This is an excerpt from a recent article by Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jeff Schultz in the wake of Michael Vick being sentenced to 23 months in federal prison for funding an illegal dog fighting operation:
While the Falcons’ season winds down, like an old Chevy dropping parts along the highway, Vick will be sentenced in Richmond for creating, funding, operating and lying about a dogfighting operation.
Some fans remain handcuffed to their anger. Others have transitioned into sadness. Both are understandable. No athlete ever had so much, money and power, on and off the field, and threw it away for something so mind-boggling and stupid.
Drug and alcohol problems, at least, could be rationalized as a weakness, even disease. But fighting dogs, refusing to cut ties with street punks you called friends, lying to the man who paid you, as well as the teammates you sweated with and the city of fans who bowed at your feet — that, you can’t rationalize. It’s a lethal combination of arrogance and immaturity that could smother any career.
For Falcon fans, it’s hard to sum up this entire situation in just one article, but I think Schultz hits the nail on the head in the above paragraphs. Vick meant so much to so many people that it’s incomprehendable to imagine how he could – as Schultz put it – throw it all away for something so mind-boggling and stupid.
