Thugs in Sports
Aug 25th, 2007 by John Setzler
Michael Vick in a game against the Carolina Panthers in Charlotte on December 4, 2005 - Photo by John M. Setzler, Jr.
I’m so sick of hearing about Michael Vick and the dog fighting scandal. It wasn’t that long ago that his little brother got thrown out of school at Virginia Tech for being a thug. I guess it runs in the family. It’s not just the Vick family though… there are a lot more and it runs a lot deeper than a few people. Michael Vick is gonna go to jail for his role in illegal dog fighting. He pled guilty to several charges on Friday. I’m not sure what all the charges are, but there was talk that he didn’t plead guilty to some elements of this case, so I don’t know what’s gonna happen there.
I listen to too much talk radio and I have heard this story from many sides. The common element I keep hearing is that Vick should pay the price for the crime. What seems to be up in the air at this point is whether or not he should be able to play football again after he serves his time. The NFL has suspended Vick, but there aren’t any details out yet on the terms of that suspension.
Professional and Collegiate sports are revenue machines. They don’t care much about the athletes as long as the dollars keep rolling in. Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of the best athletes aren’t the smartest people in the world. They don’t graduate high school at the top of their class and then they are invited to go to prestigious universities on a free ride to help generate revenue for the sports program. They stay there for a while and the best of the best get drafted into the pros… another cash cow.
I think it’s time for professional sports to step up to the plate and clean up their own act. The NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB should implement policies that automatically eject a player from any future eligibility in the league when certain events occur. If an athlete is convicted of ANY charge greater than a traffic violation, they should be permanently suspended from the league. If these guys want a piece of the spotlight, they should keep their noses clean. Too many of the great athletes in the country today just aren’t capable of that. Multi-million dollar incomes don’t make a person any smarter than they were when they were broke. If dollars equaled good sense, Michael Vick (and the rest of the thugs in professional sports) would be on par with Albert Einstein.
Michael Vick getting sacked by the Carolina Panthers secondary in Charlotte on December 4, 2005 - Photo by John M. Setzler, Jr.
I think professional sports is just as guilty as Michael Vick by the simple fact that they don’t have enough measures in place to discourage behavior unbecoming of professional sports. There are too many second, third, and fourth chances given to athletes who are habitual thugs. The money train that rolls down these tracks is just unstoppable.
Trenchant thoughts John. They’ve sparked a couple in my noggin.
1) It is very hard to play a sport at a world class level.
2) The demands are for a uniquely physical talent and
3) Particularly in team sports, and in football in particular, there are memory demands that would make a pre-med student tear up.
4) The ballet of interactions which not only change instantaneously, but brutally reward mistakes go well beyond mere reflexive or muscle memory learning.
I’ve come to conclude that pro football players in particularly are very… if uniquely… intelligent. When you get to Vic’s level as a quarterback… the totality of the package he has to bring to the game is … well the word awesome understates it.
I have always thought that colleges should have to pay for athletes with rewards well beyond tuition, book, and living grants. Why Vic abruptly becomes worth millions upon graduation is not odd. He was worth millions before, but the college/university captured that profit - sharing little with him. It is the essence of exploitation.
However, intelligence and talent nowhere preclude the existence of an evil seed. Evil, unsupressed, deserves punishment independent of the other abilities in a person’s package. Punishment, or its threat, is an incentive to supress the dark side. The question in Vic’s case is not the need for necessary punishment… but rather the extent of that punishment and how far it should go beyond a corrective dose and how far it should extend into society’s revenge as a result of its loathing of the act.
But… I blather.
Thanks for sharing…
Ted