Vick is the face of the new NFL - Ingles

The NFLPA did not go to war with ownership so Michael Vick could sign a $100 million (U.S.) deal.

The ostensible idea of any union fight is to increase and then spread around the benefits of employment. In both cases, the players’ union failed. Good thing, too, because that’s part of what makes the NFL so popular.

The result of a lot of soft-Marxist rhetoric about workers controlling their labour was an increasingly Orwellian divide — all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
The most equal of all are the quarterbacks, followed closely by those who protect the quarterback (tackles), those who compliment the quarterbacks (receivers) and especially those who hurt the quarterbacks (pass rushers).

The cull of those who must survive outside this nexus has been the story so far of the new NFL season. Bottom line: if you are a running back or an interior offensive lineman, be afeared. This league has a free pipeline to its minor-league system in college, and you are the easily replaceable tackling dummies.

If the trend continues, NFL offences will soon be comprised of a $30 million quarterback, a $15 million receiver, a $10 million blind-side tackle and eight other guys who have to take part-time jobs in the summer.

Part of what makes the NFL so attractive to its middle-class fan base is its stark divide between rich and poor (comparatively speaking). Contracts are conditional on health and performance. This year’s star is next year’s construction worker. Everyone but the gilded few is one turned ankle or two consecutive fumbles away from unemployment.

Baseball, basketball and hockey are filled to brimming with overpaid mooks who snookered some desperate GM into signing them to an insane long-term deal, staggering from one underwhelming season to the next, getting richer each year. Not so in the ruthless NFL, which makes it appealingly like real life.

Vick’s rehabilitation — both physical and moral — is the ne plus ultra of this trend.

In 2005, he signed a $130 million deal with the Atlanta Falcons, then the biggest in the league. In 2007, he was caught in a sting on a dog fighting ring. The Falcons tried to recoup $16 million of the front-loaded portion of his contract on the dubious legal basis that they didn’t like him any more. They failed. Vick was forced to declare bankruptcy in any case.

He was publicly flayed by the NFL, the Falcons and anyone else with access to a keyboard. He went to prison. He meekly accepted his humiliation, which set in motion his eventual atonement.

Throughout it all, Vick maintained the sort of soft-spoken, affectless personality that allowed others to project their opinions on to him. He was hateful when people hated him. He’s redemptive now that we’ve decided to redeem him. It’s unclear if Vick understands the circularity of these sorts of narratives, but the skill with which he has ridden this one out may be his greatest professional achievement.

Truth is, Vick was probably never as bad as he once seemed, nor as good as he seems now. Nobody ever is.

As soon as he was released from jail, the NFL swung into ‘let’s give the man a chance’ mode. This league thrives despite the transience of its stars, but it’s always short of quarterbacks. Bankrupt dog-fighting enthusiasts who play safety end up working at gas stations; quarterbacks get the benefit of the doubt.

According to Vick, he was steered away from the starter’s spotlight in Cincinnati and Buffalo and offered a third-string job with Philadelphia. Again, he quietly took what he was given. Two years later, his sins are expunged and he has just pocketed $40 million in up-front money.

Is that fair?

No, which is why it works.

In this corner of professional sport, you accept what comes to you because the lineup for your job stretches down the block. Michael Vick trusted that system, and it has made him wealthy again. Few have the talent or the luck in the position they play to follow his lead — that rarity of opportunity makes his story that much more compelling.

Ad agency constructs like Tom Brady and Peyton Manning may get the uncritical love, but it is Vick who is the representative man of the new NFL. This article was written by Cathal Kelly and appeared in The Toronto Star.