T.O. Needs Reality Check Over Vick

Roger Goodell has spoken and the NFL's leading loudmouth won't like it.

That would be Terrell Owens, of course. He's a football whiz, reality TV star and Constitutional scholar.

He was organizing a "Free Michael Vick" movement based on the belief Goodell had no right to tack on a suspension to Vick's criminal sentence.

The best approach with most things T.O. is to just laugh and move on. But in this case, people are listening.

"How do you bring a man out of suspension and then suspend him again?" said George Wilson, the Bills union representative. "I mean, he's paid his debt."

Donovan McNabb got on board Monday. Owens started a Twitter campaign. He'll probably see Vick's suspension (Goodell will determine how long it lasts by Week 6) as cruel and unusual punishment.

That's against the Bill of Rights, a document Owens should brush up on. He'd discover that James Madison never considered playing in the NFL a right.

That would shock players like T.O. who believe they have an inalienable right to everything their hearts desire. The entitlement mentality leads him to routinely say stuff like "Michael Vick is guy that really hasn't had any character issues besides [what] he got a prison sentence for."

Well, there was that whole Ron Mexico herpes thing. And flipping off the entire stadium. And being such a miscreant the Falcons had to assign someone to follow him around to clean up his messes.

But why quibble? This isn't about whether Goodell should have suspended Vick. It's whether he could, and what the NFLPA plans to do about it.


T.O. and the gang are getting tired of the commissioner playing Hanging Judge. They think the late Gene Upshaw turned into Goodell's puppet and want new union boss DeMaurice Smith to get mean. They think suspending Vick after prison amounted to double jeopardy.

Being tried twice for the same crime is against the Bill of Rights. But the NFL is not the court system. It is a private business. You know, the type most Americans still work for despite all the government takeovers.

If you were convicted of running a dog-fighting ring and everybody in town was talking about it, chances are your employer might not send a limo to pick you up from prison. Chances are you'd have been fired long before you ever met your parole officer.

But you live in the real world, not "The T.O. Show."

"I think the players' union needs to step in because the guy's already suffered so much," Owens said.

If your employer added a six-week suspension to your two-year prison sentence, you'd send the boss a thank-you bouquet. What we see as forgiveness the union sees as restraint of trade, as if Vick has a right to play in the NFL.

The league never kept Vick from earning a living. He could have signed a contract with the upstart UFL, gotten a job a Home Depot or gone back to school and become a neurosurgeon.

What he couldn't do was become the most notorious figure on the sports landscape and expect no further repercussions.

The NFL is an $8 billion-a-year enterprise. Its income comes is based on customer approval, and a whole lot of customers would rather cheer for Ayatollah Khamenei than Vick.

It was Goodell's task to weigh that sentiment against those who think Vick is a victim of society, racism or the greatest frame-up in canine history. He was judge, jury and the appellate court.

And who gave him that power?

The union in 2007, when the NFL was having more image problems than Michael Jackson's doctor. It adopted a conduct policy that stated:

"It is not enough to simply avoid being found guilty of a crime. Instead, as an employee of the NFL or a member club, you are held to a higher standard and expected to conduct yourself in a way that is responsible, promotes the values upon which the league is based, and is lawful."

Goodell's been invoking those words ever since. Tank Johnson, Chris Henry, Matt Jones, Larry Johnson and Pacman Jones are some of the players suspended after the criminal justice system had dealt with them.

The players were on board then. Nobody screamed double jeopardy. Most realized when the NFL's image suffers, their wallets eventually suffer. And paying your debt to society isn't the same as paying your debt to the NFL.

Now they want to turn Michael Vick into a rallying cry?

Oh well, nobody ever said they couldn't be stupid. T.O. exercises that right almost every day.