Today is one of those 90-degree August days in New York City (actually it's 73 and rather cool but we took a few days to post this -the editors) that has prompted many a sportswriter to note the incongruity of talking about football—the sport of the harvest while anticipating the inevitable winter freeze. Yet there is always room for football at our national roundtable. Don’t kid yourself: If you follow the NFL, you were clicking on headlines in March about free agency, in April for the draft, in May for minicamps and other miscellany, and in June and July for whatever scraps you could scavenge. Now come the dog days, which means you are preparing your fantasy roster, brushing up on your team’s schedule, and reading about men with million-to-one shots of making any team’s cut. It’s August!

The past few weeks brought us two major stories from the NFL, both sad, both for different reasons.

The Michael Vick Dogfighting Saga

By now you’ve read about the allegations against Atlanta’s star quarterback. The story transcends the sports pages and has become part of the national conversation, and rightly so. Vick has pleaded not guilty to dogfighting conspiracy charges. He is alleged to have sponsored fights, to have raised dogs to fight, and to have killed, sometimes by electrocution or drowning, dogs that lose. (A co-defendant, Tony Taylor, has already pleaded guilty.)

First, I’m not going to waste space explaining what a disgusting practice dogfighting is. Second, I’m not going to waste space explaining that Vick is still innocent and has yet to be tried. Both points have been hammered to death already, and really don’t need to be argued here.

What mystifies me is the backlash, the inevitable implicit defense of this practice from Vick’s peers and other groups and individuals. There should be nothing wrong with stating your opinion in this country, but you better be ready to have that opinion analyzed (which is what I am going to do). Let’s start with another former Falcon, Deion Sanders, who wrote this in the Fort Myers News-Press while trying to take all of us “inside Vick’s mind”:

"I believe Vick had a passion for dogfighting. I know many athletes who share his passion. The allure is the intensity and the challenge of a dog fighting to the death. It's like ultimate fighting, but the dog doesn't tap out when he knows he can't win."

Fascinating, stuff, Mr. Sanders. In fact, I think I can apply this line of thinking to other heinous acts. Let’s try rape. I believe rapists have a passion for rape. The allure is the intensity and the challenge of a woman who doesn’t want to have sex with you. It’s like consensual sex, except the woman can’t say “no” when she’s not in the mood. There now, hopefully you understand where rapists are coming from.