Vick doesn't deserve free ride from fans

With the NFL season just around the corner, one of its most dynamic players will most certainly be sitting out. He will not be donning his signature No. 7 jersey to take the field at the Georgia Dome. Instead, he will be awaiting a sentence date that will likely see him wearing an orange jumpsuit as an inmate in a Virginia detention facility for what could be well over a year.

The Michael Vick saga started earlier this year and has become a hot topic. He has been indicted on multiple counts, including, among others, gambling and dog fighting. Vick has been accused of drowning dogs, electrocuting them and slamming their bodies onto hard concrete in order to kill underperforming and losing dogs.

He eventually entered a guilty plea relating to the charges, but not before three of his associates had entered their guilty pleas and Vick had privately told both the Falcons' owner, Arthur Blank, and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell he was innocent.

The story has become a matter of debate for many, with some depicting it as a racial issue. In an article on msnbc.com titled "Vick dogfighting opens up racial divide," it is claimed that most of Vick's supporters are black and most of his critics are white. Arguments for Vick state that whites, the media, and others are targeting Vick only because he is a successful black man.

His detractors are said to point to a slow investigation by the local police, led by commonwealth attorney Gerald Pointdexter (a black man), as tacitly showing their belief of his innocence and thus not fulfilling their duties to the state. It has become heated on both sides, with hot button issues ranging from dog fighting all the way to slavery.

On Monday, Vick went to a Virginia courthouse to submit his guilty plea. He also came out to give an apology. It was the first time he addressed the media and the general public about the charges.

A swarm greeted him as he pulled up to the courthouse, with a mix of supporters and animal rights activists making up the crowd. Many of Vick's supporters were there with signs conveying encouraging messages like "We love you, Mike!" and "Everyone makes a mistake!" While it's true that people make mistakes and an often-unforgiving media magnifies many of these, it seems difficult to make as many as Vick has while he has been in the public eye (that is, unless your name starts with L and ends with indsay Lohan).

During his apology, Vick emphasized his place as a role model to young kids. He claimed that he did not want to give off the wrong image to all the young men and women looking up to him as an important life figure.

If any young kid looks up to the troubled quarterback, he or she is in for a troubled future, however. In Vick's time as the Atlanta quarterback, he has amassed quite a laundry list of controversies. There was the Ron Mexico scandal, the marijuana-in-a-water-bottle incident and of course, the time when he showed Falcons' fans what he really thought of them after a loss to the Saints by flipping them a different kind of bird. There are plenty more situations, but those three seem to illustrate the point quite well.

Now, on top of all of this, he has admitted to acts of cruelty committed against animals.

What is the point at which wrong choices just become a part of a person's character? Even though he was the quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons, why are we obligated to support a man that has shown little to no respect for his fan base? Just because he can run away and evade defenders like no one else in the NFL does not mean that we as fans have to justify his actions off the field as acceptable. By scoffing off these allegations as simply mistakes, this is exactly what we do.

This issue transcends race and should be judged by only the actions of the defendant, which are despicable. We should judge Vick for his actions as a human being, without making any sort of racial distinction. Many may be quick to defend him by saying that his environment fostered it, with an upbringing in a poor community and little guidance allowing him to believe he can do anything and will be above the law.

It is a compelling argument that boils down to one thing: his public support. We cannot continue to make excuses for him. Our continuing public support of him is like giving a child a piece of candy after he steals something from a store: it tells him that all actions will be forgiven and there will be little grief from his friends and family despite the consequences from outside sources.

The Vick saga characterizes something that has become common in sports: a worship of athletes because of what they can do on a baseball field, a basketball court or on a football field.

Who cares what they do in the privacy of their home? If I am entertained, they can kill as many dogs as they want after they get home from a hard day of practice with the team. Allowing kids to look up to a character like Vick perpetuates a societal norm that will hurt future athletes and people in general: if you are great at what you do on the court, football field or whatever sport you may play, you will be paid an exorbitant amount of money and your character is just an afterthought.

We must radically rethink the way we look at athletes and need to move towards viewing them as real people rather than these mythical titans whose performance is correlated with public love.

This has become especially true with lesser known players that have run into trouble.

There has been little outcry over what has been done to Terry "Tank" Johnson and Adam "Pacman" Jones because they are not the primetime players that Vick is. Instead, they are cast off as misfits in a league of mostly upstanding individuals. They are condemned by a league that will take action against them on just a whisper of what they have done and will wait and see for one of their best players. An athlete is given more leeway only because of what he does on the field, which is wrong and unfortunate.

It is a truth that is all too evident with athletes today and will continue way into the future unless we as fans are able to change the perception we have of athletes. Young kids and people should not idealize Vick because of his incredible talent on the field; instead, we should only look up to Vick and athletes in general if they uphold the social responsibilities that they have.

Vick took on these responsibilities as soon as he signed a $130 million contract to become the face of the franchise, a perennial superstar in the NFL and, for many, a role model. Did he deserve to become one of the highest paid athletes in the world?

The question was for him to answer, and with what he has done since the signing of the contract, the answer is a resounding no. But have we done enough to let him know that he has failed in his duties? I would answer with an equally definitive no.