Michael Vick used to be just a superstar NFL quarterback. He was born poor and raised in a housing project in Newport News, Virginia. But for all of his adult life, he has been rich, famous, and riding into the brightest of futures.
With his guilty plea yesterday to charges related to dogfighting, that future has dimmed considerably. But the truth about most sports superstars is that despite their riches and their fame, they remain largely inconsequential to life and society beyond the athletic arena.
For Vick, all of that has changed. He has become a symbol, a cautionary tale, an American tragedy. An admitted felon.
He faces up to five years in prison for gambling and animal cruelty after running a dogfighting ring that he bankrolled with part of his NFL salary and income from lucrative product-endorsement deals. Vick will be sentenced Dec. 10.
From the day he was chosen first in the NFL draft by the Atlanta Falcons in 2001, Vick has had something to prove to critics, who celebrated his athleticism and elusiveness on the field, but lamented what they saw as his deficient passing ability and poor fundamental skills. They questioned whether he could ever be a great quarterback. It was a question he never fully answered.
The criticism was tinged with old racial biases about whether black quarterbacks are intellectually gifted enough to be the leaders of their football teams. Luckily, that debate is becoming increasingly infrequent, but Vick's current troubles carry a racial subtext as well. The NAACP has come to his defense, for example.
And the question of how a rich, talented 27-year-old who seemed to have escaped the economic trap of the urban ghetto could end up in jail for fighting dogs is underlined by the question of whether people like Michael Vick can ever escape the psychological trap of the ghetto. The obvious answer is yes, but the question is unavoidable in circumstances like this.
Vick's grandfather, in an interview with The Washington Post, essentially blamed Vick's troubles on his grandson's inability to put his upbringing and his childhood friends behind him. And clearly, Vick's decision to plead guilty has something to do with the fact that his co-defendants had all previously pleaded guilty and were cooperating with the government.
The consequences of his plea will be painful for a long time. In addition to the possible jail time, Vick's money is drying up fast. The NFL has suspended him indefinitely, and the endorsement deals are disappearing like the crucial final seconds ticking off an overtime clock. "You're taking your chances here," the U.S. district judge told Vick as he accepted the plea.
But now, with all the chips down and the media attention more intense than ever, Vick has a chance to do something more significant than was ever possible on the football field. He has a chance to show us how to do something we can all relate to and use instruction on: how to redeem oneself in the face of awful truths. He can show us how to separate who you are from what you've done and begin to earn the right to forgiveness.
So Vick may indeed have been sacked by his friends and his past, but for him and his future, that is now entirely irrelevant. The time for the vigorous defense -- and defensiveness -- is over. Redemption requires something else, and it begins with repentance. The pathway essentially goes from "I did it" to "I know it was wrong" to "I was wrong" to "And now I will grow into something else -- something better."
Vick seems to get that, and has begun to face his troubles. "I take full responsibility for my actions," he said.
It will not be a quick process. There is no clock on this one, and, as they say in football parlance, he won't be able to "get it all back in one play."
Vick needs to show us that he is not the small, sadistic, mindlessly cruel human being who was portrayed so vividly when the federal indictment was brought against him. Now he has something not just to prove, but to teach. Not many of us can rush for 10 yards in the NFL in a season or throw a single touchdown, but all of us know how to screw up. Maybe not in as publicly or as flagrantly criminal a manner as Vick, but spectacularly enough to similarly threaten our futures.
So now Vick can show us what he's made of beyond the pointless sports metaphors. Is he a criminal, or did he just make a criminal mistake? Can he show that what he did to those dogs was just a thoughtless aberration from which he can recover? Or is he just a small man with big potential, who could not in the end escape his failings?
These are more fundamental questions to which he should provide answers. Then maybe his time in the spotlight might amount to something after all.
