michael vick is a rock star
(why i am not so sure that's a good thing)


it finally happened. i can check this one thing off my list. i got to see one of my most serious man-crushes, michael freakin' vick, in person sunday afternoon. the game set-up to be the kind of dream game that any michael vick or falcons fan would love to see. the lowly cleveland browns were coming to town. other than having a really good tight end, about the best thing you could say about the browns as a football team going into sunday was that they "played hard", they "were a scrappy team", or that they still have some of the most kick-ass uniforms in all of sports.

we got to the dome in plenty of time to see mike make his pre-game entrance. even with less than 10,000 fans in the stadium an hour before kick-off, his applause was different than that directed towards other players coming out as he made his way to perform his passing drills. he looked cool, of course. socks weren't pulled up. chin-strap only half-buckled. just cool. i couldn't take my eyes off of him. i was in awe. nothing i saw in pre-game, though, prepared me for the announcements of the starting line-up when the stadium filled up.

it's tradition for the home team to introduce the offensive starting 11 and let them make their entrance one by one, and the falcons were no different. first the offensive line. then the non-descript wide receivers (who, by the way, could not catch a fucking ball sunday...except for you roddy white. you did uab proud.), and then finally the stars.

first, the tight end..."ALGE CRUMPLER".....the crowd roared.

then, at running back..."WARRICK DUNN"....the crowd roars even louder for mighty, little warrick dunn.

and finally, at quarterback..."MICHAEL (FREAKIN') VICK...i cannot describe to you in words the roar of the crowd following the introduction of their elvis. and vick totally plays to the crowd. all the other players jog out onto the field, maybe waving their arms encouraging the crowd to "get loud", but they all jog out and meet their teammates. not mike. mike walks slowly out of the tunnel. head down. socks still down. chin-strap still only half-buckled. there is absolutely no fucking question he is the coolest cat in the city of atlanta at this very moment. mike walks out slowly. the crowd is eating it up and yelling like this may be their last chance ever to yell. mike stops about ten yards out of the tunnel and raises his arms slowly. the roar, then and there, made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. it was insane! and awesome!

a funny thing happened after the game kicked off. michael freakin' vick sucked. i mean, he played really, really bad. 16-40 bad. two interceptions bad. a fumble that appropriately ended the game bad. sure, his wideouts, other than uab, couldn't catch a ball even if the football was velcro and they were wearing two of those velcro-catching mitts like i had back in the day. but, this game was on mike. he had a couple of those michael vick moments where he tears down the field and he is the fastest guy on the field by far and you just know he's going to score, but make no mistake, michael vick lost this game pretty much single-handedly.

as sarah and i made our way back to marta and to our car, i heard voice after voice comment on how bad vick was. how the falcons need to trade him now when they can get something back for him. how he's never going to be consistent enough to take the falcons to a super bowl. all of that may be premature. it may not.

as a rock star, michael vick is an animal. he's david lee roth. axl rose. michael jackson during the thriller years. he's the aforementioned elvis. the only thing about those guys, though, is that the older they got, the more you kind of realized that they all kind of sucked.

michael vick is still my man. i hope to see him again in person soon. and as a rock star, he is an animal. as a super bowl caliber quarterback, well...

the jury is still out.