Dog-ged by the past

So I have this screen saver on my phone.

It's your classic sleeping-dog photo of our 14-year-old black Labradoodle (who's mostly Lab and not much Doodle) curled up on a pillow by the hearth, dreaming her doggy dreams. Her muzzle, mostly gray now, rests on one front paw. The spot is her favorite one; the attitude of sleep, her natural state now in the sunset days of a well-loved life.

Which is to say, I get why people think the NFL is even more tone-deaf than usual, doing for Michael Vick what it's doing. And that is truly saying something about an organization with such advanced degrees in cluelessness.

What the NFL has done is name Vick as one of its four "legends" captains for the 2020 Pro Bowl, along with Darrell Green, Bruce Smith and Terrell Davis. The latter of the three are Hall of Famers. Vick is the only one who isn't, but that's not the only thing that sets him apart.

He's also the only one of the four who's served prison time for torturing dogs.

Few crimes, in a society of dog lovers, are more visceral, or provoke more blind rage, than drowning, hanging, shooting and electrocuting dogs, which is what the sick bastards who ran Vick's dog fighting ring did more than a dozen years ago. Vick got 18 months in the Graybar Hotel for that depravity. More than a few dog lovers thought he should have gotten the needle instead.

The Blob wasn't one of them. Well, except for every time I looked at our sweet sleeping dog, that is.

In any case, Vick did his time and was eventually welcomed back to the NFL. If what he was a party to will follow him for the rest of his days, and should, what he's done in the 12 years since he went off to prison should follow him to.

What he's done is become as passionate an advocate for animal rights as he once was for animal torture.

In the decade since Vick left prison, he's worked with the Humane Society to put a stop to dogfighting. He's traveled to schools on his own dime to talk to kids about the moral ruin of the dogfighting culture. He helped get the Animal Fighting Spectator Prohibition Act passed by Congress, and he made a trip to the Pennsylvania statehouse to support a bill that would make it easier for police to rescue dogs left in baking cars in the summertime.

You can argue, and many will, that he's done all this merely so he could play in the NFL again. But a lot of it has happened after he was reinstated, which cuts the legs out from under that argument. There is a possibility none of it is genuine; there is a greater possibility he sees it as a form of penance.

People do change, after all. They also gain wisdom as they grow older.

Vick was in his mid-20s when he was running his dogfighting ring. He's pushing 40 and retired from the NFL now. So maybe part of this is he's simply grown up.

This is not to say the NFL hasn't stepped in it again. It has. Reformed or not, older and wiser or not, Vick seems an odd choice at best as a "legend," given the company he'll be keeping. There are dozens upon dozens of other retired players the Shield could have chosen as a legend captain. Why Vick, who will always be stained by his past no matter how much he may have grown beyond it?

Yes, people do change. To deny that is to embrace the bleakest of ideologies, which is that human beings, once they've indulged their darkest impulses, are incapable of finding their way back to the light. If that's the case, we might just as well all pack it in now.

Thankfully, it is not the case. There are numerous examples to the contrary, and it's possible Michael Vick is one of them.

He at least deserves the benefit of our doubt, therefore.

Just not as much as the NFL seems willing to extend him.