Amid dogfight case, jury still out on Vick's character

ATLANTA -- There's more than one side to Michael Vick, the star quarterback.

This is a guy who can throw a football harder and farther than just about anyone on the planet, but that's only half the profile. He's one of the most thrilling runners the NFL has ever seen, slicing this way and cutting that way a la Barry Sanders, becoming the first at his position ever to gain 1,000 yards in a season with his legs.

Maybe there's more than one side to Michael Vick, the person.

Everyone from family and friends to coaches and teammates describe him as a hard worker who cares for those around him, who never shows the sort of ego one would expect from someone of his staggering skills, who would rather hang out at home playing video games than go out on the town.

But a stomach-turning federal indictment portrays him as a sinister thug who used his big payday to satisfy a lust for blood, who turned dogs into killers and signed off on gruesome executions when they wouldn't fight, who never scrambled away from the shady friends or rites of manhood picked up on the hard-scrabble streets of Newport News, Va.

Who's the real Michael Vick?

"There was no indication, no signs, no whispers that he could be involved in any of this kind of behavior," said Atlanta Falcons general Rich McKay, sounding as baffled as everyone else that Vick might have thrown it all away in the seedy underworld of dogfighting.

The charges still must be determined in court. If nothing else, though, it seems clear that Vick -- born 27 years ago to teenage parents and raised largely by his mother in a neighborhood where gangs and drugs and poverty were a constant reminder of one's standing in life -- never quite shook off the code of the 'hood.

Machismo and loyalty help keep you alive from one day to the next. Not even a $130 million contract, luxurious cars and a mansion in the suburbs can necessarily change that.

"It's difficult for people to understand, particularly the middle class and upper middle class," said Brian Colwell, a sociology professor at the University of Missouri. "They just see it as a bad behavior, rather than a learned sense of how to survive."

Although the Falcons insist they had no indication Vick could be involved in dogfighting, there were warning signs from the beginning.

The first seeds of trouble were planted in an interview that Vick did shortly before he was drafted. He talked proudly of his interest in dogs and said he wanted to open his own kennel.

According to the feds, Vick did just that after signing with the Falcons, purchasing a house in rural Virginia and starting up "Bad Newz Kennels."