You knew I had to comment

So Michael Vick accepted a guilty plea today to the dogfighting charges.

Surprise, surprise.

There's a lot that's sad about this -

It's sad that many of those who supported Vick throughout this will continue to maintain his innocence, claiming he was railroaded by the federal government; that they will do so in spite of the fact that, according to the indictment, there was video evidence that he attended dogfighting; in spite of the fact that there was no evidence that a single one of his cronies could have in any way funded an operation like this.

There will be those that continue to defend him, like Clinton Portis did, because, "they's his dogs, he should be able to fight 'em if that's what he wants to do."

It's sad that many of these people believe that it's because he's black that he has been targeted by the feds, in spite of the fact that people like Donovan McNabb and Robert Johnson (the founder of BET) have not. It's sad that they think this is a racial thing when in fact it's about federal statute.

It's sad that a supremely talented athlete (he has a long way to go as a quarterback, but he's one hell of an athlete), is willing to throw his career away because he needed cheap thrills from a bloodsport, and needed the added excitement of gambling on said bloodsport. This was what was more important to him during the off-season than working on his game.

Don't pity him, because this is the path he chose, but it's sad that football was just a means for him to fund something else. If he wanted to be the best in the game he would have done what McNabb, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, and countless other quarterbacks do during the off-season - they work on their game, they train, they try to improve. He thought fighting dogs was a better use of his time.

And that's just sad.