Vick to Plead Guilty

[ken0042]

Originally Posted by kipperfan

Yep....they get all the deals....always have too.

I think somebody missed the OJ reference in there.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

The biggest problem for the Falcons is even if they get some of the signing bonus back, he's still going to remain as a salary cap hit for a number of years.

Vick has double tapped the falcons in the head.

I'm not sure that will be the case.

When a player is cut, only the guaranteed portion of the salary must be included as a cap hit (spread of this year and next). The non-guaranteed portion is never paid so isn't included in the cap.

So I'm guessing here, but if the Falcons are allowed to get their signing bonus back, I should think they also gain relief from the clawback.

There will be some hit from any roster bonuses he already qualified for, but I'm guessing by this time next year Vick will be off the books.

Of course there are a lot of cap stuff that never gets explained in the press (signing bonus cap hits always seemed to be explained) so I may be totally out to lunch, but I hope the Falcons are able to get some sort of cap relief (and I don't like the Falcons, so that is saying something)

[burn_baby_burn]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

The biggest problem for the Falcons is even if they get some of the signing bonus back, he's still going to remain as a salary cap hit for a number of years.

Vick has double tapped the falcons in the head.

Legally, do the Falcons have any rights? Vick brought a lot of bad publicity to that team. Posters on here were talking about boycoting Home Depot because they though Aurthor Blank owned it. Plus without Vick the Falcons are the favorite to draft first overall in the 2008 NFL draft. Since he violated his player contract and obviously hurt the Falcons financially. Do the Falcons have any rights under the law to recieve financial compensation from Vick?

[Bobblehead]

Vick must remain on the roster while the team goes through the process of trying to recoup the bonus money. If the Falcons are successful on that front, it will lessen their future salary cap obligations. Anything left on the books can be spread out over the next two seasons if Atlanta waits until after the season to officially give Vick a pink slip.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/200....ap/index.html

So any money they are unable to reclaim will be included as a cap hit this year and next. However this cap hit will be much less than if Vick was still on the roster.

[burn_baby_burn]

$150,000,000 mistake. Sounds like the Falcons can sue him as well.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slu...v=st&type=lgns

[Sylvanfan]

Anyone see his press conference? Sounded like he read something his lawyer wrote up for him and that he's not really that sorry. I'm less than convinced that he's very remorseful for what he's done.

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/7160334?MSNHPHMA

Theres an interesting column by Jason Whitlock. He makes some good points with what he says.

[CaptainCrunch]

But he did invoke the typical, I've found god, I put my faith in the hands of jesus statement.

News flash dummy, God was never lost, and I'm pretty sure that Jesus isn't going to make a flash miracle aquital happen for you.

He's as sorry as I was when I slept with that girl when I was in high school, you know the one with low standards.

[burn_baby_burn]

Originally Posted by Sylvanfan

Anyone see his press conference? Sounded like he read something his lawyer wrote up for him and that he's not really that sorry. I'm less than convinced that he's very remorseful for what he's done.

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/7160334?MSNHPHMA

Theres an interesting column by Jason Whitlock. He makes some good points with what he says.

I'm sure he is very sorry. If I blew $150 million. I would really be kicking myself.

[burn_baby_burn]

Excellent find Sylvanfan. This has to be one of the best pieces Whitlock has ever written.

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/7160334?MSNHPHMA

Vick is singing the right tune. Unfortunately my hope of a cultural awakening is tempered by the knowledge that too many young black boys will have the Vick story defined to them through the prism of white racism.
White racism is our kryptonite. It's our excuse for nearly every malady. It's our excuse to deflect and remain in denial. Within minutes of Vick's guilty plea, ESPN's Doug Stewart could be seen and heard shouting on TV that because the police walked in the Rodney King beating, black people believe Vick is being dealt with too harshly.

Talent, like beauty, can be a horrible curse. It can hide so many shortcomings, limit your intellectual evolution, compromise the way your friends, family members and co-workers interact with you, prevent you from dealing with problems that are frighteningly obvious to objective observers.

[Burninator]

His press conference didn't help his image much in my eyes. The harshest thing he said about himself was that "he was immature" and "his actions were immature". Gimme a break. Immature?! That's all he can come up with? I would have chose some very different words. Immature would have been very low on that list. Immature would be cracking an inappropriate joke, or partying a little too hard. Raising dogs to kill each other, betting on it and killing dogs, is not in the realm of immaturity. Lock him up.

[Lurch]

Interesting take from Easterbrook (TMQ) in his NFC preview. I largely agree with the points in isolation, but somehow in this case I feel ok ignoring them.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2...t&lid=tab2pos1

Atlanta Falcons
The disgusting thing about dogfighting isn't that animals battle and die -- after all, animals fight to the death in nature, tearing each other's flesh with heartless violence. The disgusting thing about dogfighting is that supposedly intelligent members of Homo sapiens add sadism to the natural equation by starving dogs to make them extra aggressive, filing their incisors to make the fights bloodier, and engaging in other acts unbecoming any man or woman of ethics. What Michael Vick confessed to Monday ought to disgust you, regardless of whether you are a dog lover. Include me. The Official Dog of TMQ -- a Chesapeake retriever, noble state dog of Maryland -- slumbers happily near my feet as I write this.

(Continued in above link.)

[transplant99]

Hunters shoot animals for sport. They do so lawfully, while the manner in which Vick harmed his dogs was unlawful. But from the perspective of the animal, there seems little difference between a hunter with a state game license zipped in his vest pocket shooting a deer as part of something the hunter views as really fun sport, and Vick shooting a dog as part of something Vick views as really fun sport. In both cases, animals suffer for human entertainment. The animal-ethics distinction between Vick's actions and lawful game hunting are murky at best. A first-time offender should go to prison over a murky distinction?

A load of hooey.

Vick and his partners did not SHOOT at least 8 dogs...instead they hung them, or drowned them or electrocuted them. In other words...a slow tortuous death.

Dieing is dieing...I agree, but the way in which they died is very much a part of this whole thing.

And to compare someone who is eating a hamburger to what Vick was doing is as repulsive as it gets. As the author points out, animals eat animals all the time as a food supply as a part of nature. Humans are animals too and eat other animals as a food supply. Yet he concludes what humans do for food is somehow equitable to what Vick and his gang of thugs did for fun??

Laughable.

[FurnaceFace]

What bugs me the most is the media's expectation that "if he is contrite" (they must have used that word 39847293842 times for this story) "if he is remorseful" and "once he gets out and volunteers for some animal rights group he'll be accepted back."

That's such BS to me. If I'm running PETA or the Atlanta SPCA Vick is the last person I'd use as a spokesperson or role model. It wouldn't have mattered if he had blubbered through the news conference with a sad hound dog face, he still knowingly did something against the very creatures these organizations are trying to protect.

I guess it says something about the US culture (and perhaps our own culture) where the media expects the general public to have a short memory and to eventually embrace him back as a fallen hero.

[Lurch]

Originally Posted by transplant99

A load of hooey.

Vick and his partners did not SHOOT at least 8 dogs...instead they hung them, or drowned them or electrocuted them. In other words...a slow tortuous death.

Dieing is dieing...I agree, but the way in which they died is very much a part of this whole thing.

And to compare someone who is eating a hamburger to what Vick was doing is as repulsive as it gets. As the author points out, animals eat animals all the time as a food supply as a part of nature. Humans are animals too and eat other animals as a food supply. Yet he concludes what humans do for food is somehow equitable to what Vick and his gang of thugs did for fun??

Laughable.

You'll note several of his points that are directly in response to your 'how they died' point. Kosher, bleeding out chickens, stunning steers, hunting with a bow instead of a rifle, etc are all very inhumane but part of accepted practice. If all the food in our food system was killed humanely I could take your point, but as a point of fact it is clearly not.

[habernac]

tranny, I am also surprised by the thoughts of many people on this. On another forum, one of the guys had hunting dogs. And while he certainly didn't condone Vick's treatment of the animals, his opinion was "they're only animals, if he pays a fine, that's enough for me".

[Lurch]

Originally Posted by habernac

tranny, I am also surprised by the thoughts of many people on this. On another forum, one of the guys had hunting dogs. And while he certainly didn't condone Vick's treatment of the animals, his opinion was "they're only animals, if he pays a fine, that's enough for me".

What part surprises you? Most people, the vast majority in fact, have reacted more vehemently to this than to Ray Lewis' charges, Pacman's problems, etc. The point I take from the article above is that there is an inherent hypocrisy in the way we treat different animals - even different dogs. The article noted that 100,000 plus Greyhounds were summarily executed in the last decade. I don't think pointing out the hypocricy is tantamount to supporting Vick in any way, shape or form - in fact, at least for me, it is the opposite in that I'd like to see a whole lot of other practices banned.

[burn_baby_burn]

Originally Posted by habernac

tranny, I am also surprised by the thoughts of many people on this. On another forum, one of the guys had hunting dogs. And while he certainly didn't condone Vick's treatment of the animals, his opinion was "they're only animals, if he pays a fine, that's enough for me".

Allthought public opinion is that Vick is being punished for cruelty to animals. The real reason he will be put behind bars is for illegal gambling.

Correct me if I am wrong. But killing dogs is not a crime in Alberta is it? Torturing or being cruel to dogs is. But if your a land owner, and a dog comes onto your property. You have the legal right to shoot that dog. (Of course I'm talking about in areas where discharging a firearm is legal, you can't shoot a dog in a town or city limits)

[fredr123]

In addition to writing Tuesday Morning Quarterback, Gregg Easterbrook is the author of "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse" and other books. He is also a contributing editor for The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly and The Washington Monthly and is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. In his latest TMQ column on Page2, he had this to say about Michael Vick and the moral grey area he sees (apologies for the length of the quote):

The disgusting thing about dogfighting isn't that animals battle and die -- after all, animals fight to the death in nature, tearing each other's flesh with heartless violence. The disgusting thing about dogfighting is that supposedly intelligent members of Homo sapiens add sadism to the natural equation by starving dogs to make them extra aggressive, filing their incisors to make the fights bloodier, and engaging in other acts unbecoming any man or woman of ethics. What Michael Vick confessed to Monday ought to disgust you, regardless of whether you are a dog lover. Include me. The Official Dog of TMQ -- a Chesapeake retriever, noble state dog of Maryland -- slumbers happily near my feet as I write this. But the punishment expected to be imposed on Vick -- one to two years in federal prison, and perhaps never playing in the NFL again -- seems out of proportion to his actions and his status as a first-time offender. The situation is confusing because the federal crimes to which Vick pleaded guilty turn as much on gambling and racketeering as dogfighting; gambling and racketeering concern federal prosecutors because of their relationship to organized crime. Racketeering can lead to jail terms even for nonviolent first-time offenders not involved with drug sales, such as Vick. The NFL, for its part, has very strong reasons to detest gambling, and elaborately warns players they will be harshly penalized for associating with gamblers. Yet I can't help feeling there is overkill in the social, media and legal reactions to Vick, and that the overkill originates in hypocrisy about animals.

Thousands of animals are mistreated or killed in the United States every day without the killers so much as being criticized, let alone imprisoned. Ranchers and farmers kill stock animals or horses that are sick or injured. Some ranchers kill stock animals as gently as possible, others callously; in either case, prosecution is nearly unheard of. As Derek Jackson pointed out last week in the Boston Globe, greyhound tracks routinely race dogs to exhaustion and injury, then kill the losers, or simply eliminate less-strong pups: "184,604 greyhound puppies judged to be inferior for racing" were killed, legally, in the past 20 years.

Hunters shoot animals for sport. They do so lawfully, while the manner in which Vick harmed his dogs was unlawful. But from the perspective of the animal, there seems little difference between a hunter with a state game license zipped in his vest pocket shooting a deer as part of something the hunter views as really fun sport, and Vick shooting a dog as part of something Vick views as really fun sport. In both cases, animals suffer for human entertainment. The animal-ethics distinction between Vick's actions and lawful game hunting are murky at best. A first-time offender should go to prison over a murky distinction?

Much more troubling is that the overwhelming majority of Americans who eat meat and poultry -- I'm enthusiastically among them -- are complicit in the systematic cruel treatment of huge numbers of animals. Snickering about this, or saying you're tired of hearing about it, doesn't make it go away. Most animals used for meat experience miserable lives under cruel conditions, including confinement for extended periods in pits of excrement. (Michael Pollan, who enthusiastically consumes meat and fowl, describes the mistreatment in his important new book The Omnivore's Dilemma.) Meat animals don't magically stop living when it's time to become a product; they suffer as they die. One of Vick's dogs was shot, another electrocuted. Gunshots and electrocution are federally approved methods of livestock slaughter, sanctioned by the Department of Agriculture for the killing of cows and pigs. Regulations under the Humane Slaughter Act of 1958 give federal sanction to shooting cows or pigs, or running electrical current through their bodies. Shooting and electrocution are viewed by federal law as humane ways to kill animals that will be consumed. Federal rules also allow slaughterhouses to hit cows in the head with a fast-moving piston that stuns them into semiconsciousness before they are sliced up. Being hit in the head with a powerful piston -- does that sound a bit painful, a bit cruel? It's done to tens of thousands of steers per year, lawfully.

Don't say "eew, gross" about how meat animals are butchered, then return to denouncing Vick. If you're eating a cheeseburger or BLT or steak or pot roast today, there's a good chance you are dining on an animal that was shot or electrocuted. You are complicit. You freely bought the meat, you did not demand Congress strengthen the Humane Slaughter Act. Livestock can be calmed and drugged before being slain. A few slaughterhouses do this, but most don't because it raises costs, and you, the consumer, demand the lowest possible price for your meal. Now about your turkey sub or coq au vin. Federal slaughter regulations apply mainly to large animals, leaving considerable freedom in the killing of fowl. Many poultry slaughterhouses kill chickens by slashing their throats rather than snapping their necks. Snapping the neck kills the bird quickly, ending suffering, but then the heart dies quickly, too. Slashing the throat causes the bird to live in agony for several minutes, heart still beating and pumping blood out of the slash -- and consumers prefer bloodless chicken meat.

Further, the Humane Slaughter Act exempts kosher and halal slaughter. In both traditions, the cow or lamb must be conscious when killed by having its carotid artery, or esophagus and trachea, slashed. The animal bleeds to death, convulsing in agony, as its heart pumps blood, which is viewed as unclean, out of the slashed openings. The delicious pastrami we consumed at a kosher deli, or the wonderfully good beef we could buy at a halal butcher, comes from an animal that suffered as it died.

Yes, Vick broke the law; yes, he arrogantly lied and refused to apologize when first caught; and yes, his actions before and after the dog killings indicate he is one stupid, stupid man. But Vick's lawbreaking was relatively minor compared to animal mistreatment that happens continuously, within the law, at nearly all levels of the meat production industry, and with which all but vegetarians are complicit. There is some kind of mass neurosis at work in the rush to denounce Vick, wag fingers and say he deserved even worse. Society wants to scapegoat Vick to avoid contemplating its own routine, systematic killing of animals. We couldn't all become vegetarians tomorrow: that is not practical. But American society is not even attempting to make the handling of meat animals less brutal, let alone working to transition away from a food-production order in which huge numbers of animals are systematically mistreated, then killed in ways that inflict terror and pain. We won't lift a finger to change the way animals die for us. But we will demand Michael Vick serve prison time to atone for our sins.

Legal note: Vick might be compelled to repay the Falcons a huge amount of bonus money, and will lose $25 million or more in endorsement income. I have no sympathy for his loss of endorsement income: Vick was hired to bring Nike and other companies he endorsed good publicity, and instead brought them bad. But think about the income loss in the calculation of overpunishment of Vick. One or two years in federal prison, and perhaps state prison time if state charges are filed as well; plus $25 million in lost endorsement income and, oh, $50 million in lost or returned NFL income. That's overkill! Often the indirect financial consequences of legal proceedings are worse than the official ones, in the same way that a speeding ticket might cost you $75 but add $1,000 to your annual insurance bill.

In effect, the federal indictment of Vick is resulting in him being fined around $75 million, which is far too much retribution. The legal hang-up is that since 1984, federal courts have been forbidden to consider monetary loss in private life as counting toward punishment. But a year of banishment from the NFL, a guilty plea with suspended sentence and probation (meaning the sentence is imposed if probation is violated), seems plenty of punishment for a first offense by someone who has not harmed another human being. Prison time and a $75 million fine? What Vick did was indecent, but now excessive punishment is being imposed, and two wrongs do not equal one right. Justice, after all, must be tempered with mercy. That's what you would think if you stood in the dock accused.

Hypocrisy note: Look who's advertising on a Web page extolling the cruel crossbow killing of animals for sport -- the NFL. Oh, that Michael Vick, he's evil, he's bad. But buy NFL Shop items to wear when you shoot deer with arrows so they slowly bleed to death!

[burn_baby_burn]

What other humane way would there be for killing steers other than stunning them? As anyone who has ever been knocked out knows. Getting knocked out doesn't hurt. Its waking up after that hurts.

[FurnaceFace]

In effect, the federal indictment of Vick is resulting in him being fined around $75 million, which is far too much retribution. The legal hang-up is that since 1984, federal courts have been forbidden to consider monetary loss in private life as counting toward punishment.

I don't know what he's really arguing here. Is he saying Vick and Vick alone is being punished too heavily for the crime? Because he loses $75m+ does that mean he's being punished more than someone in the same situation who is losing $60k? To me it's just a different factor with the same result: an individual is getting punished resulting in the lose of opportunity to earn $____ for ___ amount of time.

In fact I'd argue Vick who has made millions* over a number of years is in a better position than a guy in his same legal situation making $30k a year.

*I'm assuming he has managed his money correctly and hasn't just lost it all. I'm assuming in a couple of years when he's out of jail he'll still have millions invested.