Well, That's A Relief

So Michael Vick was supposed to go on the Oprah Winfrey show, then canceled. And after a day of thinking this over and trying to come up with a reasonable opinion about this... well, it just seems like a bullet dodged, really.

The thing about being a Vick fan -- and let's face it, I just am at this point; he's an unprecedented artist at the position, even if he's probably never going to win a championship -- is that you are really just tip-toeing past the news section every day. I don't want to hear about anything from the guy, except what happens between the lines. That's true of every athlete, really, but especially so with Vick. Off-field work means that we're worried about injuries, or that so-and-so still wants him hurt, or that his entourage was mean to some media provacateur, or etc., etc.

This also avoids the whole issue of what the Eagles will do with Kevin Kolb, assuming there's going to be a league and season. Luckily for Vick, Kolb doesn't have a ton of public support in town, for whatever reason, but if the Texan gets moved for less than a king's ransom, then turns out to be the better option, it more or less signs Andy Reid's release papers. Which, of course, a sizable percentage of Eagles Nation wants. Along with the rest of the NFC East. But I digress.

And Vick, being an athlete under financial duress (due, of course, to his own malfeasance, but still), has to try to get from under the whole thing by going outside the lines. He needs to get commercial endorsements back. Maybe a ghost-written book (shudder). Even a biopic, or more tentative steps towards the mainstream. Just because he got skittish about Oprah, that doesn't mean he won't give a shot to a late-night host that he feels will stay positive. He's got to... and if there's a lockout, he's really got to. And if he doesn't feel like he's going to get that, he'll go back to Oprah, and it'll be worse than before. (Perhaps with book in hand. Then, at least, the interview makes some kind of sense. As in dollars and...)

So while it's a relief that the Vick Show didn't create huge headlines this week, it's more a matter of when, not if. I'm still on board this bandwagon, especially given the relative weakness of the offensive line. But it's not going to be a smooth or easy ride, really.