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Animal Cruelty is illegal and is therefore enough of a reason for the NFL to ban a player from the League. However, Michael Vick's recent plea bargain with federal authorities rather than face the wrath of a jury who would hear the testimony of his co-conspirators in the dog-fighting scandal and it's attendant cruelty to animals would seem to make it obvious that Major League Football needs to add this limitation to their policy on Players' personal conduct.

Perhaps it is the ginormous amounts of money the team owners pay the star athletes that make them think they are above the law. Perhaps it begins in the secondary schools. A Teacher is advised or asked by a member of Administration to let Star Athlete pass the class "just this once" in order to maintain his eligibility to play for "the big game". Perhaps it begins in the Universities when money from television or the Booster Club is on the line. Then, Star Athlete is courted during his Senior Year of High School. Money, Sex, fringe benefits like cars, jobs, and grades are promised if only Star athlete will sign this little ole letter of intent. After six or eight years of privilege, Star Athlete no longer thinks the rules of life, or the laws for that matter, apply to him. His talent sets him above all that!

And so we wind up with a Michael Vick. A man whose talent and drive took him from the 'hood to Atlanta's most exclusive neighborhoods. A man who, perhaps because he'd had the rules "bent" for him, thought he could bend the law past the breaking point. He engaged and abetted his friends in engaging in the illegal sport of dog-fighting. Then, for their own sick, twisted, cruel amusement, they tortured the losers to death. How base, how totally lacking in moral redemption is that/

He was the idol, the role model of thousands of young people, and their parents, all over this land of ours. How many of them will now think it's OK to choke their family pet because "Michael did it"? Maybe, just maybe, the next Michael Vick will think twice before throwing it all away if the NFL spells it out in great, big, capital letters that it is NOT all right to do this.

Learn more about this author, Holly Berry.
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