Eagles players honor Michael Vick with award for courage
By Chris Chase
According to Philadelphia Eagles players, the most courageous man on the team in 2009 was one who started the year serving time in prison for an act of extreme cowardice.
Today, the Eagles announced that Michael Vick was the 2009 winner of the Ed Block Courage Award, an honor given to a player who shows courage in the face of adversity. Vick’s teammates voted for the award, thus demonstrating how tone-deaf and out-of-touch NFL players are with reality.
According to the Ed Block Courage Award Foundation Web site:
Each year, the Ed Block Courage Awards honors those National Football League players who exemplify commitments to the principles of sportsmanship and courage. Recipients are selected by their teammates for team effort, as well as individual performance.
The Ed Block Courage Award recipient symbolizes professionalism, great strength and dedication. He is also a community role model.
One recipient is selected from each NFL team, usually for things like coming back from injury, doing good work in the community or long, dedicated service to a franchise. I’d be surprised if the award’s founders intended for the honor to be given to someone doing community service as part of the terms of his parole or for showing courage in the face of reporters asking legitimate questions about federal crimes.
The Eagles’ vote is not only a slap in the face to the Ed Block Courage Award Foundation, but to the other 31 players who won the award for their respective teams. Some men are truly deserving of the honor, like Ravens safety Dawan Landry(notes) who was nearly paralyzed last year, but has come back in ’09 with four interceptions and a touchdown or Mike Furrey(notes) of the Browns, who does extensive volunteer work in his community. Adding Vick’s name to the roll makes the award seem illegitimate and meaningless.
Apparently Philadelphia players confuse Vick handling dogfighting questions and booing with a measure of class as some sort of courage. That Vick only got a chance to show this mild courageousness because of the extreme cowardice it takes to murder helpless animals isn’t something that crosses their mind. They confuse Vick’s desperation with some sort of integrity.
I’m all for second chances and find myself rooting for Vick to redeem himself both on and off the football field. He’s served an appropriate sentence (and then some) and I see no reason for him to keep paying for his past transgressions. But I also see no reason to celebrate his character.
Michael Vick(notes) is very much a work in progress. A few years from now, I hope he will be deserving of such an honor. At this time, however, he has only just started down the path to redemption.
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2009/12/23/eagles-name-vick-their-ed-block-courage-award-recipient/
Eagles name Vick their Ed Block Courage Award recipient
Posted by Mike Florio on December 23, 2009 9:48 AM ET
Every December, we begin to receive e-mail announcements regarding the recipients of each team’s Ed Block Courage Award.
The Eagles’ recipient of the Ed Block Courage Award is quarterback Mike Vick.
Really?
The Ed Block Courage Award Foundation’s web site explains that the organization “is dedicated to improving the lives of neglected children and ending the cycle of abuse.” The group “raise[s] public awareness and support[s] child abuse prevention with our radio public service announcements.”
The web site also explains that the recipient of the award “exemplify commitments to the principles of sportsmanship and courage,” that the recipient “symbolizes professionalism, great strength, and dedication,” that the recipient is a “community role model,” and that the recipient “will be identified as a team player in helping abused children and families in crisis.”
So why Vick?
This isn’t about whether a man who engaged in a six-year pattern of animal abuse, including ghastly acts of killing dogs that he deemed unfit to fight other dogs, should receive a “second chance” in a profession that pays him a large amount of money.
This is about whether that man should be celebrated.
In our view, he shouldn’t be — not based on his cameo appearances during the 2009 season, not for his ability to stay out of trouble during his ongoing federal probation, and not for whatever efforts he has undertaken to help abused children and families in crisis.
We’ll wager that he has done, and will do, nothing to help abused children and families in crisis, mainly because the focus of his off-field efforts has been to help abused dogs and canines in crisis.
Maybe there simply was no one else on the team worthy of the honor. Or maybe the players voted without a real understanding of what the honor means. Or maybe they simply wanted to give critics of Vick a collective middle finger.
Either way, we think the Eagles made a huge mistake on this one.
What a jerk…how do people expect their kids to have a role model, especially one like this? Guy is a true moron, jerk, and hates animals. If he loved them, he would not have done what he did. So much for the Boys and Girls club looking up to this jerk. What a dirt bag.
his actions were despicable and he’s not worthy of role-model status !