Sunday, August 09, 2009, 11:52 AM
Sports, Celebrities, Atlanta, In the News, Stop the Presses
By Kevin Moreau
Michael Vick—Why do we still care?
Last week, with headlines and radio airwaves buzzing about the NFL’s apparent lack of interest in Michael Vick, and questions regarding his scheduled Aug. 8 meeting with members of the Humane Society here in Atlanta, a friend posed a question that took me by surprise.
“Why do people in Atlanta still care?” he asked. “Vick has no chance of playing for the Falcons ever again. He lives in Virginia. He’s a bad memory. Why can’t we just move on?”
Why, indeed? My immediate response was that Vick’s ongoing saga isn’t just a local issue. A celebrated professional athlete’s precipitous fall from grace? That’s a national story.
Still, my friend does have a point: It’s fair to say that Atlanta pays a little more attention to Vick’s trials and tribulations, or at least observes them with a keener interest than other cities. That’s because while his dogfighting operation may have been headquartered in Surry County, Va., it was Atlanta that was most affected by his actions.
It was our NFL team for whom Vick served as the $130 million public face. And it was our team that became a laughingstock in 2007, with a dismal 4-12 record and the national embarrassment of head coach Bobby Petrino high-tailing it out of town in the middle of the night before the season was over.
Granted, Petrino’s cowardice isn’t Vick’s fault. But the lows of 2007 serve as a bitter reminder of the giddy high that came from watching Vick run his way into posterity as one of the game’s most electrifying players. Before his last two seasons (8-8 and 7-9), before he flipped off a dome full of fans, before the water-bottle incident, Michael Vick was a symbol of hope, the superhero who was going to lead us to the promised land.
Even if you don’t care about sports, and even if you aren’t particularly bothered by dogfighting (in which case I wouldn’t want to know you), you’re not immune to Vick’s legacy. His fall created some serious cracks along our fragile fault lines of class, race and self-image, forcing us to acknowledge, again, that for all its status as the capital of the New South, Atlanta is still filled with racists (“What do you expect from his kind?”) and misguided souls (“They were just dogs.”).
So, yeah, he’s slightly more notorious here than in, say, Green Bay. But just as his misdeeds disappointed us, and made us take an uncomfortable look at ourselves, so too can we earn some measure of satisfaction, and even grace, by pulling for his eventual redemption.
That’s why I, at least, still care.