Mike Vick might be playing football in prison, hard to tell really

April 8th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanR

Did you guys hear the one about former NFL star Michael Vick playing football in prison? Imagine that: a Pro Bowl quarterback playing against prison talent; he must be lighting up the scoreboard! (Do they have scoreboards in prison?) Have you also heard the one about Mike Vick not playing football in prison? What a drag, huh?

So who are we to believe in this time of peril? I’m not sure.

“Apparently, there was a prison football team and he played quarterback for both sides,” Blank told the Daily News.

However, federal prison officials told the Journal-Constitution that Vick did not arrive at the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary Camp in time to participate in the facility’s football season.

When told of Blank’s account of Vick’s football activity at the prison, a spokesman for Leavenworth sounded “incredulous,” according to the Journal-Constitution.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kevin Johnson told the newspaper.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons told the Journal-Constitution, however, that Vick might be throwing a football in his free time.

“It’s not unheard of for inmates to toss around a football,” spokesperson Tracy Billingsley told the newspaper. “But there just are no games until the fall.”

She also clarified to the newspaper that the inmates play only flag football at the facility.

So Vick might be playing football, or he might just be tossing the ball around, or he might not be doing anything of the sort. I’m not sure which source I trust here. (If anyone is reading this site from the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary Camp, feel free to e-mail us with the details. Don’t expect us to become pen pals, though.)

One thing I do know: Prison Mike is lurking around the halls of the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary Camp. Mr. Vick, I’d watch your back:

Mike Vick’s chances of playing football in prison

December 12th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanR

So we know it might be a bit of a challenge for our good friend Mike Vick to get back on an NFL football field once he’s out of prison — although some are pretty certain he’ll be back in the league — but what about in prison? Will he be able to parade around the prison yard throwing the football to fellow felons or perhaps using his legs for a first down, all the while avoiding the fate of a soap-dropper?

Slate has the answer:

The federal Bureau of Prisons operates 114 facilities, and it’s up to each institution to organize recreational activities for its own inmates. While it’s official bureau policy to encourage organized sports and other activities for inmates to pursue during their leisure time, officials tend to avoid contact sports like football that can quickly get out of hand. So if Vick wants to play football behind bars, he’ll have to get lucky and end up somewhere that offers the sport.

Wardens prefer team sports like basketball, softball, and volleyball, which involve less physical interaction between players. But some curtail those activities as well, to avoid “Club Fed”-style accusations that prison is too easy for the inmates. When they do allow prisoners to play with the pigskin, it’s usually flag football. Even if a warden wanted to allow full-contact football, most prisons don’t stock, or can’t afford, the padding and other equipment necessary for tackling.

Even flag football can cause problems for prison guards. In 1991, a Colorado facility went into lockdown after a fight broke out; one player felt he’d been “hit a little hard” during the game. In 2004, a small riot started at a penitentiary for troubled girls in Florida when several inmates tried to hang themselves with the flags.

So yeah: probably not. However, rumor has it there’s an opening for Michael Jackson in prison’s latest version of Thriller.

Today in awesome photos

September 24th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanE

I’m not sure if this photo (via Dave’s Football Blog) is a product of this Falcon fan’s extremely heightened sense of irony, or a total lack thereof … but I’m going to guess the latter.  Or maybe it’s just shamelessness.

Mike Vick, author, talking points memo

September 5th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanE

While not the clearest outline ever constructed (where are the Roman Numerals?), Vick’s apology note sure covers all the bases, even the little “dogs have suffered” bit he apparently never got around to during his apology.

PETA’s skills in recovering dog abusers’ apologetic slips of hotel paper: excellent. PETA’s skills in not alienating me with over the top “we’ll-get-the-bad-guys-let’s-roll” nonsense: poor. Very, very poor.

Weekend Fun Part 2: Of course our site is running much better today, plus some odds and ends

July 20th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanR

After my semi-delusional and overly reactionary rant last night, things seem to be moving much smoother on the site today. (For now.)

So, I’m going to do a bit of blogging here and then we’re going to call it a week. I don’t want to leave the non-positive vibes on the top of the site all weekend. You understand, right? We cool now? Cool.

First: I ran across the link where this dog emanates from early in the week, but with that Michael Vick business going down shortly thereafter, I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to display it here.

Yeah, I’m guessing if Vick got a hold of this dog, there’d be no need for drowning or electrocuting or whatever the heck else he’s allegedly done. Air Bud ain’t got nothin’ on that dog there.

Second, I had a long post ready to go on Gary Player’s comments about steroids in golf for yesterday. It’s a bit untimely now, so I’m going to reproduce just a part of it here for you in blockquote form:

Gary Player knows, man. He knows that at least one professional golfer has used steroids or some other permutation of performance-enhancing drugs. He knows so much, in fact, that’s he’s willing to go on record with the most fantastically vague quote of all-time.

“Whether it’s HGH, whether it’s Creatine or whether it’s steroids, I know for a fact that some golfers are doing it,” he said.

Asked how he knew for certain, he said one golfer told him.

“I took an oath prior to him telling me — I won’t tell you where — but he told me what he did, and I could see this massive change in him,” Player said. “And somebody else told me something, that I also promised I wouldn’t tell, that verified others had done it.”

He took an oath, really? What is this, Boy Scouts? Brownies, maybe? You know, as Americans, we should be over the shock, horror and astonishment of steroids by now. The use is so prevalent, so widespread, that it’s completely analogous with somebody being a bit shady in the real world. It’s no different than the accountant pinching money out of his/her company or the guy that clocks in his buddy for a day of work he never showed up to. It’s wrong, but it’s part of life.

Again, as I said before, we are going up to Milwaukee this weekend and at least one of us will be in attendance for the Brewers-Giants tilt on Saturday. And yes, we are totally rooting for Bonds to go yard because it would be amazing to see him hit one so close to the record, regardless of the fact that he’s kind of a dick. We’ll try to have some grand, amazing coverage of it on Monday, but don’t hold your collective breaths.

And lastly, I don’t know if this is going to be some new feature or not here on Weekend Fun, but I’m going to leave you with a musical YouTube. If nothing else, it will at least give me and E something to talk about — especially because I know he’s going to rip me for this one. I was going to throw down the music video for Feist’s “My Moon, My Man” because I think it is fantastic, but since I saw her live at Lollapalooza last year — the lineup this year is decidedly worse, in my opinion — here’s Feist preforming “Secret Heart” on Last Call With Carson Daily. Enjoy it. Or don’t.