Vick apologists try to blame the home boys

From The Washington Post:

He'd been telling stories about his grandson, Michael Vick, stories about how a poor kid from a rough neighborhood in Newport News, Va., could use football to build a fancy house for his mother and a life of fame and riches for himself. He had been telling of taking a train to New York to be with his grandson and other family members when the Atlanta Falcons made Vick, a quarterback from Virginia Tech with a powerful left arm and magical legs, the top pick in the NFL draft in April 2001. [. . .]


For those who care about Vick, it has become a struggle to keep the good times from becoming fading memories. Yesterday, Vick, 27, agreed to plead guilty to federal dogfighting charges and likely will be sentenced to 12 to 18 months in prison. He also faces further possible Virginia state charges and an NFL suspension.

An athletic career, once so promising that it earned him a $130 million contract, is in ruins.

"It's just sad when someone has that much God-given talent for something," former Falcons coach Dan Reeves said, "and it's potentially going to be wasted."

There are multiple explanations for Vick's downfall, according to interviews conducted the past few weeks with family members and Vick's former teammates, and a review of court documents related to the case. Vick could not be reached to comment and some of the key figures in his life refused to be interviewed.

The most prominent theory, espoused by Boddie and Reeves, blames much of Vick's troubles on his continued association with childhood friends who have questionable pasts. Those same friends were the ones who agreed to testify against Vick in exchange for more lenient sentences for their roles in the crimes.

Court papers, however, portray Vick as someone whose legal troubles are his own doing. They show Vick as the unquestioned leader of a vicious dogfighting operation. Not only did he finance it, but he also carried out some of its most heinous crimes, including the killings of dogs.

For some, the truth lies somewhere in between. As one person familiar with the case said: "Clearly, he's the leader but he couldn't say no to them and he couldn't cut them loose."

I very much doubt that Vick's friends from that rough neighborhood got themselves involved in an interstate dog fighting ring involving large amounts of money. I very much doubt that they enticed Vick into joining them in this operation.

The more logical explanation is that Vick likes dog fights and has a sadistic streak which causes him to enjoy putting dogs to death in gruesome ways and that he brought his old friends from the 'hood into the operation because they were the same kind of people he was. He thought he could trust them and he could share a little of his new found wealth with guys who knew him way back when.