The Eagle Has Landed

Well as most of you know by now Michael Vick made his preseason debut last night. For information on his performance please see espn.com. What I find more interesting is the varying opinion of whether or not Michael Vick should be allowed to play and whether or not he is a role model. I can remember growing up and looking up to sports players. My friends and I used to arrive hours before the game to get autographs of our favorite players. Ironically it was not our favorite players that would take the time to sign our baseball cards, gloves and caps. There are only so many Pete O'Brien autographs with "John 3:14" scribbled underneath that you can collect before you start to think what the hell is up. Why weren't our role models around to sign autographs for their biggest fans?. Charles Barkley was the first one to really come out and say it. Nike put together a commercial featuring him and his tough guy persona proudly stating "I AM NOT A ROLE MODEL." It seemed kind of cool and rebellious at the time (it wasn't adults who were lining up to buy his shoes). Years later I agree he is no role model but I marvel at how many athletes have turned out to be worse. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the term role model as "a person whose behavior in a particular role is imitated by others." In those simple terms everyone is a role model since we all play a role and have the opportunity to influence imitation in others. I look at the "steroid era" with quite a bit of sadness. It is not sadness for what the players have done but by the way they have chosen to hide what they have done. From Big Mac, to Sammy Sosa, Raphael Palmero, Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz and of course Roger Clemens. They have all lied and then lied again in an attempt to cover up the secret they held from their fans. If they would have come out and admitted it and taken responsibility we would have forgiven them and moved on. I don't mean admitted it like Alex Rodriguez though. Someone who's vein attempt to appear sincere and honest accomplished neither. Even before the admission of steroid use came off as insultingly insincere. He should have never been a role model the moment he told Seattle it was not about the money but the opportunity to win and then turned around an signed with Texas for a quarter of a billion dollars. Many cannot fault him for not passing on that amount of money but I ask in retrospect do we not see the flaws to this type of thinking. It was as symbolic as Greek Mythology or the Bible. A young man with all the gifts in the world is lured away from a home that loved him by money. It was a deal with the devil where he chose to sacrifice the chance to win and ended up playing somewhere hot where losing would be eternal. A fable he has become, one to warn your kids about every night before bed. After all of this I almost want to celebrate someone like Michael Vick. An individual who made some atrocious decisions in life and has been stripped of everything and been forced to start over from scratch. I do not know whether the punishment has fit the crime but there were very few things left to take away from Michael Vick when all was said and done. The one argument I hear from his enemies is that they could have taken away football. To this I agree, you can take away football but why? Do we not want to rehabilitate people so that they can do some good in this world and their community? What do we gain by taking away all of the money, dignity and 18 months of life from a man and then releasing him in only to push him further to the brink? When I think of this argument I think of insurgents in places like Iraq and more importantly today Afghanistan. People with little hope have very few options in life. When they have everything taken away from them we do not win. We lose because they become far more dangerous than they ever were before. What happens to Vick if we take it all away? Maybe he ends up in Virginia with the same bad news crew he was running with before. And maybe due to his poverty and his fall from grace he is caught in the same place so many others with no future to hope for end up. Back in jail or in the dirt. Here, starting today and everyday moving forward we have someone who has been to the bottom and who seems truly grateful for another chance to make it to the top. So for now this Eagle has landed, but let us hope, for everyone's sake, he once again can fly.