Fresh Loaf

Arthur & Mack: He’s more than paid his debt. It’s time for him to play ball. We’ve all messed around on some occasion. The punishment was a little excessive. They’ve done damage to his entire career. I would have bought season tickets if the Falcons got him back. For him personally, he should do something for dogs just to show people he’s not the tyrant they portrayed in the newspapers. For me, it’s not really necessary. People are going to love their dogs regardless. He really didn’t mess up anything.

Vor & Ceesah: He hasn’t paid enough. Eighteen months is a slap on the wrist. The NFL should set an example that this stuff will not be tolerated. It’s not like the NFL really took action against him. The government and the state took him to jail. The NFL should ban him for another two years. Vick sets such a bad example for the breed. We get a lot of crap — I can’t even take Ceesah to most day cares in the city. Vick has still got his mansion and his money. Where it really hurts him is not being able to play.

Dante & Diesel: Yes. I agree with the ruling that he should never own another dog, but he’s paid the price more than anybody for dog fighting. There’s a lot of people that fight dogs. They put a huge name on it to take responsibility. But the punishment was appropriate. I don’t know whether he’s remorseful, but he’s obligated to do something for these dog organizations. I’d give him a chance [with another team], and whoever wants to support him … that’s up to them. But I’m an Atlanta Falcons supporter, and I’d rather not support him. Dogs are close to my heart.

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Michael Vick, the former Atlanta Falcons star quarterback, was released May 20 from a federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan. He will be completing the final two months of his 23-month dog-fighting sentence in his Hampton, Va., home.

“Without one single doubt, Vick’s skill level will return. Will a team be interested in bringing him in to play? That’s difficult to determine right now on two levels: public relations and football. … He must be willing to do whatever it takes to help a team win as he rebuilds his life and career.”

— NFL exec Mike Lombardi, from his May 18 entry on National Football Post

“He’s erratic throwing the ball because of his mechanics. … It’s not his feet or his arms, it’s his release. … But now that they’ve got all these spread offenses, the Wildcat they’re running, a guy like Michael could be tremendous.”

— Roger Theder, San Diego Chargers assistant coach, quoted May 17 in the AJC

“I think Michael is just like so many other guys that I have seen. … It’s a young man that made a mistake and is looking for a chance to recover and move forward.”

— Tony Dungy, former Super Bowl-winning Indianapolis Colts head coach, to the AJC after meeting with Vick in Leavenworth

“We’re not interested in being part of a cynical ploy that’s nothing but public relations. … We believe that the behavior he has shown might very well be an indication of psychopathy and we’re asking for a brain scan and a thorough psychiatric evaluation.”

— PETA spokesperson Daphna Nachminovitch, on PETA’s rejection of Vick’s offer to participate in an advertisement for the group

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Speaking Wednesday at a workshop for past offenders seeking jobs, the former Indianapolis Colts coach told the AP that disgraced former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick wants a second chance:

From WUSA9.com in Virginia:

Dungy met with Vick last week at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan., where Vick is serving a 23-month sentence for bankrolling a dogfighting conspiracy.

[...]

Dungy didn’t discuss details of his visit with Vick, but told The Associated Press that the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback made a mistake.

As anyone that’s seen the “report dog fighting” billboard on I-85 South would attest to, Vick’s arrest and incarceration helped push animal cruelty front and center. Some would question whether the punishment fit the crime. But I think a more important question is, after Vick pays his debt to society, whose responsibility is it to give him a second chance? The NFL? The Falcons? The Fans? Anyone?

(via former CL-er @LadyMissHeather)

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Michael Vick is back in the news.

The fake news.

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>> Penthouse magazine may be closing. Stock up on your nudie shots now.

>> Viruses target Facebook to steal important information, like 25 things the hackers didn’t know about you.

>> Proof that octo-mom probably shouldn’t have had even one baby. She’s raising hellions…

>> HUH?: So young Iraqis are wealthy enough to buy Hummers like they’re Corollas…

>> “A black day for Pakistan cricket”: Seriously? Someone considers a cricket team a valid terrorist target?

>> Rush Limbaugh again calls for the failure of the stimulus package and other recent attempts to stave off economic apocalypse, because he “wants the country to survive.” Yeah, that makes sense.

>> Michael Vick’s old Sugarloaf mansion is up for auction. Check out photos of what you lose when you torment doggies.

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The Associated Press reports:

Richmond, Va. — A government official says imprisoned NFLstar Michael Vick has been approved for release to home confinement.

Vick’s lawyers have said they expected him to be moved any day into a halfway house in Newport News, Va. But the official says there’s no bed space, so Vick could be released to his Hampton, Va. home as soon as May 21st.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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TMZ has the goods: an essay test called “Developing Empathy” that the former Falcons QB took for PETA shortly after pleading guilty to the 2007 federal dog fighting charges that landed him in Leavenworth. He didn’t do very well, scoring just 73.5 out of 100.

Why would Vick have taken such a test? Because he wanted to be allowed to cut a public-service TV ad for the organization, presumably to help rehabilitate his image while he was in stir. Apparently, the nice folks at PETA agreed, on the condition that the test results show he had sufficient empathy to convince them he wasn’t simply doing the ad as a crass PR move. As you must have guessed, they were unconvinced.

Still, as TMZ points out, Vick’s answers did provide the rest of us with some amusement:

• Vick explains “The Golden Rule” as doing “on to others as u want them to do on to u …. (as long the feeling is mutual).”
• “People who abuse animals dont [sic] have a heart and find it amusing to see animals suffer.”
• “Chickens have an uncanny ability to think and are very agile. They are very athletic to me.”
• “My aunt Tina own a Rotti name Tico. Once my aunt and her boyfriend Wayne was having an intense fight … [Tico] jump through a glass window & pinned my aunt boyfriend Wayne to the ground just growling … Now that’s loyalty.”

You can download a PDF of Vick’s hand-written answers here.

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From The Virginian-Pilot:

Michael Vick plans to plead guilty to state dogfighting charges in an effort to get an early release from federal prison and enter a halfway house, according to papers filed in Surry County Circuit Court.

Read the rest.

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VICE UNIT: Obama is Biden his time and keeping rumors at Bayh when it comes to his VP candidate, but the two senators believed to be atop his short list are given prime-time convention speaking slots, raising speculation it’s one of them.

COLOR-CODED: Reuters offers an analysis of how race has bubbled below the surface throughout this campaign, and how it manifests itself in coded language.

SAVANNAH RIVER ECOLOGY LAB: Less than two years after it looked like the ground-breaking, 54-year-old lab would be shut down for lack of funding, its own fundraising ventures have exceeded expectations and drawn in $2 million.

BIGFOOT IN THE DOOR: The Clayton County cop and former corrections officer who claim to have a frozen Bigfoot body will hold a press conference this afternoon in Palo Alto, Calif., to announce their findings. So far, even Bigfoot experts aren’t buying it.

WETLANDS: Can survive a drought, despite appearing dried-up.

BRAVES: Swept by the Cubs in six games for the first time since 1876, despite Mark Kotsay hitting for the cycle.

VICK: Bankruptcy judge appoints a trustee to oversee the troubled QB’s finances, after his initial trustee was charged with securities fraud.

ETERNAL SUNSHINE: Falcons third-string QB Joey Harrington, whose Detroit teammates used to call him “Joey Sunshine” for his sunny disposition amid miserable circumstances, still hasn’t given up hope.

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In 2004, Michael Vick signed a 10-year, $130 million contract with the Atlanta Falcons that made him the highest paid quarterback in the NFL.

Yesterday, the AJC reports, Vick filed for bankruptcy protection in Virginia with an estimated debt of anywhere from $10 to $50 million. Vick is serving a 23-month sentence in Leavenworth; his scheduled release date is June 2009.

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WILDFIRES: Cumberland Island fire is 90 percent contained; progress made against California wildfires could be undermined by hot, dry weather this week.

VICK: Files for bankruptcy.

PLANE DEALING: The malfunctioning jet that Obama had to make an unscheduled landing in yesterday wasn’t his usual plane; it was previously used by Hillary Clinton. He still made it to Atlanta, though, appearing at two fundraisers last night and at McEachern High in Powder Springs today.

THE BURLY GATES: Atlantic Station’s Millennium Gate is revealed, and the Christian Science Monitor reports that the 82-foot-tall, $20 million monument is “a serious statement that risks, against the topsy-turvy backdrop of modern mass development, to become a legacy to 21st-century kitsch.”

HOUSE DIVIDED: An Atlanta family is trying to sell its mansion so it can give half its worth, about $800,000, to fight hunger in Ghana.

SEX OFFENDER LAW: Homeless Gainesville sex offender challenges a Georgia law that doesn’t allow him to register with the state’s sex-offender list without including an address.

IRONY: Paulding County restaurateur/racist thinks free speech should allow him to call Obama a monkey on his restaurant’s marquee but shouldn’t allow others to call him a racist:

“I believe in your right and my right or anybody else’s right to say what they want without being criticized as being a racist,” said Lanzo.

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Today’s Washington Post reports on the fate of the dogs found at ex-Falcon Michael Vick’s notorious Bad Newz Kennels compound in Virgina. Apparently, animals rescued from similar – if less publicized – circumstances are typically considered poor candidates for rehabilitation and are typically put down.

But because of the intense public outcry over the treatment of the dogs in Vick’s operation, the judge provided for each of the 49 rescued pit bulls to be evaluated and considered for placement in shelters or even private homes.

Of the 47 surviving dogs, 25 were placed directly in foster homes, and a handful have been or are being adopted. Twenty-two were deemed potentially aggressive toward other dogs and were sent to an animal sanctuary in Utah. Some, after intensive retraining, are expected to move on to foster care and eventual adoption.

As editor Scott Freeman recently reported, one of those dogs, Lucky 7, had been fostered by Smyrna tattoo artist Brandon Bond, but was hit by a car and killed last week near its new home in Florida.

The Post piece concludes:

As with any celebrity case, the legacy of the Vick bust has been far-reaching. Dogfighting raids across the country have tripled in the past year. Hundreds of law enforcement officers have been trained to detect the signs of underground rings. And, in some cases, officials have asked pit bull behavior experts to evaluate seized fighting dogs rather than automatically euthanizing them. But most dogfighters don’t have the kind of money that Vick did. So even those deemed worthy of a second chance don’t always get one.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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“Lucky 7,” a female pit bull rescued from fallen Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick was killed last Friday in Florida when she was struck by a car.

The dog was one of three that were fostered by Smyrna tattoo artist Brandon Bond and his organization, Atlanta Pitbull Rescue. The dog was eventually adopted by a man in Florida.

According to Bond, Lucky 7 was used as a “breeding dog” on the Vick property where rape stands were discovered, which are benches used in forced breeding and torture. Her face and legs were covered with scars from puncture wounds and tears from teeth where she had obviously been attacked by the males during breeding and fighting. She was pregnant when she was confiscated, and lost the puppies when she was spayed by veterinarians with the U.S. Justice department.

“She was so happy, full of life, curious, and not afraid of anything,” Bond said. “She never showed one single sign of aggression, or unhappiness, it was like she had forgotten the horrors of her past entirely. Today is a sad day for animal lovers everywhere.”

Lucky 7 escaped from her yard on Friday, and was struck by a car. The motorist stopped and drove the dog to an animal hospital, but it died en route.

“She finally got to be a dog, for the first time in her life,” Bond said. “She was happy, her new dad gave her the best six months of her life, and I know she was grateful for it, I could see it in her smile. She even slept in his bed with him. It’s a terrible loss.”

(Photo courtesy Atlanta Pitbull Rescue)

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OBAMA: Tries to solidify his standing as presumptive nominee by visiting the House of Representatives and taking a “victory lap,” as the NYT calls it.

BONEHEADED: Without even being asked, teen being questioned about an unrelated crime tells police officers that he and a friend dug up a 1921 grave, stole the skull and made a bong out of it.

ATLANTA NO. 1 FOR SINGLES: Maybe now there actually will be thousands of local singles waiting for our call.

BAN KI-MOON: U.N. secretary-general, while visiting Atlanta, calls for Myanmar to allow in foreign aid workers.

CLAYTON COUNTY: Has the best-tasting water in metro Atlanta.

BURNING TO THE VICK: Judge orders Michael Vick to repay more than $2.4 million to a Canadian bank for defaulting on a loan.

UNIONS FIGHT LAYOFFS: Fired city workers and union leaders say Mayor Franklin didn’t exhaust enough short-term options before laying off 441 employees.

YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY, RABIES: Hall County has its 20th reported case of rabies this year. AccessNorthGa has used one of its finest rabies file photos for this story.

EVENT VERIZON: Girl discovers that a Verizon store manager, while doing an “emergency battery charge” on her phone, sent himself a copy of a revealing photo she had taken of herself on her phone. WSB is so outraged on her behalf that it posted a (cropped) copy of the photo on its home page.

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FALCONS: Put a period at the end of Michael Vick’s sentence.

AL FRESCO: Rejuvenated Al Horford and the Hawks try to even the series with the Celtics tonight.

CLAYTON: Has another chaotic school board meeting, this time while trying to vote on a contract for its new corrective superintendent.

A LOAN IN THE DARK: Only one Georgia technical school participates in the federal student loan program, leaving the state with the highest percentage in the country of tech schools students without access to the federal loans.

SWAMPWISE: Late Okefenokee stalwart Oscar the alligator, who was at least in his mid-60s when he died last July, will be memorialized in a dinosaurlike skeleton display at the park.

VICIOUS CYCLE: Kanstantin Sivtsov of Belarus wins the Tour de Georgia.

GA. DEMS: Hoping Obamania and GOP infighting will grease their wheels in November, but also having to robo-call in a search for candidates for certain districts.

GRADY EXPECTATIONS: New York doctor demands severance from Grady after he quit his job in NY and moved to Georgia with his wife, only to have his job offer at Grady withdrawn after they got here.

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NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP: Memphis crumbles, Mario Chalmers hits the shot of his life and Kansas wins in OT.

GRADY EXPECTATIONS: Robert M. Woodruff Foundation gives $200 million cash donation to the ailing hospital to keep it afloat as power is transferred.

THE LONGEST YARD: Michael Vick initiates mail correspondence with Arthur Blank, telling the Falcons owner he’s playing football in prison and washing pots and pans for 12 cents an hour.

FLIPPING A BIRD? Unnamed active Falcons player is subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury in NFL performance-enhancing drug investigation.

SPRING BREAK! Despite having made almost no progress in the quest to meet SACS’s nine accreditation-hinging mandates, Clayton County Schools administration is taking its scheduled five days off for spring break like everyone else in the school system. Meanwhile, the interim superintendent pleads for leniency.

IT TOLLS FOR FEE: I-85 OTP could be getting optional toll lanes to ease traffic congestion, possibly as far north as I-985.

STONY BURKE: Lobbyist with vaguely subdivisionesque name is tapped as Southern Co.’s new “director of federal legislative meddling affairs.”

LAKE LANIER: Will be the site of Canadian Olympic trials next month, presumably for its mud-racing team.

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GOING INTO LABOR: Delta flight attendants to vote on unionization.

ROAD TO HELL: Will be repaved with good intentions every weekend for the next eight months.

HOLDS WATER? Carol Couch stumps for state water plan at Ga. Tech.

DROUGHT: Downgraded from “exceptional” to “extreme,” skipping over “badass.”

DOGFIGHTING: Austell ring broken up.

MICHAEL VICK: State dogfighting trial postponed until June 27.

WIND OUT OF OUR SALES: Legislators are predicting the bill that would allow communities to vote on whether they want to allow Sunday alcohol sales won’t make it to the House floor for a vote.

SINISTER MINISTER: Habersham County reverend busted for allegedly having nine sexually explicit online chats with undercover cop posing as 14-year-old girl. (And I swear I won’t harp on this anymore, but AccessNorthGa.com has yet another insightful news graphic.)

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A federal judge ruled today that former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick is entitled to most of the $20 million in bonus money that he was paid by the team prior to his imprisonment on dogfighting convictions.

A special master had ruled in October that Vick had to return all the money to the Falcons. The NFL player’s union appealed that decision and U.S. District Judge David Doty of Minneapolis ruled that returning the money would violate the league’s collective bargaining agreement. He ruled that the league can only recoup bonus money, and only $3.75 million of the Vick money came from a signing bonus.

While the Falcons try to breathe life into their franchise, Vick remains in federal prison in Leavenworth, Kan. No word on whether he was able to watch the Super Bowl.

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Michael Vick’s pit bulls are getting the celeb-reality treatment. The much-pitied animals will be featured on the upcoming season of the National Geographic Channel’s “Dogtown,” according to a recent story in the Hollywood Reporter.

National Geographic Channel said Monday that its new series “Dogtown” will spend the next few months documenting the attempted rehabilitation of 22 dogs that belonged to jailed Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick and are now residing at Dogtown, the Best Friends animal sanctuary in Utah.

“Dogtown” is in production on new episodes set to premiere in the summer.

The series will focus on four of the toughest cases as the experts at Dogtown try to “resocialize these seriously aggressive pit bulls.”

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You may have noticed our print cover this week: A Jack Russell terrier named Roux is digging her teeth deep into a Michael Vick jersey.

No. 7. Get it? 2007? Well, I thought it was a witty idea.

Roux, who’s owned and trained by my friend Melissa Nunnink, actually was Staff Photographer Joeff Davis’ second model for the cover shoot. The first was Bella, a pit bull whose time was volunteered by former CL staffer Noah Gardenswartz.

Here’s the layout we gussied up for Bella. We liked both shots, but I wanted to show folks Bella to let you decide whether we picked the right photo. And also, well, because she’s kinda cute — doncha think? And, looking into Bella’s noble pose … doesn’t it make you even more sick that Michael Vick would pick on pit bulls?

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The San Diego Union-Tribune reports today that the Bill Parcells-spurned Atlanta Falcons have made overtures to former San Diego Chargers head coach Marty Schottenheimer and to assistant Chargers GM Buddy Nix.

Known as a no-nonsense coach, Schottenheimer was the NFL Coach of the Year in 2004 and in the fickle manner of pro football, fired two years later after conflicts with the Chargers general manager. He also infamously played quarterback Drew Brees in a meaningless final game in 2005 that resulted in a shoulder injury that almost devastated Brees’ career.

Nix, according to the paper, is being eyed as the new general manager for the Falcons. Nix joined the team in 2001 just in time for the Chargers to pull off the best trade in San Diego history: the first overall draft pick in the 2001 draft to the Falcons. The Birds picked Michael Vick; the Chargers used the Falcons’ draft pick to select a running back you might have heard of: LaDainian Tomlinson.

For the Falcons, the wheels keep spinning. Bill Cowher turned them down. Bill Parcells used them to leverage a deal in Miami. Schottenheimer is known for turning losing teams into winners. He also tends to stick around a while, something a couple of previous Falcons head coaches weren’t, uh, known for.

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The NFL has fined five Falcon players who showed support for fallen former quarterback Michael Vick last Sunday. Of course, they didn’t show enough support to actually win one for the Vicker. They only adjusted their uniform to “honor” Vick. Wide receiver Roddy White, for example, wore a “Free Mike Vick” T-shirt under his uniform. And DeAngelo Hall ran out onto the field holding a Vick poster.

The Nation of Islam Sportsblog has its own take on the situation:

… what got back to Vick (from the NFL) is clear:

You are dead to us.

‘Free Mike Vick’?

No.

Mike Vick has been in chains from the first day he put on shoulder pads.

And this well intentioned, though poorly thought out maneuvre by the Falcon players only further tightened the shackles around their own wrists.

If I’m going to be chained, a $130 million contract would most definitely help alleviate my mental anguish. Hell, I might volunteer to be chained for half that much money. But only if they let me wear shoulder pads.

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The reaction to Bobby Petrino’s quick decision to quit his job as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons in order to go hog-calling in Arkansas has drawn heated reaction on the Net. Some of the adjectives invoked include “weasel,” “jackass” and “rancid.”

Some samples:

“I was looking for a commitment from Bobby and having some exposure on behalf of the franchise Monday night,” Blank said of the face-to-face meeting. “[I] wanted to know, ‘Are you with us or not?’ I did press the question with him … Bobby extended his hand and said, ‘You can tell them you have a head coach.’”

— Arthur Blank, AJC.com

* * *

And so Blank, it seems, wasn’t the only one who misread Petrino. Unfortunately for Blank, whose good intentions and desire to win keep blowing up in his face, he’s the only one who hired him. Turns out that maybe Blank is better at finding people to manage the drywall department or to order hammers than he is at finding someone to manage his football team and bark orders at his players.

— Len Pasquarelli, ESPN.com

* * *

He ran the team with an aloof style, feeling no reason to share his decisions on personnel with the affected players. He could walk through the locker room without speaking to anyone and was openly criticized by two of the team’s stars, Pro Bowlers [DeAngelo] Hall and Alge Crumpler.

Quarterback Joey Harrington was noticeably perturbed a few weeks ago when, after leading the Falcons to two straight wins, he heard from the media that Petrino still considered injury prone Byron Leftwich the starter.

— Peter King, Sports Illustrated online

* * *

“This is the worst year I’ve ever had in football,” one veteran player said. “It’s just miserable. I think (Petrino) had a clue about offense, but he couldn’t communicate with anybody. You’d talk to him and it was almost as if he would stare at you and not get what you were talking about. He’s a strange guy.”

That player went even further, claiming that Atlanta owner Arthur Blank had told some of the veteran leaders on the team, including Crumpler and running back Warrick Dunn, that the team had made a mistake in hiring Petrino.

— Jason Cole, Yahoo Sports

(more…)

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The Atlanta Falcons lined up for the team’s very first kickoff in the National Football League in 1966. And as the kicker ran up to kick, the wind knocked the football off the tee.

It turned out to be a symbolic start to what has become one of the NFL’s worst franchises. But as bad as the Falcons have been throughout their history, it’s never been as bad as it was this week.

In one 24-hour period, the Falcons:

• Saw their star quarterback sentenced to 23 months in federal prison;
• Lost by 20 points to a 5-7 team on “Monday Night Football”;
• Saw their head coach bolt like a rat jumping from a sinking ship, taking a pay cut to go back to a college job less than 24 hours after he had assured team owner Arthur Blank that he was here for the long haul.

Michael Vick’s arrest took the rudders off the Falcons franchise and what we’re seeing is not only the resulting free fall and crash, but the lowest point of a franchise with a history full of low moments.

It’s hard to feel bad for a billionaire, but today I want to find Arthur Blank and give him a hug.

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Last night, during the TV broadcast of “Monday Night Football,” Falcons owner Arthur Blank made an unfortunate comment about Michael Vick eating fried chicken in prison.

Listening to it in context, it sounded like a “the food in prison is unhealthy” comment rather than a “black people sure do love fried chicken” comment.

Nevertheless, it’s a cringe-maker.

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