AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2007 > June > 02
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Reeves doesn’t see his Vick in headlines today
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
No, he didn’t hear, see or suspect anything involving Michael Vick and illegal dogfighting during the three seasons they were together. No, he never had a significant problem with the suddenly trouble-filled Falcons quarterback either on or off the field. No, he hasn’t a clue about how this will end.
Here’s what former Falcons coach Dan Reeves does know: Before he maneuvered in 2001 to make Vick the No. 1 pick overall in the NFL draft, he did what most of his peers would have done. That is, he called those in charge of the league’s security staff to check for anything strange in Vick’s past, dogfighting or otherwise.
Nothing, the NFL told Reeves. Still, last week an unidentified police informant told ESPN Vick was present and betting heavily on dogfighting in 2000, when he played at Virginia Tech.
“I spent a lot of time talking to [Virginia Tech football coach Frank Beamer], and he certainly didn’t know anything about [Vick and dogfighting],” said Reeves, now an NFL analyst for Westwood One radio when he isn’t helping Georgia State with its football ambitions. “I never heard anything about any misdoings by [Vick] coming out of college, and the league certainly didn’t know of anything. I mean, Michael was like a son. I enjoyed being around him, and he was fun to be around.”
As a result, with the feds, the Virginia judicial system and the NFL’s no-nonsense commissioner starting to bark at Vick louder than those 66 dogs involved in his latest controversy, Reeves gave an invitation to Vick three weeks ago. “I talked to him, and I told him at that time, ‘Hey, you know, I’m here. You need somebody to talk to, to bounce things off of, whatever. You know, don’t hesitate to call me,’ ” Reeves said. “So I’m always there to talk to him if he needs help. He knows that. I don’t want to interfere with him, but all of that has got to come from him.”
The phone at Reeves’ Buckhead home has yet to ring with Vick on the other end, but Reeves should stand by.
News continues to break about Vick’s possible role in dogfighting. That news ranges from the Virginia prosecutor in Surry County claiming he has enough evidence to indict as yet unnamed persons to AirTran dropping Vick as an endorser to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell sending league security to the scene to assist in the local investigation.
Not good. In contrast, there was 2002, when Vick finished his last full season under Reeves with the highest quarterback rating of his career. Vick also was maturing as a person. Among other things, Reeves hired someone to help Vick with his diction to improve his speaking in the huddle and in interviews.
“Michael was very much involved in wanting to be the best he could be and trying to do the right things,” Reeves said. “He had a great heart. Now there is no question he had some things you had to talk to him about, involving his associations. He was greatly influenced by what people would say, because he was young. There were several things that happened, but it was more about, ‘Michael, you got to be careful about who you associate with.’ And I think that’s a little bit of what’s happening now. It’s just gotten out of hand.”
Which brings us to this: Reeves has been around the NFL awhile. He went to Super Bowls as a player and coach in Dallas, Denver and Atlanta. He even froze as a player during the Ice Bowl in Green Bay.
So what’s going to happen here? “I have no idea, but I’m hoping and praying Michael’s not going to be involved and that the only thing he’s guilty of is making some poor decisions as far as letting people on his property and so forth,” Reeves said. “I mean, [dogfighting] is a felony. It’s not like you not knowing this is illegal. It’s illegal most everywhere you go.”
Then Reeves paused, before mentioning his love affair with golden retrievers, Cavalier King Charles spaniels, and other types of canines. “Shoot, man. You don’t mess with my dogs,” said Reeves, easing into a chuckle. His chuckle got louder, when the Americus native added, “Dogs are the only things that you can count on that will love you when you come home. No matter what the score is.”
Permalink | | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Paterno upholds values at Penn State
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Leave it to Joe Paterno. He’s more than 80 years old and loves to coach a football team. He got so close to the action last season that a leg was broken in a sideline pile-up. He still kept showing up, on crutches or wheels. He believes football is a team game. No players’ names on Nittany Lion jerseys, which are as plain and unadorned as a garbage collector’s, which brings me around to the subject of the day.
In early April, one of his players, Anthony Scirrotto, and a girlfriend were insulted on the street and Scirrotto was slugged by some passers-by. He called some of his teammates, and a number of them, 14 or 15, came to his aid and crashed a party where the sluggers had come from, and a bigtime brawl broke out. More football players joined in, and in the end, it all wound up in court in State College.
Paterno waited for the legal process to play out; then he swung into action. The punishment he dealt will go down in history, and might get the attention of coaches who usually punish such dudes by ordering them to run stadium steps, or do workouts at dawn. Not Joe. Rather than try to sort it all out, he laid a sentence on the whole team. Get this:
Next season, the Penn State football team, all of them, will clean up Beaver Stadium after each home game, tidying up after 107,282 guests. That’s how many Beaver Stadium seats. The players will get a major test right off. Notre Dame plays there in early September, after which the place will look like a storm struck. There willl be seven home games in all, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio State and Purdue to follow.
But why the whole team? Wouldn’t some of the innocents say, “Why me? I wasn’t there.”
Paterno answered the question before it was asked. Rather than try to figure out who did what to whom and who was to blame, he went for the whole team, once again demonstrating an above-average standard, as one might expect of a Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year choice, not once, but twice.
“I just thought we had 14 or 15 kids — I don’t know how many — that were involved in something embarrassing and I wanted to prove that we are not a bunch of hoodlums,” Joe said. “I don’t condone fighting. Our kids were wrong.”
First thing the average alumnus would worry about is, “Oh, my gosh, what will this do to our recruiting?” Well, Paterno isn’t worried about recruits. He’s worried about the reputation of Penn State football. This was a shot across the bow.
Usually, stadium clean-up is handled by members of club sports teams at Penn State, crew, lacrosse, volleyball, soccer and such. They share a $5,000 fee for each game. The clubs will continue to join in the clean-up, and collect the same fee, but this season they’ll have some upper-class help. As a sort of warm-up for the job ahead, Penn State’s football players will build a house for Habitat for Humanity and work with Special Olympics this summer.
“We’re all going to do it. We’re in this together. This is a team embarrassment,” Paterno said. If anything like this has ever been done before, it has never been recorded in the history of college football — at that level at least. In the small-college leagues, perhaps, but as a necessity there, not as punishment.
“So far, the only reaction we’ve had,” Jeff Nelson, the sports information director, said, “has been e-mails and others expressing support and pleasure. Of course, students are away for the summer and the campus newspaper isn’t being published.”
But this is not something that will rock Paterno’s boat. He has weathered storms before and charged back. “Team” is Paterno’s theme, as he said: “We’re all in this together.” His main concern may be when cameras and reporters show up on Sunday morning, making a story of it, players collecting wrappers, cups and such trash, hosing down stairs and doing the work of a garbage crew.
Call it the Paterno Rule. He wants to prove that Penn State players aren’t “trashy.”
Permalink | Comments (19) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
