Forgiveness and 2nd Chances - Mike Vick and Lawrence Taylor? (1 Viewer)

[Joe Bryant]

Here's something I've been thinking about. 

And wondered what you guys thought.

Good story this week where Darren Rovell reported Mike Vick has paid back 17.4 million to creditors he owed in his bankruptcy. Something most people never do.

Former NFL quarterback Michael Vick made the final $1.5 million payment to creditors on Thursday, meaning he paid back $17.4 million of the $17.6 million that he owed when he filed for bankruptcy in July 2008.

The payment and final payouts were confirmed by Joseph Luzinski, a senior vice president at Development Specialists Inc., a management consultancy firm and the liquidating trustee in Vick's bankruptcy.

"Paying 99 cents on the dollar, which he did, is remarkable," Luzinski said. "It happens in, maybe, one out of 100 cases."

Vick elected to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy instead of Chapter 7, which would have allowed him to liquidate his assets and not owe any more. Vick, who served 548 days in jail for taking part in an illegal dogfighting ring, took the rare step of kicking in future income to pay off his creditors.

"I didn't want to stiff people who never stiffed me," Vick told ESPN in 2014.

I caught some flack back when Vick was released from prison when I supported him saying he'd paid his debt to society.

This week, Lawrence Taylor is on a promo with Joe Theisman for NBC and people seem less forgiving. 

Taylor is a registered sex offender and his name and picture still appear in an online database stemming from a 2010 incident in which the Pro Football Hall of Famer was charged with third-degree rape, patronizing a prostitute, sexual abuse and endangering a child after he was busted for having sex with a 16-year-old girl at a hotel in Rockland County. The girl claimed she had been beaten by her pimp and was forced to go to Taylor's hotel room, where they had sex.

In my own head, I have an easier time forgiving Vick than Taylor.

Is it comparing the victims? Is it that Vick seems to have changed more? Not sure. What do you guys think?