The Game of His Life



        The NFL's Conduct Policy is in such disarray now that Goodell appears to just making stuff up as he goes now.  Now he's revealed a new wrinkle in his conduct policy.  Earlier today he denied former Georgia Bulldog linebacker, Odell Thurman's petition for reinstatement and decided that the current Cincinnati Bengals middle linebacker should miss another season because of his ongoing problems.  
Thurman was suspended for all of last season after skipping a drug test and later being arrested for drunken driving.  In his words, suspensions are indefinite and that players will have to earn their ways back into the league.  This is getting a little too close to a dictatorship for me.

        So then, why even put a time line on suspensions?  This conduct policy has no structure to it and unfortunately no Personal Conduct 4 Dummies book has been written yet(Goodell should get on that right now).  As you can tell I can't stand the guy not because of the suspensions but because of his immaculate incompetance.
What would Goodell have done if he was commissioner during other major sports scandals?

        Watching Michael Vick come out of a federal courthouse was eerie but a little more eerie is knowing that the Falcons will have to move on without him as his trial is set to begin on November 26th, the day after what was supposed to be the marquee match-up of the season. Vick, the unorthodox lefty scrambler against Manning, the pocket QB with the golden arm will not happen.  ESPN's Chris Mortensen said tonight on SportsCenter that the thinks NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is likely to suspend Michael Vick in the next three weeks or so. "Conduct detrimental to the league" would be the basis. Why do they need 3 more weeks? The Vick indictment only takes about 30 minutes to review. They don't need more time.
 
        ESPN is also getting on my last nerve the way that they're sucking on Goodell's nips.  Chris Mortenson has really disappointed me with his whole loyal dog act.  Where's the opinionated Mort I once knew who would give us breaking news at 4 in the morning?  Seriously, is he not annoyed by the fact that he's become the commissioner's PR spokesman for anything and everything Personal Conduct related? Yet, not once has he questioned Goodell's erratic decision making!  He even has this sheepish gleam in his eyes as if he's thinking to himself "Man, Goodell has ruined my life." It seems that him and John Clayton seem a little to eager to assume Vick WILL NEVER PLAY in the NFL again and that Pac-Man won't touch a football field until 2009 at best!(despite the fact that he's not facing serious jail time and his trial will be over by next season's training camp. ESPN won't tell you that though.) On ESPN, Terrance Moore of the AJC made a splash by audaciously claiming so adamantly, "Michael Vick's career is over.  He'll be lucky to play anywhere South of the Canadian Football League as long as Goodell is the commissioner".

        On Wednesday, Jones found a corraborating witness who claims he did nothing wrong at the strip club in Vegas. The witness is actually an employee at Minxx Gentlemen's Club.  A day later, this news had not made the home page of ESPN.com. When Jones recently obtained a moving violation for having bad tags, ESPN considered that front page news. However, this more positive development in Jones' life has not been reported on with an inkling of the same enthusiasm by the Wide World Leader.

        Since when did the NFL become so socially conscious? And since when did parents have to explain so "delicately" to their kids what Michael Vick did? In a recent poll apparently 62% of Falcons fans said they planned to THROW AWAY their Vick jerseys.(Didn't EVERY bandwagon Laker fan do the same thing after Kobe Bryant's rape allegations?  Hmm...  PETA shoulda been there too because that girl...)  That's the equivalent of me never being able to show reruns of Power Rangers to my kid's because the red ranger became a porn star a decade later--true story.  As long as he's not humping the pink ranger on camera, I could care less.  Where were all the parent's throwing away all of their Britney Spears memorabilia after she entered rehab?  Well maybe they already had, but I digress...

        I'm a fan of Vick the football player not Ron Mexico...I mean not Vick the person.  Ten years ago it was perfectly okay to watch Tyson fight even though he was a convicted rapist.  I never payed to watch him take some girl's virginity, just to punch some dude's forehead in.  The difference between boxing and the NFL is of course sponsorships.

        Welcome to the Age of Political Correctness.  In this age of immense celebrity exposure, MTV Cribs, etc. the media seems to think that we should idolize athletes and celebrities off the field as well.  

        Now David Stern-- thats a commissioner who knows how to handle his league.  When Kobe was FALSELY accused of rape("8 different, never mind") Stern didn't take the CIA route on us and disavow any knowledge of ever knowing who this Kobe kid was, never benefited from his jersey sales or anything like that, he just kept his mouth shut cause quite frankly (where's Stephen A. when u need him) he was "innocent until guilty and if he was guilty, he'd probably never play again.  So the problem would solve itself.

            Instead, while PETA buys more Vick jerseys to burn in protest, Goodell will benefit from the sales and piggy back Chris Mortenson until the next breaking news surfaces.  When Stern learned about the latest scandal he did the due process and surmised it was an isolated incident, not like Goodell who's now wasting NFL resources to find anyone else involved in dogfighting.


        The Falcons are cursed as losers. Blank and his orange apron aren't going to work any magic. Michael Vick may find a way to clear himself of the charges and then Falcons management will look like presumptive idiots and will have burned their bridges. I'm surprised that the Falcons are shunning Vick and I'm mad as a fan.  I bet the Cincinnati Bengals won't have a half empty stadium this season.

            Now if Vick and Pac-Man do emerge unscathed with not guilty verdicts, I hope they file the biggest lawsuits the league has ever seen and bring this tumultous reign of Roger Goodell over the NFL to an end.  Remember that line from Armageddon, "You and your men are the biggest mistakes in the history of the NASA space program." Well... insert "Roger Goodell at the beginning, and replace NASA space program with "professional sports--or mankind". 

         He has yet to realize that in his eagerness to lend the NFL a better image, every time he suspends a player it gives the media even more of a reason to project that image to the casual fan.  Every day the intense media firestorm makes it feel like Goodell invaded Iraq, ordered the assassination of Dr. King, lured David Beckham to kick for the Oakland Raiders, wagered on a few games with Tim Donaghy and personally shot steroids up Barry Bonds. 

          Oh, and will somebody please tell PETA protestors to get ...a real jobs("Hippies!"), and the correct information.  Why are they in Flowery Branch, GA at the Falcons training camp protesting when Vick is 100's of miles away at a federal courthouse in Virginia?  Someone on the Falcons is going to get upset, organize a group of players, find out where these people work and march outside of their workplace chanting rehearsed slogans for 4 hours a day.

2nd Alternative: Shock Treatment

            If the Michael Vick era truly has come to a close, it seems more of a blessing in my opinion that Schaub was traded before these allegations initially came forth because as I' ve said before, I'd take D.J. Shockley's limitless potential, and even Joey Harrington's proven talent and experience over Matt Schaub's $48 million dollar mystery any day.  Perhaps this could serve as a conduit for the emergence of the D.J. Shockley-Norwood era.

            When you think about it Shockley's skill set on the Falcon's roster is a lot like the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Shockley has the Schaub pedigree(in my opinion he looks better than Schaub in pre-season and his specialty--mop up duty... Schaub had excellent hand off skills.), nearly as elusive as Vick but more inclined to throw on the run than scramble as well as the arm of Joey Harrington.

            While Vick has become alienated from a large portion of the fanbase in recent months, Shockley is a homegrown player who went to high school in Atlanta, college in Athens, and in 2006 was drafted in the 7th round by the Falcons.  In other word's he is "just right" for this current team.  If this team were to implode early on, there's no harm in giving D.J. Shockley's motor a test run.  For too long in college he had to suffer behind a safer yet less talented pocket quarterback, I hope Bobby Petrino don't make him suffer the same anguish again with the Falcons.

             So why has the battle for the backup position between Shockley and Harrington suddenly been handicapped now that Vick has likely been put down for the season.  If he displays the flashes of superstar brilliance that he displayed sparingly (not his fault) in college, and all throughout his senior season, then hopefully it will subside the rampant speculation of drafting Brian Brohm or any other quarterback to solve the quarterback issues. 

            With 2008, likely being Warrick Dunn's final season as the starter, Norwood's position as the future cornerstone at running back is essentially set in stone.  That way they'll be able to shift their focus in the 2008 Draft(...has it really come to this? Looking forward to the 2008 NFL Draft?)  to their weakness in the receiving corp and draft the incredibly exciting DeSean Jackson to replace the Mike Vick experience.  


            Adversity has a unique way of galvanizing teams and propelling them to achieve greatness when the public, analysts, fantasy leagues and preseason predictions least expect it to occur. 

            So while they've been discounted as playoff contenders by the national media, ESPN, SI, you name it,this team has surprise factor written all over them.  Just like the '06 Saints, the McNabb-less Eagles, the '99 Rams after the loss of Trent Green and the 2001 Ravens with journeyman Trent Dilfer instead of Tony Banks at the helm, this team has that aura of an injured predator hidden in the grass or the Georgia Dome's artificial turf ready to pounce. 

Word of the Day
            Remember when I said "brace yourself for another year of fresh legal jargon, speculation, "motions"  in no way related to the gridiron, press conferences and reintroduce yourself to Roger Cossack"? Well todays Word of the Day is Superseding Indictment because evidently, ESPN can't spell it correctly.

--D.J. Dunson Jr.
Full Michael Vick coverage


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