23 months for a few dogs!?!

“23 months for a few dogs” was a text message that I received from a friend of mine after he heard about the Mike Vick ruling. At first glance i chuckled but then thought, hmmm how many people will think and will say something just like that. I am sure a lot of MV supporters at least. I am not one of those people, a MV supporter, or a person that thinks he should have gotten 23 months for dog fighting.

But I don’t think he got 23 months for “just” dog fighting. He got one month less than the maximum allowed for all the other shit that has gone on since he pleaded guilty to the charges. In this recap by Lester Munson on espn.com, he speaks to how MV is being punished because,

…In addition to the deception on drugs and executions, federal prosecutor Michael Gill explained that Vick “had made a calculated effort to hide the truth” on four other issues in interviews with federal agents.

So yeah, maybe this all started with the 40+ dogs found on his property, but as time has gone on there has been a continual effort to basically stick his middle finger at the judicial system, and he is now paying for it. The Atlanta Journal Constitution has calculated that MV has lost about $142m in income over all of this, which is a lot of effing money. Then after you think , damn that is a lot of money, you realize that after you think about hundreds of millions you still can’t put a price on your freedom. Because after his 23 months, he still will have some “closely monitored probation” to deal with. On some level you feel sorry for the him, him being made the poster child with this prosecution, but on the other hand you have to say that he knew the rules and he chose to break them. It would be naive to think that the number of dogs involved through out this operation could not have easily been in the thousands. The law states something to the effect that you can’t take any evidence into consideration that is not presented as fact, but I think that this isn’t even about the dogs anymore; at this point it is his character that is being prosecuted. And not just Mike Vick by himself, but the so called “overpaid athlete.”I am sure there is a choice to believe that he, as well as all athletes, have plenty of narcissism and and huge egos that lead them to believe that they are above the law. On his part there was definitely some disbelief that all this isn’t really going to get me in jail, and this really can’t happen to him because he is Mike Vick, the man who revolutionized the quarterbacking position, but it was and it did. I just hope that he can find some time and a way to stay out of trouble, get his head right, keep himself clean, head down, do his time and get the hell out of there with his dignity.