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)
October 2009.
That’s when a 29-year-old Michael Vick will be released from federal prison for bankrolling a dog fighting operation that will go down in history as one of the dumbest things a high-profile professional athlete has ever done.
$130 million.
That’s the contract Michael Vick threw away when he helped kill a half-dozen pit bulls that weren’t up to snuff as fighting machines.
23 months.
That’s how long Michael Vick will spend in prison. U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson went above the 12-18 month sentence that was recommended by prosecutors when Vick pleaded guilty. There was word last week that federal prosecutors who debriefed Vick on the dog fighting world said he was not forthcoming with them. At the hearing today, it was revealed the FBI gave Vick a polygraph test in October, which he flunked. And the fact that Vick tested positive for marijuana just two weeks after he entered his guilty plea certainly didn’t play in his favor. (One now wonders just what strings were pulled to get that charge concerning the Aquafina water bottle with the hidden compartment at the Miami airport dropped.)
Michael Vick was once the prototype for the new modern quarterback. Now he’s the poster child for stupidity.
As ESPN notes on its homepage, the sentence is a serious blow to Vick’s future as a pro football player. He’s going to spend the next two years in prison, where he’s not going to be getting good food. He won’t be able to work out. He was already a player who needed to improve, and there will be no way to hone his talents sitting in a cell. He was a player who depended on speed, and that speed will be dissipated once he’s released.
And there are the state charges that hang over him that could mean even more prison time once he’s released on the federal conviction.
Even if he can still play football once he’s out of prison, what team is going to want him and all the baggage that comes with him? What team is going to want to deal with protesters outside the stadium with every game? And that’s assuming he’s even allowed back in the NFL, which shouldn’t be taken as a given.
This is the highest fall for a professional athlete since Shoeless Joe Jackson was banned from baseball in the prime of his career. Michael Vick and Peyton Manning were the faces of the NFL. Vick had the world at his fingertips.
Today, Manning leads the Indianapolis Colts toward another Super Bowl while Vick arrived at the courthouse in Richmond, Va., wearing prison stripes.
Michael Vick has thrown his life away. And that’s the most tragic thing of all.
