Writer's Alert-FW Star-Telegram Editorial on Vick

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This is a perfect opportunity to write a brief, polite LTE to Paul Harrel, Editor of the Editorial Page, FW Star Telegram in response to the below FWST column.FW Star-Telegram LTE email: lettersRemember to keep your polite email under 200 words and include your name, address, and day time telephone. If they decide to publish, they must first call you first to confirm you sent the letter. MargaretVick's answers leave lots of questions By Jim Reeves Star-Telegram Staff Writer That resounding clank that Michael Vick heard Friday wasn't just the symbolic sound of a cell door hopefully closing

somewhere in his immediate future, it was also the sound of the other shoe falling. That the shoe was on the foot of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and happened to connect resoundingly to Vick's backside should have come as a surprise to no one, least of all the now former Falcons quarterback. This is what Goodell is building a reputation on: He

sweeps out the trash and, unfortunately, there's a lot more of it in his league than he might have realized when he took the job. On Monday, Vick will formally plead guilty before a federal judge. Sentencing will come later, but reports have indicated he'll get 18 months in federal prison. Goodell didn't wait to hand down his verdict. Once Vick

signed off on his plea agreement Friday, including admitting to bankrolling the Bad Newz Kennels gambling operation and to the killing of dogs by "the collective efforts" of him and associates, the commissioner suspended him indefinitely without pay. "Your admitted conduct was not only illegal, but also cruel and reprehensible," Goodell wrote in his letter to Vick. "Your plea agreement and the plea agreements of your co-defendants also demonstrate your significant involvement in illegal gambling... You have engaged in conduct detrimental to the welfare of the NFL and have violated the league's Personal Conduct Policy." Goodell's action wasn't unexpected. By making the suspension indefinite, he leaves it open-ended, but if it's anything less than three years, it won't be enough. Vick's hands are red with the blood of dogs who fought and died like gladiators for his pleasure -- those who made the grade and weren't summarily and grotesquely executed anyway -- and it's obvious in the fine print

of his 11-page plea agreement that he's still looking for an out that he never gave his pit bulls, who went into the ring under a death sentence. The scary thing is that Vick might find it. After studying the plea agreement Friday, ESPN legal analyst Roger Cossack came to the conclusion that Vick might not even spend a single day behind bars.

Why? How, you wonder, can this even be possible? Here's how: One of the main stipulations in the plea agreement is Vick's future cooperation in providing information, and even court testimony in other cases, about the secret world of dogfighting. It falls under a section called, appropriately enough, "Defendant's Cooperation." "The defendant agrees to cooperate fully and truthfully with the United States , and provide all information known to the defendant regarding any criminal activity as requested by the government." It goes on to stipulate that Vick will make himself available to testify in front of grand juries and at future trials, for additional debriefing and pre-trial conferences, must provide all documentation relating to his dogfighting enterprise, submit to polygraph tests at the government's whim, and provide additional information that may not be included in the plea agreement. In other words, Vick, like his co-conspirators before him, is offering to rat out others -- friends, family, maybe even

teammates -- if it will cut off some of his own jail time. Sorry, I'd like to give him credit for being so cooperative, but considering that he was backed into this corner, fighting tooth and nail, I'll have to take the cynical viewpoint. So we have to ask ourselves: What does all this cooperation buy him? Is he angling for probation? House arrest?

Extra chocolate chip cookies? Will the judge cut him some slack for turning informant? Or is the fact that the federal prosecutors are asking the judge to hand down something on the lower end of the scale as far as prison time what Vick is getting for his willingness to spill the beans on others in the business of killing dogs for their so-called sporting pleasure? We just don't know yet, and that's the unsettling thing about the agreement that came down Friday. It's what has legal experts like Cossack wondering if Vick is destined for real jail time, or merely a lengthy probation while he spends the next couple of years schmoozing with federal investigators and testifying against his former dogfighting partners. Vick's defense attorneys once again issued an apology on behalf of their client Friday, including this statement: "Mr. Vick apologizes for his poor judgment in associating himself with those involved in dogfighting and realizes he should never have been involved in this conduct."

Sadly, Vick himself has yet to personally stand up and publicly express even a smidgen of remorse, though his attorney, Billy Martin, told The Associated Press Friday that Vick will at some point "speak to the public and explain his actions." The Tom Joyner Morning Show, a syndicated program based in Dallas , has announced that it will have a live interview with Vick on Tuesday. What no one should buy is that this was just a mistake, a lapse in judgment. Wearing plaid shorts with a striped shirt is a mistake. Ordering Tex-Mex in Philadelphia is a lapse in judgment. For Vick, killing dogs is something he's been doing his entire adult life. It's not just that he associated with the wrong crowd, he was the wrong

crowd. That message even came from his father, Michael Boddie, in a revealing interview with TheAtlanta Journal-Constitution. Boddie told the newspaper that Vick organized and ran dog fights in the garage of the family home in Newport News, Va., six years ago,

though both his father and mother advised him to stop. "I wish people would stop sugarcoating it," Boddie said. "This is Mike's thing. And he knows it." Now Mike's thing, what he's earned, is prison time. If he somehow weasels out of it, then justice is indeed blind.

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