The odds that Michael Vick recently played football for a federal prison team are about as good as the chances of escaping Alcatraz, federal prisons officials say.

Sure, the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback might have tossed the ball around with a few inmates at the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary Camp, officials said Monday. But he didn't become an inmate at the Kansas facility in time to suit up for the prison football season.

Their assessment contradicts published reports that Vick played for teams in Kansas, staying in shape by tossing the ball.

Vick, convicted of federal dogfighting charges in December, arrived at the minimum-security prison in January, said Tracy Billingsley, a spokesperson for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. He was too late for the football season, which includes only a handful of games.

"They only play [football] in the fall," she said.

Falcons owner Arthur Blank remembered things differently. Blank said he'd exchanged letters with his onetime star, who is serving a 23-month sentence. In an interview with the New York Daily News, Blank said Vick is " staying in shape" the best way he knows how - by playing prison football.

Vick "played quarterback for both sides," Blank said.

Well? Did he or didn't he?

Through a spokesperson, Blank declined an AJC interview request.

A spokesman at Leavenworth's U.S. Penitentiary, adjacent to the minimum-security facility where Vick is incarcerated, sounded incredulous. "I don't know what you're talking about," spokesman Kevin Johnson said.

Billingsley offered a possible explanation. "It's not unheard-of for inmates to toss around a football," she said. "But there just are no games until the fall."

The games aren't the smash-face affairs to which Vick is accustomed, either. "Our institutes only play flag football," she said.

If Vick wants to play football, that's fine, said John Goodwin, who oversees animal-fighting issues for the Humane Society of the United States. The organization called for Vick's incarceration when it learned he had pleaded guilty to dogfighting.

"We'd much rather see a convicted dog-fighter playing in a prison yard than in front of tens of thousands of fans," he said.

Vick isn't likely to play in front of thousands for at least a couple of years, if ever. His projected release date is July 20, 2009.

–Staff writers Ken Sugiura and Chris Vivlamore contributed to this article.