Dog fighting isn’t directly related to football the same way that, say, running a childcare center and a child porn ring are.
Some people are calling for him to lose his job because what he did was so terrible. But what he did wasn’t made possible by his job. Sure, he had more money because of his job, but there are tons of poor people involved in dog fighting.
Then people started to claim that it is related because the NFL doesn’t like illegal gambling. But the illegal gambling aspect is not why people want bad things to happen to him. They want bad things to happen to him because he tortured and abused or condoned the torture and abuse of animals.
Torturing and abusing animals isn’t something that’s facilitated by having a job with the NFL.
But it is likely a moot point anyway. If he does jail time which I suspect he will, he will be unable to keep his job and will be in no shape to play by the time he gets out, and won’t likely be asked to come back.
And like I said earlier, I wouldn’t blame the NFL if they simply didn’t want him in their league.
I do think that NFL fans (and this goes for all sports) are responsible for the types of organizations/players/teams they root for and support. If fans really don’t want bullies and thugs (Kenny Rogers, I’m looking at you!) on their teams, the teams wouldn’t hire them.
I don’t think it’s that people are calling for his job as a punishment so much as they are observing that he will likely lose his career regardless if he goes to prison. Missing a year (or possibly multiple years) in prison would make a return to the NFL extremely difficult rgardless of any official sanctions by the league itself. The loss of time and the decline in skills alone would probably be fatal.
Also, the NFL is very nervous about gambling of any sort by its players, especially its marquee players. Gamblers tend to lose, losers tend to chase losses and this makes them vulnerable to pressures to influence games. A quarterback is in the best position possible to influence the outcome of game. He wouldn’t even have to suck the whole game. All it would take is one bad throw or untimely fumble to throw a game or even just keep a winning game under the spread. I do think Vick might be suspct to some kind of league sanctions even if he was just betting on the ponies.
But doesn’t this apply to anyone who goes to jail? A university professor won’t be able to take a couple of years sabbatical to cover his time away from work to serve time, and your local McDonald’s manager isn’t going to keep a spot on the fryer open for someone who gets thrown in jail for a DUI (or whatever.)
Losing his job is not an legal penalty - it’s something his employers do to maintain their business. If you stay out of jail, then you don’t have to worry about it.
That would explain Vick’s career pretty well. He’s not inaccurate and inconsistent - he’s point shaving!
I thought NFL players were allowed to gamble legally on other sports, just couldn’t touch football. I could be totally wrong though. And there certainly would be sanctions of some type for illegal betting on any sports.
It’s happened in the equestrian world, that prominent and wealthy participants have been banned from the sport, most notably in the murder for hire of top-level show jumpers. Some very big names in that world went to jail.
The funny thing is, he’s supposedly a licensed dog breeder. Has anyone everyone bought a dog from him? Has he ever entered any dogs in any of the various dog show competitions? I don’t recall seeing him at the latest Westminster show. And if no, then why would he be a registered as a dog breeder, other than as a cover, should a case just like this one arise?
Not in the same way - a professor or fry cook can still get a job in their field somewhere once they’re out of the clink. A running quarterback, whose effective expiration date is his 34th birthday under the best of circumstances, is basically done.
Vick also sold dogs openly, though the operation that did so, an Internet site called Mike Vick K9 Kennels, has long been closed up. Speculation is that some of these dogs were ones that couldn’t cut it in the dogfighting arena, so we have potentially vicious dogs out there in private homes.
In this particular case, there are several factors that suggest Vick should lose his job. First, he is employed by a league that withholds the right to fire an employee who is charged with a crime, even if there is no conviction. Second, he is an athlete, who would not benefit from years sitting “on the bench,” so to speak. Third, he is under contract to play, and a six-year absence would cause him to break those terms.
He is an NFL player, and I recognize that these standards apply. They are higher standards than would apply to the average person. I don’t have a problem if he does lose his job.
I’m just a little worried that we in society, and even on the SDMB, occasionally make bloodthirsty demands like, “He should lose his job!” for a first offense. It isn’t just this case.
Many of those demands may be justifiable — Mike Nifong, perhaps. Pete Rose. The IHOP-cop who shot the kid in the van. Don Imus? They haven’t all been famous, or highly paid. Our Pit is egalitarian in that way.
“He should lose his job!” is a rallying cry that worries me.
Actually, jerseys and videogames are trivial when it comes to the oceans of money the NFL is raking in.
You gotta sell a lotta jerseys and videogames to exceed a small part of $3.74 billion dollars per year. Ticket sales could theoretically exceed $1 billion per year, but I’m not convinced they do. I couldn’t find a cite either way.
Vick not playing will not hurt the NFL as a whole, not one bit. It will however crush the Falcons, who out of all the NFL cities probably have the largest number of blacks who attend games, and these fans will sell out the Georgia Dome every Sunday Vick is playing, but when he was injured for example, IIRC the amount of no shows was enormous. Now, in a perfect world, you add Daunte Culpepper, similar player with similar fan base, and move on, maybe even get better as a result, assuming Culpepper could regain his former glory. But the salary cap makes this all but impossible without some concessions from the league, or Culpepper taking a huge pay cut or large amount of deferred money.
I still want to be cautious about rushing to judgment. The mob has been wrong before. (Richard Jewell, Duke lacrosse, etc…) It is not out of the realm of possibility that Vick has some mooching relatives who are trying to save their own skins by offering prosecutors Vick as a prize. And yes, I have read the indictment. It is fairly “bristling with allegations,” as the saying goes. But at this point that’s still all they are. Allegations.
Vick may be guilty. But let’s allow a jury to make that call.
Not a chance. The district attorney did an in depth study of the case and found that the officer acted appropriately and that in the situation he had a reasonable cause to discharge his firearm.
Months after that report he was suspended, in large part because of moronic fuckwads that think the police are wrong ANYTIME someone gets shot, bitching constantly at this guy’s boss (who is a political figure in and of himself.) He was basically told, “you were completely exonerated of any wrongdoing by the DA, but since a bunch of people are bitching about this I have to suspend you for political reasons, see ya in a few weeks!”