YourBlackSports is a place for brothers to talk about sports from a black perspective. This is not ESPN, this is Your ESPN. We see the analysts on all the shows talking this and that about black athletes, without a brother even being invited to the conversation. Well that doesn't happen at YourBlackSports, since this site is all about you!
Like most fair-minded and even moderately temperate souls, I am of the unwavering belief that Mike Vick has now paid his debt to society, served his time, and should again be free to live his life in the most upwardly mobile fashion he's blessed enough to navigate.
Being convicted of a crime, in and of itself, should in no way result in an automatic death sentence. Some of those who've sought to bury Vick by mercilessly stripping him of his already earned riches and NFL livelihood struck me as hypocrites of the highest degree in their straying beyond the law by insisting that Vick's transgressions not only be punished by the legal system but that his world forever be left in ruins.
That doesn't strike me as justice, but rather overkill. And yet, I couldn't help but feel as if the Vick Express on the road to redemption veered recklessly off course this week when he was to be honored in his Virginia hometown as something just short of a demigod.
'Celebration for Mike Vick' event organizer and Southern Christian Leadership Conference chapter president Andrew Shannon intimated that hundreds of youths were expected to be on hand to cheer Vick on and hear him speak before an unforeseen scheduling snafu caused the entire event to be scraped.
I'll call it divine intervention.
Admit it, in a world where black and minority men make up far to high of a percentage of those incarcerated, the image and implications born of Vick being paraded as some sort of cause célèbre of indisputable virtuosity before so many impressionable minds could be more than just a bit dysfunctional for its audience. Idolatry, you see, can be a form of imprisonment of its own.
If any NFL teams are interested in Michael Vick(notes), they’re not saying.
A day after the quarterback was conditionally reinstated to the league, only the Baltimore Ravens would directly acknowledge evaluating him.
“We’ve had long discussions about Michael Vick and we have a feeling about how he would impact our team and not impact our team,” coach John Harbaugh said Tuesday.
General manager Ozzie Newsome declined comment. Previously, he has said the Ravens have enough quarterbacks.
Other teams either refused comment or insisted they wouldn’t pick up the former Atlanta Falcons star, who served 18 months in federal prison for running a dogfighting ring and was released from home confinement on July 20.
Commissioner Roger Goodell said Monday that Vick can immediately take part in preseason practices, workouts and meetings and can play in the final two preseason games—if he can find a team.
Once the season begins, Vick may participate in all team activities except games, and Goodell said he would consider Vick for full reinstatement by Week 6 (Oct. 18-19) at the latest.
Two clubs that might have seemed like a logical destination—the Miami Dolphins and Cincinnati Bengals—said they wouldn’t pursue Vick.
Michael Vick is back in the NFL. Now all he needs is a team to play for. Vick, free after serving 18 months in prison for running a dog fighting ring, was reinstated with conditions by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on Monday. He could participate in regular-season games as early as October.
Vick can immediately take part in preseason practices, workouts and meetings and can play in the final two preseason games -- if he can find a team that will sign him. A number of teams have already said they would not.
Once the season begins, Vick may participate in all team activities except games, and Goodell said he would consider Vick for full reinstatement by Week 6 (Oct. 18-19) at the latest.
Goodell suspended Vick indefinitely in August 2007 after the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback admitted bankrolling a dog fighting operation on his property in Virginia. At the time, Goodell said Vick must show remorse before he would consider reinstating him.
"I accept that you are sincere when you say that you want to, and will, turn your life around, and that you intend to be a positive role model for others," Goodell said in his letter to Vick. "I am prepared to offer you that opportunity. Whether you succeed is entirely in your hands."
A judge reportedly denied a request by Michael Vick's lawyers to allow him to plead guilty to state dogfighting charges via videoconference from federal prison on Thursday.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported Thursday that Surry County Circuit Judge Samuel E. Campbell denied the request during a hearing in Sussex County court. Vick's attorneys made the request so that the disgraced former Atlanta Falcons quarterback would not have to leave prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, where he is serving a 23-month sentence for a federal dogfighting charge.
The state's attorney objected to the defense's request, and Campbell agreed, as there is no allowance in Virginia law for someone to plead via videoconference, according to the paper.
Vick is facing two state felony charges -- dogfighting and animal cruelty -- in Richmond. The judge set November 25 as the date for Vick to enter his pleas.
The state and federal charges against Vick are related to a dogfighting ring he funded at a property he owned in Surry. He is slated to be released from federal prison and into a halfway house on July 20.
Your sports page may have recently induced an unpleasant sense of déjà vu. A pro football star, by all accounts, seemed caught in a spiral of depression. Friends and advisers were worried enough about suicide to call the police. After an ensuing public-relations fracas, the player and the team assured us that it was all a grand misunderstanding.
Two years ago, this was the story of Dallas Cowboys star receiver Terrell Owens. Less than 24 hours after Owens had sleeping pills pried out of his mouth, his PR flack said that the police report was a fabrication and "Terrell has 25 million reasons to be alive" — an ugly reference to the dollars he was due in his contract.
This month it was Vince Young, quarterback of the Tennessee Titans. During a Sept. 7 victory over Jacksonville, Young threw two interceptions, sparking a chorus of boos from the home crowd. Then he seemed to be refusing to re-enter the game — and was injured shortly after he did return. The following night, when he didn't return calls to his cell phone, the police were sent to find him. He had apparently uttered the word "suicide" to his manager, and perhaps a team therapist, and made clear that he was in possession of a gun.
But now Young and the team say that this is a whole lot of noise about nothing.
"I'm fine. I'm good," Young said. "I just needed (time) ... to get through some things. But now I am OK. I was never depressed; I just hurt a little bit. ... When it happens again, I'll know how to handle it."
The response by many columnists and bloggers has been repellent and elucidating. This is why athletes keep these issues under wraps. Jason Whitlock of the Kansas City Star used this moment to write: "I'm going to do my best to avoid turning this into an I-told-you-so column. But the truth is, I told you before the 2006 draft that Vince Young was primed for NFL failure."
In the NFL, there is no worse sin than failure, and players are expected to shake off losses, injuries and criticism. In football, it is well understood that performance-enhancing drugs, legal and otherwise, are part of that process — just not antidepressants.
In such a high-pressure sport, where contracts aren't guaranteed and any play can be your last, depression lurks like a blindside linebacker. This shouldn't surprise anybody. Studies show that repeated concussions are linked to depression. One 2007 study that examined more than 2,500 retired NFL players found that those who had suffered at least three concussions had triple the risk of clinical depression compared to teammates. Those with one or two concussions were one-and-a-half times more likely to be diagnosed with depression.
And yet the NFL is selling a fantasy about professional football: It's all perpetual adolescence and a nonstop frat party. Fans don't want their star players to be human.
As Mike Messner, professor of gender studies at the University of Southern California and author of Taking the Field: Women, Men and Sports, said to me: "Therapists will tell you that it's much harder for men than for women to recognize the signs of depression, and then to ask for help. Quintuple that for a famous man. Being an NFL star is like being put on a national stage as the ultimate man: tough, decisive, invulnerable. Superman isn't supposed to get depressed, so depression gets viewed as a source of shame, like failing at manhood. ... In failing to discuss and deal with the very human reality of men's vulnerabilities, it seems to me the football establishment is once again giving boys and men a very unhealthy message."
In other words, team and league executives don't want to be upfront about Terrell Owens or Vince Young. And they certainly don't want to talk openly about the story of Shawn Andrews. Andrews, of the Philadelphia Eagles, missed days of training camp in August because, as he told reporters, he was depressed. "I'm willing to admit that I've been going through a very bad time with depression," the two-time Pro Bowler said. "I've finally decided to get professional help. It's not something that blossomed up overnight. I'm on medication, trying to get better."
But the Eagles didn't see Andrews' mental health as a legitimate medical problem and fined him $15,000 for every practice he missed. That wouldn't have happened to a player with a sprained knee. Andrews is now back on the field. After Young's episode, Andrews told reporters that depression is the silent scream of many NFL players.
"When we faced the Patriots, those guys were really concerned, and when we played the Jets, a couple of guys were inquiring — told me if I wanted to talk or needed to talk (to contact them)," Andrews said. "A lot of guys, you'd be surprised, are going through what I'm going through and don't admit it. I think guys are sensitive to it. If they haven't been through it, they know somebody who has."
Surely many fans know someone who has endured the darkness of depression as well. But the NFL, rather than take the opportunity to educate fans about a disease millions of men face, just pumps up the music and gets back to the big frat party. Let's hope more people like Andrews break the silence before tragedy strikes.
Last September, Donovan McNabb, the Philadelphia Eagles‘ veteran quarterback, ruffled feathers during an interview on HBO when he said that African-American quarterbacks were held to a different standard than their white colleagues.
“There’s not that many African-American quarterbacks, so we have to do a little bit extra,” he said. “Because the percentage of us playing this position, which people didn’t want us to play, is low, so we do a little extra.”
Then he added in reference to Peyton Manning and Carson Palmer: “Let me start by saying I love those guys. But they don’t get criticized as much as we do. They don’t.”
Shortly after McNabb made his comments, Vince Young, the Tennessee Titans‘ quarterback, was asked for his reaction.
“That is his opinion,” Young said. “I really feel like myself, black or white quarterbacks, we all go through something because that is the life of a quarterback. You have to be able to handle all the pressure, and you have to be able to handle the losses, and you have to be able to handle the media saying this about you. If you can’t handle it, then you have to get off that position and go play something else.”
In light of Young’s bizarre behavior last week, he may want to revisit McNabb’s comments. He’s not handling the pressure so well.
Young was lustily booed last Sunday after throwing his second interception in Tennessee’s 17-10 victory over Jacksonville. It appeared that he didn’t want to return to the game. Coach Jeff Fisher pulled his headset off and talked to him before Young joined the rest of the offense. Four plays later, Young sprained his left medial collateral ligament when Jaguars linebacker Daryl Smith slammed into his knee.
Fisher apparently told Young to have a magnetic resonance imaging exam on Monday to determine the extent of the damage. Young didn’t go but rescheduled the test for Tuesday.
Young didn’t go to the Titans’ headquarters Monday, and Fisher went to Young’s house. The Titans also sent a psychologist and another team official to talk with Young.
The 25-year-old Young said he left the house because he needed space to think. “Let the cloud go away for a minute,” he said, “and that’s what I did. I left.”
Fisher called the Nashville police, who searched for Young for more than four hours.
According to The City Paper of Nashville, which obtained a copy of the police report through a public records request, the Titans called the police Monday because Young’s therapist told Fisher that Young had mentioned suicide several times before driving away from his home with a gun...
From T.O. to Michael Vick to Paul Pierce to Ron Artest to Stephen Jackson to Caron Butler, it's the same bulls---. Black Athletes with enormous talent are subjected to inordinate and criminal forms of interrogation and surveillance. Michael Jordan's flamboyant attitude on-court was rapidly challenged by white pundits who we're uncomfortable with his irreducible-presence and unmitigable-impact. Now, the NFL, just like the NBA have taken it too damn far. To ensure that Black Athletes don't freely celebrate and exist un-shackled, the NFL is now employing a special team to "investigate... hand signals of street gangs" that some players might have displayed in their moments of elation. Like David Stern of the NBA, Roger Goodell has lost his mind. There's no telling what the next regulation would pan out to be. Let's hope it doesn't come with an abolition of blackness. The AP reports tonight that:
The NFL is stepping up its monitoring of on-field player activities to ensure that no one is flashing the hand signals of street gangs.
The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday that the league had hired experts to look at game tapes and identify players or team officials who might be using suspected gang signals. Violators would be warned and disciplined if the episodes recurred.
League officials said Tuesday that avoiding gang-related activities has long been stressed.
They said the scrutiny was intensified after the shooting death of Denver cornerback Darrent Williams in 2007 after Williams was involved in a dispute with known gang members. Anti-gang information is included in orientation literature and stressed in the annual mandatory league meeting for rookies.
The NFL took further notice after Paul Pierce of the NBA’s Boston Celtics was fined $25,000 in April for what the league said was a “menacing gesture” toward the Atlanta Hawks’ bench. “I 100 percent do not in any way promote gang violence or anything close to it.” Pierce said in a statement. “I am sorry if it was misinterpreted that way at Saturday’s game.”
The Times said that was the precipitating incident for the NFL.....
