Michael Vick is almost surely going to jail and his football career is probably over. All the years he spent as a pampered celebrity in the general vicinity of education did not provide him with the insight that torturing dogs is not good and, besides that, could get him in trouble.<\/p>\n
The plea bargain he struck with federal prosecutors in Richmond, Va., yesterday gives no real suggestion that he knows right from wrong. He does know that his former friends turned on him for the prosecutors, and that he is in big trouble, which is a start.<\/p>\n
In one significant way, Michael Vick is part of the values of middle America: He is another symptom of America\u2019s major gambling jones.<\/p>\n
Up to now, Vick had been scrambling, looking for an opening, the same way he played quarterback \u201d\u201d past tense, most likely. But yesterday, the play ended. By admitting to charges from the vile operations of the Bad Newz Kennels in rural Virginia, he could go away for up to five years, although he will probably serve only one.<\/p>\n
That guilty plea should be quite enough for the N.F.L. to bar him permanently, particularly because of the gambling implications. These people who slipped furtively into the camouflaged farm Vick owned were not there just because they liked to see dogs chew each other to death. They were gambling.<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a> (Scroll down the page about half way).<\/p>\n