LET ME BE ME: Like a lot of people, I read Will Leitch's profile of Michael Vick in GQ published online this morning, and, um, is there something I'm missing? Because when you just focus on the parts in which Vick is directly quoted, there's not much there, there, other than the insight that the NFL steered him away from signing with Buffalo or Cincinnati (which had offered him starting jobs) and towards a third-string role in Philadelphia. Beyond that, as much as Leitch tries to suggest that there's a bolder, less remorseful Michael Vick out there being restrained by his PR advisors, the evidence backing that spin seems just doesn't appear on the record.
As I've suggested in the past, I remain uncomfortable with Vick's being the starting quarterback for the Eagles, and believe that atonement and a changed life can only be demonstrated over time. And so far, he's doing that.
Adam, I'm very happy you wrote this. After seeing tweets from Sepinwall and Linda Holmes pointing out how good and important this article was, I was worried that I was going to have to start my own blog this morning just to point out that this article (written by an author I like quite a bit about an athlete I don't like at all, and especially dislike because he is my favorite team's QB) is, basically, an opinion piece dressed up as journalism. Worse, it's an opinion piece expressing the evergreen cliches of (a) famous athletes relations with the public are mediated by communications professionals so we can't trust their public personae, and (b) winning obscures a multitude of sins in the minds of the public.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing (other than the interesting fact of the NFL steering Vick to the Eagles) that Leitch may have uncovered is that Vick seems to believe (maybe) that his "maturation" started before his arrest. This is presented as if it implies that Vick doesn't believe he has done anything wrong, though I think it implies the opposite.
I thought the story was extremely well written, but I also disagree with the notion that it reveals Vick as being relatively unremorseful. I'm not sure we can determine whether he's remorseful or not based on his comments in the story. As Adam mentions, all we can really judge him on at this point are his actions thus far. Vick does imply - after being gently led in that direction by the writer/interviewer, it seems - that his sentence may have been unfair. But isn't it possible to be remorseful while also thinking you may have received a raw deal in your sentencing? I don't think that's necessarily inconsistent.
ReplyDeleteThe Phillymag Vick profile was better, and that piece wasn't that great.
ReplyDeleteNothing in this piece is new, but it's also not new for a Will Leitch article to be overhyped. I'm enjoying Doug Farrar attempting to turn this into a big scandal, though.
I think the focus on remorse misses the point. Vick is pretty clear that he knows what he did was wrong, if nothing else because it was illegal. The interesting thing to me is that Vick doesn't seem to believe his experience in prison changed him, instead he had already changed and was leaving behind what he considers essentially youthful indiscretions, he just got caught before he could cut ties. He also seems to feel the media criticism went overboard and, while Leitch led him there, confirms that on some level there's just a cultural divide that makes something commonplace to him incomprehensible to others and therefore implies some mitigation of culpability.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who lives in Newport News and taught middle school kids who grew up in the same neighborhoods as Vick, I get where he's coming from and don;t necessarily disagree, I just think it's interesting to see a few cracks in the PR facade in which he had thus far agreed to take every lump without complaint.
On a football note, I think it's important that he dismisses the idea that he's a different QB in Philly because they've taught him anything, instead they just let Vick be Vick. That certainly contradicts the countless hours of "expert" analysis indicating how much more polished of a passer he is. I think I agree with Vick, he's always been inconsistently amazing with insane highs followed by mediocre play followed by Houdini escapes.
I think he is a much more polished passer now than he was in Atlanta and disagreed with Vick's assessment there, though it's worth noting that Roddy White really struggled during the Vick years before developing into a star the last couple of years. If Vick had gotten a chance to throw to the current version of Roddy White, perhaps he would have seemed like a much better passer.
ReplyDeleteImagine being a colts fan and thinking all this time Marvin Harrison was a good guy. At least with Vick, you know he made mistakes and you know he won't do it again. I wish he was less remorseful, frankly, not because of what he did was wrong but because two years of prison and two years of public atonement is quite enough. He broke the law in horrible ways, but he shouldn't spend the rest of his life feeling publicly guilty about it, not when the appropriate punishment is written down. (who knows or cares what's really in his head?) he doesn't of course because his job is to play football, not bust on society, but if he wants to have a press conference and say that he's thru with public displays of contrition, and that it should be sufficient for everyone involved that he's not planning on doing any more dogfighting, I'd love it. Too bad he didn't sign for Rex Ryan.
ReplyDeleteI'm a little confused by the notion offered in some places that we should grant more credence to Will Leitch's metanarrative than we do to Nike's. Isn't it all just opinion and spin?
ReplyDeleteAnd, in fact, if Leitch wanted to write something along the lines of Nike's metanarrative, GQ wouldn't have published it. It'd be boring.
ReplyDeleteI didn't lend any credence to the story when I saw a link to highliting the author as "Will Leitch of <span>Yahoo! Movies</span>"
ReplyDeleteWell that's ok, if anything happens to Michael Vick this season, you'll still have Vince Young!
ReplyDeleteOn behalf of all Titans fans, enjoy that! And by "enjoy that," I mean boo him the way only Philadelphia sports fans know how to do.
The general impression I've always gotten from Vick is that he isn't particularly sorry for what he did, just that he got caught. Also, you never know what sort of material was cut by editors or what Leitch heard off the record that might have influenced his tone. I'm not against Vick being given a clean slate legally and socially- I mean, I'm keeping him for $5 in a fantasy football league- but I also think we're all allowed to make our own minds up about him.
ReplyDeleteThat's a pretty myopic view to take, given that Will Leitch did some pretty groundbreaking stuff with The Black Table, has four published books (two by notable publishers HarperCollins and Hyperion), built Deadspin from the ground up (contributing to a massive sea change in sports media), and works as a contributing editor at New York Magazine. The new web economy has lots of incredible writers sporting bylines that would've been laughable just a few years previous.
ReplyDeleteUnless he's talking about Deadspin, which, of course, cited him as "Yahoo! Movies Blogger Will Leitch" because, well, that's what they do.
ReplyDeleteGuest was me
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that we're all allowed to make up our own minds about Vick. Further, if I had to make a guess, I would probably come down on the side that he isn't all that remorseful at this point (if he ever was), because I've never liked him. My problem with the article is that it presents itself as if it has new information to add to help make that determination, but I don't think it actually does.
ReplyDeleteWere the author of the article someone I had never heard of, I would have automatically assumed that it's tone was influenced more by its interest in seeming newsworthy so as to get published and noticed than by things heard off the record. That would have been uncharitable of me, however, and I think a fairer read is that the tone was most likely influenced by the author having previously made up his own mind about him.
Actually, I may have been harder than the article than I should have been. I can see the argument that the article is being presented (as Linda Holmes points out in her unsurprisingly interesting take on Monkey See) as a first person account of what the author thinks about Vick. My irritation is that I am seeing it being received as a piece of evidence against Vick rather than an opinion piece.
ReplyDeleteThis takes me back to our discussion about Roethlisberger last season. It's funny that these guys would have more trouble getting a job at Duane Reade for minimum wage than playing professional football for millions.
ReplyDeleteNot, like, haha funny. The other one.
ReplyDeleteIf there's one thing Andy Reid knows, it's mobile quarterbacks.
ReplyDeleteIf there's two things Andy Reid knows, it's movile quarterbacks and donuts.
ReplyDeleteThis is the passage that made me think he was unremorseful. It's not that he thinks the sentence was too long -- that's fair, if inadvisable to say in public. It's that he doesn't seem to think that his crime had victims.
ReplyDeleteI ask him if he buys this argument, if he believes he was treated unfairly. Most people convicted of dogfighting don't spend a year and a half in prison. They aren't forced to declare bankruptcy. I ask him if he was sent to prison for too long.
"One day in prison is too long," he says.
Yes, but I mean for this particular crime.
He sighs. I'm not the first person who's tried to lead him down this road. "For a while, it was all 'Scold Mike Vick, scold Mike Vick, just talk bad about him, like he's not a person,' " he says. "It's almost as if everyone wanted to hate me. But what have I done to anybody? It was something that happened, and it was people trying to make some money." He pauses and looks around. Time to step back from the edge. He's recovered so much ground that he's not about to lose it all again by taking things too far with some writer he just met. "But it's not fair. It's not fair to the animal. I know what to do now. I am strong as an individual, and I can handle anything."
He has half a point -- he didn't do anything to any of the people who criticize him without knowing him. "anybody" in his question refers to he "everyone" who "wanted to hate [him]."
ReplyDeleteand yet mobile donuts give him a lot of trouble.
ReplyDeleteWhat about donuts purchased at a Mobil?
ReplyDelete"It" wasn't something that just "happened"; people made it happen, and he was one of those people. What an asshole.
ReplyDelete<span>built Deadspin from the ground up (contributing to a massive sea change in sports media)</span>
ReplyDeleteIs this supposed to be a good thing? Associating Leitch with Yahoo! Movies was doing him a favor.