GQ is scheduled to publish former Deadspin editor Will Leitch's interview with Michael Vick today, but Deadspin broke (or at least bent) embargo and posted a variety of choice cuts while you were sleeping. The gist is that the expiration date on "Michael Vick, humbled and changed man," is about to be up. That such timing is strangely concurrent with an amount of preseason hype about "Michael Vick, awesome football player" not seen since 2003? Purely coincidental. Purely.
Vick blames any current conversation about his dog fighting days completely on the media, wants to be able to own more dogs, cops to simply being a misunderstood black man, and cites his poverty-stricken upbringing as the reason for his past behaviors, thus hitting some kind of "Fox News Pundit Rage" bingo card.
Deadspin's right - there's tons of subject matter here to piss people off. Somewhere Bill Cosby is screaming to no one in particular that Richard Wright overcame Jim Crow butnever got busted using an alias to treat his herpes. And in the parallel universe in which Rush Limbaugh still works at ESPN, surely the scene from "Scanners" was just re-created across the table from Skip Bayless. But our favorite quote (ESPECIALLY when taken out of football context), ignores society's bruises and pays homage to that surly hamlet slowly emerging to become Atlanta's "real" pro sports rival.
Sez Vick:
"I think I can say this now, because it's not going to hurt anybody's feelings, and it's the truth... I didn't want to come to Philadelphia. Being the third-team quarterback is nothing to smile about. Cincinnati and Buffalo were better options."
It's SO awesome, because even if you were just a normal guy who wasn't trying to ressurect an until-that-point inconsistent pro football career because you routinely electrocuted pregnant dogs and lied to the government about it, you'd also only consider starting a new life in Cincinnati or Buffalo if Philadelphia was your sole option.
GOODELL: We're confident that a fresh start in Philadelphia will help set you on the right path back, Mike.
VICK: Philadelphia? Say, what's this I heard in prison about the league's potential European expansion? Because if that's your offer, I'm open to snuffing out the rest of my playing days in a Slavic ghetto. Or even Buffalo.
Those two teams wanted him and would've allowed him to start, but after meeting with commissioner Roger Goodell and other reps from the NFL, Vick was convinced—and granted league approval—to sign with Philly. "And I commend and thank them, because they put me in the right situation."
I suppose signing with the Bills would've caused probation headaches crossing back and forth from Canada (HEY-O), but we're flabbergasted as to why Goodell didn't want a convicted felon and lifelong, let's say, "conduct risk" becoming the poster child and de facto ringleader of the Bengals. That commish, such a tyrant.