TheLastManInAmerica

Dear Michael Vick,

            Oh how the mighty have fallen! What was once considered a bright and promising career, based rather on your talents for running the football rather than throwing it like your position entails, has gone from dreams of a Super Bowl to the reality of the toilet bowl. From making highlights with your fleet feet to making headlines with your lame brain, you have seen the proverbial highs and lows and in the process squandered a life of luxury and forfeited a fortune in not only base salary but countless endorsements. And now we hear that, from behind bars, you’re declaring bankruptcy. You’re battered and broken and rightfully deserve more. Hell, I thought your sentence should’ve been taking part in fighting pit-bulls yourself where, upon your defeat, you’d have your head held under water, testicles hooked up to a car battery and then strung up by the neck until you blackout. Maybe then you could partially understand the heinousness of your crimes. But here we see you, with no future, lamenting the past and wondering what it would’ve been like had you used that thing between your giant diamond earrings.

            The world knew you as Michael Vick, Quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons, whose on field antics shocked the world every Sunday as you glided effortlessly across the field, crossing up defenders and making hulking linebackers and swift D Backs look like they came straight out of Pop Warner. Though not much of an actual quarterback, you were such a threat that you had defensives rattled before they took the field; coaches reorganized their schemes just to try and keep you contained, almost always to no avail. And it was this prolific talent of yours that made you the first overall pick in the 2001 NFL Draft while receiving the most lucrative contract any rookie had ever seen. Then came all the endorsements; with enough money to last the rest of your life had you just played football, you stumbled, head first, into a sea of money from some of the largest companies in the world. Nike, Coca-Cola, Kraft, and many more all came beating down your door, imploring you to sell their products. If ever anyone could say they had the world in the palm of their hands, it was you - stud quarterback in the NFL, spokesman for multi-billion dollar corporations and idol of countless football fans, young and old.

           But that was the Mike Vick the world knew from a distance. Those closest to you knew you by other names. Ookie, Ron Mexico these aliases confirmed your street cred (trash) status. Rarely did those of us who saw you on the highlights of ESPN ever see those two show their face. Perhaps the only time I can recall is when you gave some of your home team fans the finger. That is until the spring of ’07 when your perfect world came crashing  down and the costume of Michael Vick was peeled back to reveal Ookie, who had been there all along. We got to see the “man” who resided under that facemask and armor. And we were shocked to learn that it was an animal torturing sadist who had been entertaining us for these past few years. Having learned that you were bankrolling an operation that saw the maiming, torturing and murder of innocent dogs, we have come to despise you. You and your ignorant supporters call this a sport, comparing it to hunting but you fail to recognize that you take no part in the competition, other killing off those who don’t perform well. And even though hunting does entail the killing of animals, it is not done in a way that sees them suffer. These dogs suffer, their whole lives as their “trained” for battle, they suffer during the fight and if they lose, they suffer more as their tortured until they are put out of their misery. In my opinion, anything that happens to you from here on out is gravy; I’m not a spiritual man but if there is Karma, this is it!

            But what will happen to you now? You’ve declared bankruptcy and there’s virtually no shot of you ever earning the kind of money you did f you’re lucky enough to get back into football, let alone ever signing any type of endorsement again. Yet there are scores of people out there who think you’ve done nothing wrong, that it’s a cultural thing to do what you’ve done. And these morons will undoubtedly pack the seats again to watch you play. But outside the stadium protesters will be awaiting your arrival, damning you and pressuring the NFL to ban you from the game. In a league full of criminals and reprobates, the head offices would likely want to make an example of someone and who better than one who’s already a social pariah? You’ve definitely hit rock bottom, kid, but don’t despair; it can only go up from here, right?

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