Hunley: On Vick, football and dogs

I forgive Michael Vick.

Now, that doesn't mean he's a good person. Or even that he deserves forgiving.

He probably doesn't deserve it (and he certainly needn't care what I think).

But I'm forgiving him anyhow. Mainly, because too often I don't forgive others and then clamor for others to forgive me when I mess up.

So though Vick's conduct could rightly be described as repugnant, as reprehensible and as, well, any of several other adjectives meaning "bad," I think it's fine that he can play football again.

I don't know that my Redskins season-ticket money should go toward getting him to come to Washington, but it's all right that the league has reinstated him.

And I proclaim that as a dog lover from way back.

Another, more prominent, dog lover doesn't agree, however.

"I don't believe he should have been given a second chance," Melissa Korzuch told me last week.

Korzuch is president of the Prince William SPCA. She said that she won't watch a game in which Vick plays, and that she doesn't agree with the Humane Society's decision to work with the fleet-of-foot former quarterback on an anti-dogfighting campaign.

"I think it's just deplorable what he did," Korzuch said.

Sonny Hagy had a different take. While I called Korzuch for the animal side of the story, I called Hagy, who coaches the defense at Osbourn High School, for the football side.

He was my choice because I saw student after student urge the Manassas School Board earlier this year not to eliminate his job in a budget-cutting maneuver.

They respected him that much. So what better person to ask a complicated question about football and morality?

Hagy said Vick deserves another chance, as does anyone who has paid his debt to society.

But he also noted American culture's predilection to turning athletes into idols.

"Sometimes some of these people that we look at as role models are not really the best role models for our younger individuals," he said.

And, Hagy made an important point about differences.

While Korzuch and I agree that Vick is "deplorable," dogfighting, cockfighting and the like are considered normal in some circles.

"If you've grown up that way, you don't see anything really wrong with it," Hagy said.

That doesn't excuse Vick, but it sheds more light on the situation. I like that. More information is never bad.

Of course, in the end, it doesn't matter what any of us think. As Hagy said, a "higher being" will decide what's to be of Vick.

"And," he said, "that's not me or the commissioner of NFL football."

Jonathan Hunley is a staff writer at the News & Messenger. Contact him at 703-369-5738 or at jhunley@insidenova.com.