Last week I suggested that the best thing the Eagles can do is to trade Mike Vick and try to get some value from him while he is hot. Now it seems the Eagles have instead drank the Vick cool aid and will soon be signing him to a long term deal and trading away Kevin Kolb. Noooooo! Don't make me root for Mick Vick. He may be an amazing football talent, but he is a disgusting human being.
Don't get me wrong. I am all for the idea that once you have done your time, you should be allowed to become a productive member of society again. Intellectually, I have no problem with Vick playing in the NFL again. That's his profession, and he should be allowed to work again now that he has finished his jail time.
That said, I don't have to like the guy, and I don't want to root for him every Sunday. These are some of the things he did to his dogs. He attached jumper cables to their ears and electrocuted them to death. He hung them from trees and let them slowly die of exposure. He slammed them to the ground over and over again until their skulls were crushed in. He strangled them with his bare hands. These are not the acts of a normal human being. These are the acts of a psycopath. Every time you read the story of a mass murderer, it starts with the explanation about how he loved to torture small animals as a child. This is a man one step removed from Jack the Ripper.
I have less problem with the dog fighting itself than the way he treated his dogs in between the fights. If I look at it in a twisted way, I can understand the viewpoint that dog fighting is a sport and these dogs are warriors. If he had treated his dogs with the pride and respect afforded a valuable athelete, I may have slightly understood the actual dog fights. But the fact that after having them rip each other to pieces in a ring he then took them home and continued to torture and kill them tells me he just enjoyed the spectacle of watching animals suffer and die. That is not normal. That is not someone I wish to invite into my living room every week.
Go back and look at all the things Vick has said since the Eagles signed him. At no point does he express remorse for doing these things to his dogs. His remorse if clearly for doing something illegal and getting caught, which cost him dearly in jail time, fame and fortune. When people say he is a changed man, they are referring to a renewed work ethic and dedication to football. I do not believe whatever it is inside him that made him enjoy torturing defenseless animals has really gone away.
Again, I acknowledge that he was probably punished more for this crime than anyone in history. I do not want him kept out of professional football. It is likely that the thought of further jail time and the loss of everything he holds dear is enough to keep his warped impulses locked inside and that he will never harm another being again. All this is true, but it still does not make me willing to like the guy. Now he is going to be quarterbacking my team for probably many years to come and every time I cheer for a big pass play, I will be cheering for a closet psycopath. I'm not really sure I can do that.
Why Andy Reid why? Why did you force this choice on us? Couldn't you at least have given Kolb more than a quarter and a half to win the job? In the end, I will probably keep rooting for the Eagles. 40 plus years of habit are hard to break. But they have definitely taken some of the joy out of the sport.
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