Falcons, Atlanta Fans Punished by NFL for Vick’s Crimes, Poor Finances
In case you haven’t been following the Mike Vick saga closely since he was banished from the league, the disgraced quarterback continues to haunt the Falcons, even from his prison cell.
The reasons that Vick is still a bogeyman to the Falcons have to do with more than merely the continuing bad PR and the embarrassment of the Falcons’ front office. The NFL has mandated that unless the Falcons recover actual $ from Vick, they will receive no cap relief for the amount of money that Vick owes them for breach of his contract. In other words, even though the Falcons and their fans were defrauded by Vick and cheated out of the quarterback play that they paid for in advance, and even though a court has determined that Vick owes the team $3.75 million in bonus money for breaching his contract, unless Vick feels like handing over the cash, the team and Atlanta fans are out of luck. Too bad, so sad.
Of course, the felon is seeking bankruptcy protection, claiming to be between $10 and $50 million in debt (though how it is possible to owe somewhere between $10 and $50 million but not be able to be more specific than a range of $40 million is a mystery to me). If Vick is really broke or simply hiding his assets in off-shore accounts is something for the courts to sort out - the bottom line is that Atlanta is going to have less money than the rest of the NFL to spend in free agency and on their own players while they rebuild the squad in the wake of the Vick debacle.
It hardly seems fair that Atlanta’s team, players, and the few remaining Falcons’ fans should have to foot the bill for a deceptive, profligate, animal-abusing thug, but that is the effect of the NFL’s ruling in this matter. Vick is a specter who can’t be exorcised, it appears.
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