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Sunday, December 9, 2007
Vick’s sentencing, Falcons converge
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
To comment on the Vick sentencing, please go to the Talk of the Town blog.
The sentencing unfolds in a packed courtroom. It will be dissected on air and in print ad nauseam, catastrophe making for great theater.
The game unfolds in a relative 70,000-seat mausoleum. Thousands of seats will be left empty by blinded fans who stepped in it, mistakenly renewing their season tickets before the indictment, before the guilty plea, before one of the most extreme and tragic falls from grace we’ve ever seen, or ever will see.
Michael Vick will be sentenced Monday.
The Falcons will play Monday night.
We have lived at this intersection for too long.
“The electricity he brought to the team and the city was like something I had never seen,” said Bobby Beathard, who joined the Falcons as new owner Arthur Blank’s adviser in 2002. “To make the playoffs that first year, then go to Green Bay and win, you just thought, ‘They’re going places.’ It looked like the Falcons were set up for a long time.”
They were set up. Just not the way we thought.
While the Falcons’ season winds down, like an old Chevy dropping parts along the highway, Vick will be sentenced in Richmond for creating, funding, operating and lying about a dogfighting operation.
Some fans remain handcuffed to their anger. Others have transitioned into sadness. Both are understandable. No athlete ever had so much, money and power, on and off the field, and threw it away for something so mind-boggling and stupid.
Drug and alcohol problems, at least, could be rationalized as a weakness, even disease. But fighting dogs, refusing to cut ties with street punks you called friends, lying to the man who paid you, as well as the teammates you sweated with and the city of fans who bowed at your feet — that, you can’t rationalize. It’s a lethal combination of arrogance and immaturity that could smother any career.
We try to feel sorry for Michael Vick. We try to forgive. But he makes it so hard.
He pled guilty on Aug. 27. He made a statement in which he sounded humbled, embarrassed and contrite.
He said: “I will redeem myself. I have to.”
Two weeks later, he submitted a urine sample that tested positive for marijuana. It was a violation of the conditions of his release before sentencing — to say nothing of a violation of pure common sense.
Part of Vick’s plea agreement was that he would help federal authorities in other dogfighting investigations. He was given the opportunity to reduce his potential sentence. But if he has helped, it has been kept quite a secret. A recent report indicated government officials don’t believe Vick has been forthcoming.
“I need to grow up,” he said after his plea. But his level of doesn’t-get-it-ness just keeps rising. The birth certificate says 27. The actions say 12.
“I feel sadness for Michael,” Beathard said. “Sometimes I’d go back to his locker, and we’d just sit and talk. I liked the guy. He was charismatic, intense, and competitive. Michael gave you something. But he couldn’t get away from the entourage, the guys he grew up with. That can drain your career. It’s just so sad when you think of what he had.”
Yes, he had us at hello, as a rookie in 2001. He had us every Sunday. It was exactly five years last week when Vick’s 46-yard touchdown run in overtime at Minnesota ignited this city and blew up a nation of highlight shows.
He was a reason to watch. No. He was THE reason to watch.
The Falcons, 16-32 in the previous three seasons, went 7-0-1 in one stretch in 2002, Vick’s first year as a starter. They made the playoffs. They went to Green Bay. The Packers had never lost a playoff game at Lambeau Field. They lost that one 27-7. On the first possession of his first postseason game, Vick drove the offense 76 yards in 10 plays for a touchdown. He made the Pro Bowl. Only five other NFL quarterbacks had done that in their first year as a starter.
When Vick played, you couldn’t close your eyes.
Now, you don’t want to open them.
Creditors are lining up. Everybody’s suing. His former house is being auctioned off. His former employer wants $20 million back. A team is wrecked. A city is doubled over.
Monday he is sentenced.
Closure.
We hope.
Permalink | Comments (15) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
Johnson’s the right fit for Jackets
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Paul Johnson has already done what his predecessor couldn’t do in six years of trying: He has Georgia Tech football fans believing again. Tech people never warmed to Chan Gailey, not even on the day of his hiring. But here’s what Taz Anderson, the Atlanta entrepreneur who lettered under Bobby Dodd, said of Johnson:
“He’s the best choice we could have made. He’s perfect for us. He knows the state of Georgia. I like his bearing. … I think he’s the choice of all Tech fans.”
The same Taz Anderson
had become a persistent critic of both Gailey and his sponsor, former athletics director Dave Braine. It was Anderson who said of Gailey’s Braine-bestowed contract extension and Braine’s bizarre assertion that Tech would never win nine or 10 games on a consistent basis: “I’m disappointed Georgia Tech would expect mediocrity in anything. We certainly don’t teach it in architecture or chemistry or engineering. It’s kind of hard to build half a bridge.”
With one hire, Dan Radakovich has bridged the Gailey-generated expanse that had divided Tech fans. More than simply being unable to beat Georgia, the disenchantment was systemic.
Said Anderson: “It didn’t appear there was any real fire in the program.”
Now comes Johnson, who has worked the past 11 years as a collegiate head coach and who has had 10 winning seasons. (Contrast that with Gailey, who arrived in 2002 having been a college head coach for only three seasons, the most recent in 1993.) Now comes Johnson, who has done well with lesser talent and should do no less well with better players. If you can win national championships at Georgia Southern and bowl games at Navy, why can’t you win nine or 10 games at Tech and beat Georgia two times out of five?
As Gailey said the day before his team lost the ACC championship game to Wake Forest 12 months ago, “I think Tech people understand business.” Alas, the majority of Tech folks saw Gailey’s program as mismanaged. His Jackets would beat a good team — but never Georgia — and lose to lesser ones.
Johnson will bring consistency in both method and execution. His teams will run the spread option, and they’ll throw it more than you might think. (Johnson will surely turn Josh Nesbitt into a star.) Anderson again: “His team scored 74 points in a [non-overtime] game — how could you not be excited?”
This buzz, if you will, is what Radakovich had in mind when he spoke of the need for “energy” and “enthusiasm.” Some interpreted that as a call for Bobcat Gold-thwait to come coach the Jackets, but football coaches as a breed tend to be vanilla personalities. (Is Mark Richt a live wire?) The energy and the enthusiasm come from winning, yes, but also from the expectation of winning.
Tech again has that expectation. “Whomever we hired needed to be a fit,” Radakovich said Saturday, “and not just on the football field but with our student-athletes and in the community. We found that fit.”
Has he heard one note of dissent? “I have,” Radakovich said. “Exactly one.”
In the overheated world of college football, one negative is tantamount to unanimity. And Johnson, it must be said, has something going for him Gailey never did — the new man has the backing of an AD Tech people have come to like and trust. Braine, for various and curious reasons, never was viewed in the same light.
Give Radakovich credit: He conducted the first major coaching search of his career in an expert manner. He fired Gailey on a Monday and introduced Johnson 10 days later. In between he met with all the candidates he should have and with one intriguing wild card (Rick Neuheisel). It was so well done that even a guy Tech interviewed but didn’t tap could offer only compliments.
“They treated me well,” said Georgia Southern’s Chris
Hatcher, on hand at the Georgia Dome for the high school playoffs. “And they hired a great coach.”
Permalink | Comments (123) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
