Watching NFL preseason football last night, I heard the interview with Commissioner Roger Goodell (video available here). The interesting thing was a point made by one of the announcers on ESPN: that the NFL is more concerned about Michael Vick’s gambling on dogfights than they are about the dogfights themselves. This story seems to back up that claim.
Under NFL policy, a player can be banned for life for gambling or associating with gambling and Vick might face that penalty.
I haven’t heard that particular point made before and due to the despicable nature of dogfighting, it is one that I certainly overlooked. I understand much better now why Vick is concerned about what the Commissioner has to say.
I guess we’ll all find out soon enough. As of this writing, Vick has not accepted a plea deal, even though the 9am deadline has passed. But as expected, his two remaining co-defendents entered their pleas this morning.
Technorati Tags: Michael Vick
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Yes, good observation Vivian. I just happened to be watching a part of that game (yes, desperate for some football) and I over heard the announcers say this too…I tend to disagree 101 percent. I understand the NFL (and all pro sports for that matter) are extremely sensative to gambling, but let’s be clear: the outcry over MV’s actions are due to his inhumane and henious treatment of animals..period.
If MV would have been running an intersate underground gambling operation he would have been deep trouble..but the public by no means would be a furious with MV as they are now…for that matter they probably wouldn’t really care at all…
Still, I found the dialog between announcers (especially Jawarski sp?) to be a unique take on the circumstances of the MV debacle…
If anything the Feds are just using the gambling to jam up MV and put him in the hole for the “real” crime of dogfighting…
I think the NFL commissioner was being straightforward in putting the gambling issue first. From a sports league’s point of view, there is no greater threat to the sport itself than player gambling, which can put the player in the position of deliberately trying to lose games to make money. Everything else pales by comparison. Even dopers are trying to increase their physical ability in order to win.
I don’t doubt, on the other hand, that Goodell is as appalled by the dogfighting as the rest of us. It’s just that, speaking for the league, the gambling has to come first.
This whole business does raise a more general question, though. Most of us, when thinking about our own jobs, tend to think that what we do on our own time is our own business, and the boss should butt out. As long as our bad behavior doesn’t affect the job, it shouldn’t matter. Then again, most of us don’t run dogfighting rings in our spare time. Where should the line be drawn? And should it be different for high-profile, high-income folk like athletes than it is for ordinary people?
Goodell is a fraud, just as Taglaibue was and George Mitchell is.
One Billion Dollars is bet illegally each week on steroid-based NFL games. It is a monster business and the NFL & Disney/ESPN’s only concern is how to grap a piece of that action betting line.
Fantasy sports pose yet another threat to their monopoly.
They all dope, lie, cheat, and defraud consumers.
NFL = WWE but with more drugs and spousal abuse.
I’d just add that the NFL has existing precedent for how it handles players with “gambling” problems. The perception issue of treating any athlete in a procedurally balanced manner is easier when the transgression has been dealt with in the past. Anyone remember Art Schlichter?
Patently false virginia. That is more NFL steroid spin.
Michael Irvin? Meth & stripper abuse
Shawn Merriman? Deca Durabolin
Pacman Jones?
Ray Lewis? Murder
Rae Caruth? Murder
OJ Simpson? Murder
Dana Stubblefield? steroids and wife beating
Bill Romanowski? steroids and assault
Rod Martin? wife beating
Michael Strahan? spousal abuse, restraining order
Lawrence Taylor? spusal abuses
Ricky Williams? doping
Chris Cooper? Balco steroids
Carolina Pather doping (2003/2004)
James Schortt, MD (NFL approved steroid doc)
Todd Steusse, steroids
Todd Saurbran, steroids
Jeff Mitchell, steroids
Theresa Denny, MD (Hawaii mail order steroids)
Jim Haslet, steroid confession
Terry Bradshaw, steroid confession
Steve Coursen, steroid confession
Disney/ESPN decides the NFL policy on all media matters.
Schilling? Perhaps you’d be happier living in Stockholm, where this week a police officer forced a man into a police station for a drug test because his arm muscles were too big. She decided on her own that he could only have gotten that way through steroids, so she basically arrested him. His drug test was clean.
Glad you enjoy steroids, wife beating and drunk driving.
Put your money where your big mouth is—-Will you move next door to Bobby Welch, Tony LaRussa, Esteban Loaisa, Michael Strahan, Lawrence Taylor, Ron Artest, Jason Kidd, Kobe Bryant, Charles Barkley, Reggie Bush or Michael Irvin??
Go ahead—be another ignorant ESPN-funded sports fan.
On my blog is a story titled, ” Vick, you make me sick”. Several people have commented. I welcome your opinion.
The Sultan on Sports
http://www.tsos20.wordpress.com
tsso20 – you have 2 choices: contribute to the conversation or not. Note that neither of those choices is plugging your own blog, which you’ve now done twice. Next time you do it, I’m deleting the comment.
So let me get this straight, Schilling. Tony LaRussa uses steroids to make his managing muscles bigger?
Perhaps if you had some real evidence that professional athletes as a group are more violent than the general population, you’d have an argument. Spouting names at random is not such evidence.
As for living next door to those guys, I’d have no problem with them. I’m sure I have equivalent problem cases in the neighborhood I’m in now. In fact, I’m sure I’d be hard-pressed to move anywhere where I wasn’t near someone like that.
It is an interesting take on the situation and I’d like to see how it plays out. Shill – you are going a little out there to extrapolate this occurance to the NFL as a whole. I will continue to enjoy watching football and calling out the individuals as I see them doing something wrong. But a few bad apples doesn’t spoil the whole barrel, IMHO.
This whole thing makes me sick. What was done to the dogs is sick. And what the prosecutors are doing is sick. They are threatening Vick with the prospect of many years in prison, based on the witness of two scumbags who agreed to sell him out to get their own sentences reduced. Then, because they don’t actually want to put those two scumbags on the stand, they make Vick an offer of one year in jail for a guilty plea.
What the hell has happened to our justice system? If you have the evidence, try him. If you don’t, let him go.