Eighteen of the dogs were already euthanized, and more than 50 others also allegedly overseen by the former football star appeared on the verge of being put to death. They had to be, authorities said.
“They’re just too dangerous,” a spokesman for the state’s bureau of narcotics and dangerous drugs control said to the Associated Press of the pit bull terriers.
It wasn’t their fault, though. “They will be euthanized,” the executive director of the state’s veterinary board told the Associated Press.
“All of these dogs have been bred to fight. There’s no way they can be adopted,” she said.
A former All-American who went on to play several years in the NFL, the man who was ordered to stand trial on charges of cruelty to animals, keeping a dog for fighting and keeping a place or equipment for dog fighting in this case might not be who people think.
Believe it or not, this was not the story of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, but rather LeShon Johnson, a running back who in 1993 finished sixth in Heisman Trophy voting at Northern Illinois before a lackluster NFL career he spent with three teams spanning from 1994 to 1999, and a final effort with the XFL’s famed Chicago Enforcers in 2001. He was sentenced in December 2005 to five years of probation after pleading guilty to those charges in Oklahoma. While Johnson couldn’t boast Vick’s stardom, neither can the 40,000 people in the country estimated by the Humane Society of the U.S. to be involved in “professional” dog fighting, taking advantage of an estimated 250,000 dogs.
Every so often, actual sports matter beyond their benign battlegrounds. They go from being buried on the inside of the newspaper, and 25 minutes into the broadcast, to the forefront of our day’s most cutting discussions and issues. They can provide a lens into the good, bad and ugly of societies in a way that not much else can.
The fans of football – to a greater extent than those of its “Big Three” counterparts, basketball and baseball – cross a sweeping spectrum of race, age and region in this country.
For example, on April 28, the first day of the NFL Draft, ESPN filmed dozens of fans – nearly all of them black – falling to their knees in celebration at a barber shop in Mobile, Ala., for the selection of JaMarcus Russell, a local product. The same day, they captured the Minnesota Vikings’ official draft party in Eden Prairie, Minn., where a sea of onlookers – nearly all of them white – likewise deliriously applauded their team’s selection.
These passions grow from an early age. The 10-year-old who has already memorized every player’s rating in “Madden ’08” glances at eight different fantasy football magazines while being dragged through the grocery store, as the 45-year-old peruses the chip aisle in search of the perfect complement to his “Sunday NFL Ticket” package he bought to keep in touch with his hometown team so far away. And the constellation of pigskin-crazed towns ranges far and wide. Baton Rouge, La., Morgantown, W.Va., Ann Arbor, Mich., Gainesville, Fla., Norman, Okla. and Boise, Idaho are all fine towns on their own, but when put on a list with Los Angeles, they can combine to make sense as one thing and one thing only: a college football poll.
No other sport in this part of the world captivates us with such a blanketing fervor. Vince Lombardi was right when he said that while baseball may be this country’s pastime, football is its passion. And if there is a silver lining to the Vick ordeal, it’s that dog fighting is being brought to light because of it. Or at least, it should be.
The sports community, from the millionaire playboys put on a pedestal dictating the action to the average couch-bound thrill-seeker tuning in to a game, is now faced with one of those now-it-matters moments, especially in light of this particular concern – dog fighting – being purported to be a sport by its perpetrators.
We have an opportunity, now, through the virtue of our sports-obsessed society, to redirect some of that passion to confront dog fighting unlike we have before.
We could miss the chance though. ESPN’s Aug. 21 “SportsCenter Fantasy Draft Special” featured a segment in which commentators discussed how Vick’s “absence” would affect fantasy drafts and leagues.
You’d think Johnson, for one, might’ve learned his lesson after his property was raided in early 2000 for alleged dogfights, resulting in 14 citations being written upon observance of bloody, wounded dogs and people fleeing into the woods outside Johnson’s property. But telling from some of the reactions Vick’s more high-profile case has drawn, misconceptions about dog fighting still abound in our society.
“I don’t know if he was fighting dogs or not, but it’s his property, it’s his dog; if that’s what he wants to do, do it,” Washington Redskins running back Clinton Portis told WAVY-TV in Virginia.
Portis hasn’t been the only prominent athlete to sound off on the case. New York Knicks guard Stephon Marbury, a two-time NBA All-Star, told reporters, “You know, from what I hear, dog fighting is a sport. It’s just behind closed doors.” (It’s conceivable that Marbury could’ve heard that from Qyntel Woods, a teammate of his in New York during the 2005-06 season. Woods was sentenced in 2005 to 12 months probation and 80 hours of community service after pleading guilty to first-degree misdemeanor animal abuse in Oregon, where he then played for the Portland Trail Blazers and was investigated for dog fighting.)
The leniency of Portis and Marbury hasn’t been exclusive to the community of pro athletes. Actor Jamie Foxx told an Access Hollywood interviewer, “It’s a cultural thing, I think. Most brothers didn’t know that, you know. I used to see dogs fighting in the neighborhood all the time. I didn’t know that was Fed time. So, Mike probably just didn’t read his handbook on what not to do as a black star. … I know that cruelty to animals is bad, but sometimes people shoot people and kill people and don’t get time. I think in this situation, he really didn’t know the extent of it, so I always give him the benefit of the doubt.”
Although these views may seem shocking, many might be surprised to learn the extent to which the subculture of dog fighting, and animal fighting in general, subsist in this country.
Even though cockfighting is illegal in all 50 states, magazines such as “Gamecock,” “Grit and Steel” and “Feathered Warrior” can be subscribed to via Amazon.com. According to the Web site, customers who viewed “Feathered Warrior” also took a glance at the book, “The Dog Pit: How to Select, Breed, Train and Manage Fighting Dogs.”
Customers who bought that item also bought the documentary “Off the Chain,” whose purchasers further shelled out for the movie “Ghetto Dawg” and its riveting sequel, “Ghetto Dawg 2: Out of the Pits.”
As Californians, we may tend to think of dog fighting as being centralized in distant parts of the country, but it takes place much closer to home than we may realize.
Eleven pit bulls were seized Aug. 8 in an area of Fresno local police reportedly refer to as “Dog Pound Territory,” at a scene where authorities found six graphic videos depicting men training their dogs to maul others.
Even though dog fighting is a felony in 48 states (it’s a misdemeanor in Idaho and Wyoming), most states don’t sufficiently penalize attending dog fights, which doesn’t do enough to encourage law enforcement to pursue cases, wrote Rebecca Simmons, outreach communications coordinator for the Companion Animals section of the HSUS, at their Web site, HSUS.org.
Even worse, “After being confiscated, fighting dogs are typically euthanized due to their highly aggressive nature and unsuitability for adoption,” Simmons wrote.
“In some states, the dogs are required to be held at an animal shelter until the court date, forcing shelters to euthanize healthy animals to make room for fighting dogs that will be euthanized at a later date,” said Simmons.
As for Vick’s dogs, 49 of the pit bulls seized from his property in April are now scheduled to undergo a behavior assessment from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, according to the Daily Press of Newport News, Va., Vick’s hometown.
Meanwhile, a Missouri woman recently gained some notoriety by giving 22 Vick trading cards to her dogs-who chewed them up-and then auctioning them on eBay as a fundraiser for animal welfare groups. The lot sold for $7,400, and several similar fundraisers followed suit.
But perhaps the most insightful, important response to the Vick storm was offered by Pro Football Hall-of-Famer Jim Brown. “This is not a tragedy,” Brown told a TV interviewer of the sudden detour in Vick’s life. “This is a new beginning.” For not only Vick, but also the subculture of dog fighting to which he used to belong and a society at large finally able to see illuminated a vicious underworld previously in the dark that it has condemned, we can only hope.
After all, Johnson never appeared on the cover of the 10-year-old’s “Madden,” (as Vick did in 2004) nor did anyone ever take him in a fantasy league, although the odds are both Vick’s and Johnson’s dogs wouldn’t know the difference.
Indeed, it’s entirely likely that had Johnson’s cards – or would-be memoirs from a trading card set numbered to 40,000 in honor of this country’s estimated pro dog fighting league – similarly been given to dogs to gleefully gnaw, man’s best friend would have been happy to oblige. But no one has ever given the dogs that chance. Of course, there’s still time to find out, even with Vick’s dogs themselves. Better hurry, though. They, too, appear likely to be euthanized.