Catching up mit Vickkampf

John Clayton doesn't think that Vick is going to be suspended($) because of the lack of proof that he was involved, at least at present. What I'd like to see from Clayton is an explanation as to how Pac Man Jones could be suspended early in the legal process (I don't think he's been indicted, has he?), but the NFL has to wait for the indictment process to play itself out in Vick's case. It couldn't have anything to do with Vick's stature in the NFL relative to Jones's, could it?

Surry County DA Gerald Poindexter (whom I have to remind myself not to refer to as "Buster") has declined to execute a warrant to search Vick's property for dog remains, which is either consistent with the charge that he's slow-playing his investigation for political/laziness reasons or it's consistent with the notion that he's being extra-careful to deny Vick any procedural defenses in the event that he does bring charges. In any event, the search of the property is not a major issue, since there is a wealth of evidence to show that dog fighting took place at the property. The key question is going to be who was present at the fights and who was funding and running the operation.

I suppose I should also link ESPN's anonymous source article, in which a "confidential source" claims that Vick is into dog fighting in a major way. I generally don't have problems with anonymous sources, since they provide most of the interesting political news that is ultimately accepted as true. (See, for example, the disclosures regarding the warrantless wiretapping program implemented by the Bush Administration.) I also think that this is yet more smoke that Vick was not merely a victim of not controlling his friends and relatives. All that said, I would have liked to have seen ESPN show their work by devoting some time to explaining why this particular source is credible. How do I know that this just isn't some guy who wants to lay the groundwork for notoriety and happens to know about dog fighting?

One other thought on the ESPN article: don't think that I didn't grin when I first read the article and it depicted Vick betting a significant amount of money on his dog while he was still attending Virginia Tech.

I should also link SI's piece on the investigation and on dog fighting in general, which is really well-done. It demonstrates that when SI and ESPN go head to head on investigating and writing, SI can be trusted to do a better job. If nothing else, the Vick episode has highlighted the prevalence and ugliness of dog fighting and George Dohrmann's piece does the best job of painting that picture.