What the League Should Do with Michael Vick

Sacked

Michael is scheduled to plead guilty Monday. He's going to jail and he will want to get it on and over with as quick as possible then get back to making millions playing quarterback. That's really all he knows how to do.

So you are Roger Goodell. What do you do with Michael?

It's in his power to do anything from nothing to a lifetime ban.

If you listen to PETA and the animal rights activists, they want him banned for life. Anecdotally most people I talked to think he should be in jail for a long long time. One friend of mine said he should have his balls cut off and be forced to work at McDonald's. I searched but could not find a legal precedent for this type of punishment.

It almost goes without saying that 'most people' think, of course he should not get to play in the NFL again, like it's some sort of privilege that can be taken away like a teenager's car. That by degrees we can say, well shit if you had been involved in a murder or shipped tons of weed or smacked your bitch up, shit man thas cool, you get another chance but not Michael. Not after what he done.

Wednesday the president of the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP came out and said Michael should not face a lifetime ban from the league, that society should allow for his rehabilitation and that he should be allowed to resume his football career.

Yesterday I heard all about that on the radio. Why does the NAACP back him? Do they feel the need to support him because he's black? The players union is mostly black and they have shunned him.

Here is the larger question: how should the punishment law imposes on him relate to his work?

If I was convicted of this crime, I would lose my job, if for no other reason than I can't work from jail. Even if I was indicted the company would likely sever ties with me.

But here's the thing. There is more than one company that employs people with my skills and if I have been banished from one does not mean I have been banished from them all. I chose to get into a field with portability and I could likely land a job after getting out of prison.

Should the fact that there are limited opportunities for professional quarterbacks factor into Roger's decision?

In other words should it be Roger's problem or Michael's problem that if he is banned for life he will have a hard time 'making a living?'

Ok let's name them. CFL, Arena League, Arena League 2, National Indoor Football League.

Roger's solution is simple and elegantly so.

Do not ban him for life. Suspend him for the 2007 season without pay. Period.

Let him be a problem for the owners.

Is there an owner that would take a chance on Michael's abilities? Probably.

Is there an owner that is willing to risk fan outrage for hiring a convicted dog executioner? Ehh, possibly.

A stern speech with implied advice not to hire Michael when he is out, that's at the next owners meeting. In either case, it becomes an ownership problem, not a league problem.

Because the NFL is an employer just like any other. Its rules are only binding to the extent of the law.

Michael has the money to mount a legal challenge were the commissioner to ban him forever. That legal challenge would last a year, two years or more and ultimately would pit the forces of a forgiving society against those of concentrated wealth. If it is up to Michael's lawyers in this scenario they will be sure that we all think about what happened if we made a mistake, paid our debt and the world still didn't want us?

The league simply wants this problem to go away so Roger should suspend Michael for a year and let the market take care of the league's Michael Vick problem.



Michael Vick from here.