The new NFL season starts this week and as a Chicago Bears fan it's been a long off season. In the weeks leading up to the start, the stories has not been the usual camp reports and draft signings news but rather the news of Michael Vick. Wherever a sports fan turn, the Vick story was there right in front of them. At one point, I remember watching ESPN and they had the ticker of upcoming stories with nearly every other segment on Vick's trial!
How much coverage can they squeeze out of one story? Michael Vick's crime is pretty heinous. At the least it demonstrate a lot of cruelty in what he did to another living creature, but with the constant barrage of news coverage I started to get numb to it and the story became another statistical news item. I wondered whether it was orchestrated by Vick's PR machine to save his career and if it was then the people responsible are geniuses. From the initial reaction of "Vick's career is over", ESPN put so many commentators in front of sports fans to argue that Vick shouldn't be punished by the NFL that I'm sure that people started thinking, "Just shut up about this story, who cares if Vick plays." In the end, it really took the focus off Vick and put it on everyone else.
The media can be scary...
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