"Playing to Wrong Crowd: Longtime Loyalties Are Seen as Culprits In Vick's Undoing"
- From: Mike <yard22192@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 06:14:44 -0700
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/20/AR2007082000898.html
Playing to Wrong Crowd
Longtime Loyalties Are Seen as Culprits In Vick's Undoing
By Mark Maske
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 21, 2007; E01
BROOKLYN, Md. -- James Boddie rose from a leather chair in the living
room of his townhouse, minutes from downtown Baltimore, and walked
upstairs to retrieve something. "I want to show you this," he said.
He'd been telling stories about his grandson, Michael Vick, stories
about how a poor kid from a rough neighborhood in Newport News, Va.,
could use football to build a fancy house for his mother and a life of
fame and riches for himself. He had been telling of taking a train to
New York to be with his grandson and other family members when the
Atlanta Falcons made Vick, a quarterback from Virginia Tech with a
powerful left arm and magical legs, the top pick in the NFL draft in
April 2001.
Boddie returned with a frame containing a draft-day picture of Vick
and a signed commemorative draft T-shirt. That was a fond memory
indeed. "Got a chance to meet Joe Theismann and all those guys,"
Boddie said.
For those who care about Vick, it has become a struggle to keep the
good times from becoming fading memories. Yesterday, Vick, 27, agreed
to plead guilty to federal dogfighting charges and likely will be
sentenced to 12 to 18 months in prison. He also faces further possible
Virginia state charges and an NFL suspension.
An athletic career, once so promising that it earned him a $130
million contract, is in ruins.
"It's just sad when someone has that much God-given talent for
something," former Falcons coach Dan Reeves said, "and it's
potentially going to be wasted."
There are multiple explanations for Vick's downfall, according to
interviews conducted the past few weeks with family members and Vick's
former teammates, and a review of court documents related to the case.
Vick could not be reached to comment and some of the key figures in
his life refused to be interviewed.
The most prominent theory, espoused by Boddie and Reeves, blames much
of Vick's troubles on his continued association with childhood friends
who have questionable pasts. Those same friends were the ones who
agreed to testify against Vick in exchange for more lenient sentences
for their roles in the crimes.
Court papers, however, portray Vick as someone whose legal troubles
are his own doing. They show Vick as the unquestioned leader of a
vicious dogfighting operation. Not only did he finance it, but he also
carried out some of its most heinous crimes, including the killings of
dogs.
For some, the truth lies somewhere in between. As one person familiar
with the case said: "Clearly, he's the leader but he couldn't say no
to them and he couldn't cut them loose."
Regardless of the causes, it is difficult to find a greater non-injury-
related demise of a top American professional athlete in the prime of
his career.
"He could have saved a lot of people a lot of heartache, like his
mother for one, if he'd done what was right from the beginning,"
Michael Boddie, Vick's father, said yesterday.
The Rise
Michael Boddie met his future wife, Brenda Vick, when they lived
across a courtyard from one another in Newport News. The young couple
had four children, two daughters and two sons, but didn't get married
until just before the birth of the youngest child, Courtney. Brenda
took the last name Boddie but the older children, including Michael,
chose to keep calling themselves Vick.
Michael Boddie spent time in the Army. James Boddie has a picture on
his living room wall of his son in uniform, alongside a larger frame
with a collection of photos that includes shots of an approximately 10-
year-old Michael Vick with his three siblings and a high school-age
Vick with his mother. Michael Boddie eventually followed in his
father's footsteps and became a welder; he also was a carpenter.
Periodic layoffs made money tight and Brenda, according to James
Boddie, worked at Kmart and as a bus driver during the lulls when
Michael Boddie wasn't working.
One person who knew Michael Vick as a young boy, speaking on the
condition of anonymity because of the controversy in which Vick now is
engulfed, said Michael Boddie was in and out of the young Michael
Vick's life and Vick's "stabilizers" were his mother and grandmother.
James and Michael Boddie dispute the notion. James said the
characterization sprang from the fact that Brenda attended Michael
Vick's games at Virginia Tech while Michael Boddie usually stayed at
home with the other children.
"You've never seen me, have you?" Michael Boddie said in a telephone
interview last week. "You never see me in interviews or anything. But
I've been in his life. There was the two and a half years I was in the
Army that I wasn't, but I came back three months before he turned 3.
Me and Brenda got our first apartment together in '83. We lived in the
same house, under the same roof, and raised our children. All those
stories you've heard about me leaving my children? It's not true.
Someone persuaded my wife and child to make it seem like he came from
a broken home to help his chances in the NFL. This is what was told to
my family and they bought into. I didn't say anything about it because
I didn't want to put my wife in no bad light and hurt my son."
Michael Vick grew up near Ridley Circle and 12th Street in the rugged
East End section of Newport News; the crime- and drug-ridden southeast
part of town was nicknamed "Bad Newz" (Vick and his co-defendants
allegedly called their dogfighting venture the "Bad Newz Kennels").
Family members called Michael Vick "Ookie," a nickname that turned up
as an alias in his dogfighting indictment. James Boddie said he didn't
know the meaning of the nickname. "Who knows?" he said. "But they've
been calling him that ever since he was knee-high."
Some accounts of Vick's life have maintained that he might have been
headed toward trouble as a kid but chose football over the streets.
James Boddie, however, said the Vick children were never in trouble
more serious than breaking a window playing ball. Michael Vick found
his way to the local boys' club, where his competitiveness was
evident, whether he was playing basketball or table tennis. His best
sport at first was baseball, said someone who knew the young Vick, but
a boys' club coach steered him toward football when he was 9 or 10.
Vick's younger brother, Marcus, would follow him to Virginia Tech as a
quarterback; his second cousin, Aaron Brooks, would become an NFL
quarterback. But Michael Vick's ability transcended theirs and was
apparent from the moment he first picked up a football with his left
hand -- which was odd, since he did most other things right-handed.
James Boddie's wife, Evelyn, said as she sat near her husband in their
living room last week that family members always told stories of the
neighborhood kids running out to catch passes from the young Michael
Vick, just to see how far he could throw the ball. James Boddie said:
"It was just a gift, and it was a way out. It was a way out from 12th
Street."
Michael Vick became a standout at Warwick High but still was playing
in the shadow of nearby quarterbacking prodigy Ronald Curry, who would
go on to play both football and basketball at the University of North
Carolina and now is a wide receiver with the Oakland Raiders.
Vick took a recruiting visit to Syracuse during which he befriended
the school's quarterback, current Philadelphia Eagles standout Donovan
McNabb, but chose Virginia Tech.
Pierson Prioleau, a backup safety for the Washington Redskins who once
was a teammate at Virginia Tech, recalled a practice early in Vick's
collegiate career in which Vick was assigned to emulate McNabb on the
scout team, getting the Hokies' defensive players ready to face the
Syracuse star that week.
"And oh, did he play it well," Prioleau said. "The guys on our defense
were saying, 'There's no way Donovan McNabb is that fast.' From that
day on, I knew he'd be something special."
The next season, Vick led the Hokies to the national title game in his
first season as a starter. He played two seasons at Virginia Tech
after being redshirted for a season, and Prioleau said Vick was well-
liked. "I never heard a bad word about him," Prioleau said. "He was
just a regular guy."
Perhaps too regular. James Boddie said his grandson got homesick at
times during college and would go back to Newport News to hang out
with old associates from his neighborhood. Reeves, who was Vick's
first NFL head coach, said: "That's really what got him into trouble.
He was indicted with three people that he should have been as far away
from as east from west."
Former Virginia Tech linebacker Brenden Hill, a lifelong friend of
Marcus Vick who knows both brothers, said the Vicks remained highly
loyal to their home town and the people they knew there. Marcus
tattooed "757," the area code for Newport News, on his arm. Michael
also embraced his roots.
"It's kind of what is involved in this situation right now," said
Hill, who was convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor
in 2004 for an incident in which he, Marcus Vick and another Virginia
Tech football player served alcohol to teenage girls. "I want to make
it clear that's who's gotten him even involved in this situation. What
brought him to the hot water, I would say, is because of the fact that
he's loyal."
NFL teams spend countless hours and dollars looking into the
backgrounds of the players that they're going to draft and invest
millions in, but Reeves said the Falcons found no red flags with Vick
before drafting him. "None whatsoever," Reeves said. "I talked to his
high school coach, to [Virginia Tech Coach Frank] Beamer. The league
checked him out, and nothing showed up."
The Falcons ended up with Vick after trading up to get the first pick
from the Chargers in a deal that resulted in tailback LaDainian
Tomlinson going to San Diego. James Boddie said the Vick and Tomlinson
entourages ended up at a post-draft celebration at a New York hotel.
"It was a party like you've never seen," Boddie said. "Me, his daddy,
his uncle, his mom, my youngest daughter, LaDainian Tomlinson's
people, we were all drinking Johnnie Walker Red and Chivas Regal. And
Ookie was just sitting down with Pepsi, watching some Western. And
everybody was in a festive mood. But since then, I have never seen him
get the big head like, 'Ooh, I'm it.' Every time I've been in his
presence, it's the same old Ookie."
Vick developed into one of the NFL's most exciting and marketable
players even though his quarterbacking lacked polish. He remained a
relatively inaccurate passer. But his athleticism was breathtaking,
and he helped the Falcons to some success. They reached the NFC
championship game in the 2004 season before losing at Philadelphia. In
December 2004, Vick signed a 10-year, $130 million contract extension
that included $37 million in bonuses.
Reeves, the Falcons' head coach for Vick's first three NFL seasons,
said he "had no complaints" about working with Vick but did speak to
the quarterback as a rookie about his off-field associations after
police reportedly stopped two men in Newport News traveling in a truck
owned by Vick and found them to have marijuana.
"I brought Mike in and I told him, 'Mike, you just can't afford to do
that. You have to sever those ties. You have to be careful. When
something like this happens, the headlines won't be about that guy.
They'll be about the car being in your name,' " Reeves said. "In three
years, that was the only time I had to talk to him about that. And
things like that are not just something that are unique to Mike Vick.
You talk to a lot of your players about issues like that."
The problem didn't end with Reeves's talk.
"Brenda used to tell me every time she would go to Atlanta -- he's got
this big mansion down there in Atlanta, and Ookie ain't no cook or
housekeeper," James Boddie said. "So he's got a bunch of guys hanging
around all the time, the girls running in and out. So she went down
there and cleaned house: 'Everybody just get out! Get out! Get out!
You guys are just sucking up my son's money. You're really not doing
nothing for him.' I think that's when he met these guys."
Evelyn Boddie said, "We're just sorry he did meet them."
In October 2004, Vick and two men -- one of whom later was identified
to police as Quanis Phillips, a co-defendant in the dogfighting case
and a longtime friend whose criminal record at the time included a
1997 arrest for possession of stolen property and a guilty plea in
1999 to misdemeanor possession with intent to distribute marijuana --
were passing through a security checkpoint at the Atlanta airport. One
of the two men traveling with Vick took a watch that belonged to a
Transportation Security Administration screener named Alvin Spencer,
who'd placed the fake Rolex on the X-ray belt to pass the time during
a slow period. Spencer eventually got his watch back, but only after
being pressured by police, he said, not to press charges in the case
to preserve Vick's reputation. An internal affairs review by the
Atlanta police concluded that the investigation had been handled
properly, but some TSA officials believed otherwise. Falcons executive
and former player Billy "White Shoes" Johnson intervened on Vick's
behalf during the episode and acknowledged in the internal affairs
investigation that he offered Spencer money, although no payment
ultimately was made.
Last year, Vick reached a settlement with a woman who had sued him and
claimed that he knowingly gave her herpes; the lawsuit said Vick used
the alias "Ron Mexico" when being treated. Last season, Vick was fined
$10,000 by the NFL and agreed to donate an additional $10,000 to
charity after making an obscene gesture toward fans at the Georgia
Dome as he left the field following a Falcons loss. In January, a
water bottle surrendered by Vick at a security checkpoint at the Miami
airport was found to have a secret compartment and what a police
report called a marijuana-like substance; authorities later said that
no evidence of drugs was found and no charges were filed.
Several people within the NFL said they think Vick was surrounded by
enablers, from his friends to his business advisers, and probably
developed a sense that any transgression would be overlooked and any
problem fixed for him. "It was this world of 'yes' men around him and
he thought his status put him above it all, including the law," said
one top executive within the league.
The Fall
James Boddie said Michael Vick "formed a bond" with cousin Davon
Boddie, and Davon Boddie "would go down to Atlanta and drive him
around." Authorities were conducting a drug raid focused on Davon
Boddie in April when they reportedly found dogfighting equipment at
Vick's property in Virginia. Officials at the Humane Society have said
they had heard rumors beginning in 2004 of Vick being involved in
dogfighting, but had been unable to substantiate them.
The federal indictment of Vick, Phillips and co-defendants Purnell
Peace and Tony Taylor said that Vick, along with Phillips and Taylor,
decided in early 2001 to start a dogfighting venture. They identified
a property in Smithfield, Va., in May 2001 "as being a suitable
location for housing and training pit bulls for fighting," the
indictment said, and Vick purchased it that June.
The indictment portrays Vick as being an active member of the
dogfighting ring, attending and even traveling to dogfights, paying
off bets lost on fights and participating in the killings of dogs that
didn't perform well. Taylor pleaded guilty last month and signed a
statement saying that Vick funded the dogfighting operation and its
gambling efforts almost exclusively. Peace and Phillips pleaded guilty
Friday and Phillips signed a statement saying that Vick participated
in the killing of eight dogs, some by hanging and drowning.
Furthermore, Vick apparently lied to NFL officials when he met with
them to discuss the allegations.
"We totally condemn the conduct outlined in the charges, which is
inconsistent with what Michael Vick previously told both our office
and the Falcons," the NFL said yesterday.
The NFL's personal conduct policy for players empowers NFL
Commissioner Roger Goodell to fine, suspend or impose a lifetime ban
on an offending player. Vick also may have violated the league's
gambling policy. The Falcons haven't ruled out releasing Vick, and
they could try to force him to refund some of the bonus money in his
mammoth contract. Already, analysts say he has lost tens of millions
of dollars in potential endorsement income. The owner of one NFL team
said he doubts that Vick will play another game in the league.
As he sat in his living room last week, James Boddie was asked how
great a toll this was taking on the Vick and Boddie families. He
paused, closed his eyes and said: "Unbelievable."
He opened his eyes, and they looked a bit teary. He told of his
grandson leaving him tickets when the Falcons played in Baltimore last
season, and using them to take some neighborhood kids to the game.
"Every time I'd see him on TV, people would roar when he came out on
the field," Boddie said. "I'd say, 'This is not somebody else's
grandson. This is my grandson, and people love him. He's taking care
of his family and he's doing great things, you know, he's visiting the
boys' clubs and hospitals and holding babies and stuff, always doing
positive stuff.' . . . And then this."
.
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