Michael Vick’s Media Treatment: Unreasonable and No Doubt

Michael Vick once looked like the future of the quarterback position in the National Football League. Today he is on borrowed time, his career and reputation in ruins. The 19-page federal indictment brought against him for various dog fighting charges, among them one for conspiracy that allows the government to charge Vick for various offenses even if he were neither at the site nor had direct knowledge of the events, is devastating. This isn’t a bumbling Cook County prosecutor’s office walking around afraid to press a case against R. Kelly for five plus years, nor some publicity-seeking type up for re-election trying to ride headlines back into office.

Instead, this is the federal government waging a case against a high-profile athlete, easily the most visible Atlanta Falcon,  and someone who just a few short years ago was widely seen as “the face of the NFL.” Now a state prosecutor who only last week said he didn’t think there was enough evidence to proceed is talking about bringing state indictments against Vick on top of the federal charges. You can also bet the government has already cut deals with witnesses willing to testify against Vick to lessen their own time behind bars.

People who rail about innocent until proven guilty like Stephen A. Smith on ESPN radio Thursday are both right and irrelevant. Vick’s guilt or innocence must be proven in court in order to convict him of a crime. No such indicator is necessary for corporate America to declare him persona non grata, or the Atlanta Falcons to send him on his way. The good folks at PETA also aren’t interested in waiting for a trial. They’ve already started protest marches at Falcon headquarters demanding Vick be cut from the team or at least suspended.

Quite frankly the deck is stacked against Michael Vick. He put himself in this position by, at minimum, dealing with questionable types and not monitoring what was happening on property he owned. Whether he engaged directly in the training of dogs for fighting, or aided in the malicious and brutal destruction of animals who lost, has to be proven and at this point remains just an allegation. But listening to the hordes at EPSN and on sports-talk radio, many people aren’t willing to wait for a trial. They want him disciplined, and right away.

This is what happens when you have an NFL  commissioner who says publicly he doesn’t care about due process, and will  take action solely on the basis of charges and/or past problems. The overwhelming attitude of sports fans is it’s long been time for a crackdown on excessive athletic misconduct. Such concerns as the presumption of innocence have given way to a lock-em-up and throw-away-the-key mentality that sees people immediately assume an indictment means guilt. Michael Vick at this point is guilty only of extreme bad judgment in terms of association and fiscal choices, but that won’t save him in an era where supposedly objective media types decide guilt or innocence in 10-minute monologues between commercials.

Ron Wynn