mad sweeney said:
I thought it was a very heartfelt and proper statement. The only thing I take poorly from it was that he repeated a few times that he "never pointed the finger at anyone", which is exactly what he did until his boys rolled on him. All of his excuses at the beginning about never being there, his family taking advantage of him etc... So he's still doing some spin control, but a very sincere statement on his part. A different Mike Vick than we've seen before.
But other than that, he did all the right things, looked sincere and genuine (the exact opposite of a TO conference), he admitted to lying to his friends and teammates and bosses and I gained a little respect for him and hope he can make good on the promises he made today.
Sorry, but I totally disagree. An apology is only worth as much as the fault the person accepts. They have to take ownership for their misdeeds. All the cliches about "letting down the kids/teammates/family", blah, blah, blah, focuses on the effects rather than the cause, which is to say that it dodges the point. Your post, ostensibly defending Vick, actually argues better for the opposite. Vick has a huge amount of vested interests that would like to do nothing more than minimize all of this so that they can "just move on". His handlers coached him to say a few catch phrases, which he dutifully repeated over and over. Frankly, that's probably about all they could expect from someone of his intellectual caliber, but that just means it was all the more transparent.
Vick's not upset because he genuinely thinks he did something wrong. He's upset because he got caught and because his asinine decision to breed and fight dogs over mere thousands of dollars has ended up costing him tens of millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and endorsements and has resulted in public embarrassment, all while he can't play football for at least a couple of years and maybe never again.
Jeezus, I spend 3-4 months arguing about what a POS Vick is and I make one comment about his apology and somehow I'm put up as a Vick Defender. I was NOT DEFENDING VICK. All I said was that I thought his apology sounded more sincere than guys like TO, who are "sorry that people took offense to something I might have said or done". I even pointed out that he didn't come fully clean in his statements today but I thought that otherwise he took 1 step in a miles long journey and now I'm a Vick lover. And that's all I said.If I just lost $100 million dollars and my freedom I would feel a lot more sorry for my loss than for my crime too, and I never said anything to the opposite. Sorry is sorry. He's getting VERY punished for it and he has time to reflect on it. Whether or not he actually thinks dogfighting is a crime or that he did anything wrong, he has learned respect for the law, humility and suffering. And that is a part of redemption and becoming a part of society again. I doubt he plays again and I don't think he should and I don't want him to. He hasn't fully admitted his guilt about the gambling and that should keep him out of the league. But his apology today wasn't about the gambling, it was about the dogfighting and in that respect he more or less sounded sincerely sorry. And to me he went from 100% ####head to 99%. Clearly a I'm a Vick Defender.
Mad Sweeney,I understood what you said the first time you said it, but just because you said something that might seem as though you're giving Vick an credit you get jumped on and people tell you how horrible dog fighting is and how many dogs he killed or whatever. When in fact what you said really had nothing to do with what happened in the past. It happened its over and done with and cant be taken back. Now steps have to be taking to repair the damage done. In this case it was damn either way, if he didn't apologize he would be cold blooded and unremorseful. He apologizes and now he didn't mean it. So this obviously mean you're stupid to believe him. right? surely everybody who does a terrible thing cant be truly sorry they did it right? Sometimes people are involved in terrible thing and until your caught and reflect on what you were really doing, and really think about who you are/were you just dont think about it when your doing it. i generally like to believe that people can changes. Is it a guarantee?no is it certain?no but there is proof that it can happen.
Now what happening to u is what happens most of the time. People pile on and no matter what you say or do its viewed as bad. Most wouldn't be satisfied until Vick is living under a bridge pushing a shopping cart around. Might sound extreme but just read some of the post about him.
Think back in your life to the worse thing you've ever done(not just what you got caught doing) no matter how bad it was and ask yourself would I really want to be known for that for the rest of my life?
