Michael Ventre

Whatever your opinion is of Michael Vick, you have to admit he’s been well coached.

There was Frank Beamer at Virginia Tech, Dan Reeves and Jim Mora, Jr. with the Atlanta Falcons, and now Billy Martin of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan. In fact, Martin, Vick’s defense attorney, might have been the most adept of them all when you consider the trying circumstances and the amount of time he had to work with.

Vick’s brief apology Monday wasn’t scripted, but it was coached. Vick stood at a podium without notes and hit all the damage-control talking points: “forgiveness and understanding,” “bad judgment,” “very immature,” “role model” and “Jesus,” closing with the always popular, “I will redeem myself.”

Was he sincere? Was he sufficiently contrite?

For the most part, yes. He did seem as if he was speaking from the heart – with one glaring omission:

Dogfighting.

Yes, he did hit that target, too, on Monday. He said this: “Dogfighting is a terrible thing and I do reject it.”

That was the one false note. That was the one flubbed line.

And that was the most important point of them all.

This entire scandal is, after all, about dogfighting. It’s a cruel, inhumane, despicable practice, and Vick blew well over $100 million and possibly his entire football career because of his lust for it.

There are millions of people out there who are irate over Vick’s treatment of the pit bulls that he tortured and killed. They wanted to hear his thoughts on dogfighting. They wanted to know how he could ever have gotten involved in such a thing, how he could justify starving animals to make them more ornery in the ring, and most of all, why exactly he and his cohorts had to inflict horrific acts upon dogs he felt didn’t live up to his standards.

This is all about dogfighting, but you wouldn’t have known it from the offhand remark he tossed out Monday during a cameo appearance choreographed to begin the massive repair job on his reputation.

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It is often said by Vick’s defenders that he made a mistake and should be forgiven. But he didn’t make a mistake.

A mistake is an error caused by poor judgment, carelessness or insufficient knowledge. If the postman drops off a package at the wrong address, that’s a mistake. If a person has a couple of beers, makes the unfortunate decision to get behind the wheel and then gets into an accident, that’s a mistake. Human beings can understand when other human beings make mistakes, because we’re all flawed.

What Vick did was not a mistake. It was premeditated. It was plan that was cooked up shortly after he signed his first pro contract. It was a sustained pattern of criminal activity over a period of roughly five years.

This wasn’t a “Gee, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this” situation. This was completely intentional from the start.

It was not a mistake.

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Therefore, the need to understand why Vick did what he did is raging at the center of all of this. And Monday, in an otherwise efficient performance, he fumbled.

The quarterback’s appearance took place after he submitted a plea of guilty on a federal dogfighting charge. A sentencing hearing was then scheduled for Dec. 10.