come up with is the football. That Andy Reid and the rest of the Eagles' football people somehow convinced dog-loving owner Jeff Lurie that Vick was the thing that was going to make the difference in the NFC East, and that winning the Super Bowl is such an obsession with these people that they're willing to make a hugely risky bet on a guy who's shown no real sign (outside of the words he said to them while trying to get hired) that he's worth it.

Reid brightened when asked how he planned to use Vick on the field.

"I think we all know that Michael Vick was, two years ago, one of the greatest quarterbacks in the NFL," Reid said. "He will contribute, and you can ask defensive coordinators on other teams whether they're worried about that."

There. That's a single-minded football coach talking. That right there gives us the best insight into why all of this happened today in a city that will love and forgive Vick if he helps their team win a Super Bowl but will angrily and viciously run him out of town if he does the slightest thing to stand in its way. In the end, these people are all lining up behind Vick because they're dreaming of a redemption story that ends with him holding up a Super Bowl trophy while wearing green and white.

"I think the majority of the public wants Michael to do well," Reid said.

I don't agree with him. I think the majority of the public could care less, and a significant portion of the public wants to see him fail or just go away. But even the segment of the public, however large it is, that does want to see him do well...they're not betting on it to the extent that the Eagles are. Or to the extent that Tony Dungy and Roger Goodell are. The public isn't going to look like fools if Vick backslides. Those guys are. They're staking a great deal on the hope that he doesn't make them look bad.

The question remains, given everything that's led up to this, why?