Philadelphia is a town whose sports legends include Charles Barkley, Pete Rose, Chuck Bednarik, Wilt Chamberlain, and Steve Carlton, who in addition to being Hall of Fame-level talents in their respective sports also found the time to throw folks through windows, be convicted for tax evasion, joke about nearly crippling people, pleasure many ladies, and offer ideas that are at best “colorful” and at worst “anti-Semitic.” Philly itself is the town that cheered when Michael Irvin had a dangerous neck injury (in fairness, Irvin did play for the Cowboys). Now former Atlanta Falcons quarterback/ one-time Don King of dogfighting Michael Vick’s arrived. Wow.

I’m of two minds about Vick. One is he served a lot of prison time and lost a lot of money, so maybe it’s time to get another chance. The other is Vick is a breed apart from anyone ever readmitted to the NFL. Yes, the league is littered with drunk drivers and alleged wife-beaters and general scumbags, but I don’t think there’s ever been anyone quite so coldly calculating as Vick. We’ll leave the cruelty to animals out of the equation. As a dog owner for much of my life, I find the thought of fighting them to the death troubling (and occasionally having my staff electrocute them or slam them against the ground until they died beyond abhorrent), but let’s make the argument that animals aren’t people and shouldn’t be regarded as such, making this little worse than hunting. I don’t know if I buy this view, since most hunters don’t kill their prey by torturing it to death in a bizarre fashion–that tends to be behavior associated less with sportsmen than serial killers–but so be it. Here are the rest of the facts.

As far back as 2000, Vick was reportedly considered one of the “big boys” of the dogfighting world and his escapades didn’t really come to light until 2007, meaning this was something he pursued for roughly a decade, wagering tens of thousands on individual bouts (and there are lots of individual bouts over the course of a decade). He set up facilities specifically for this activity and maintained a large enough group of flunkies to keep everything hidden away and running smoothly. When initially confronted about it, he lied through his teeth to his team and league officials. It was a long-term illegal operation involving large amounts of money and lots of individuals that required deceiving everyone around him…all so in his spare time he could pursue a favorite hobby: watching animals maim each other to death.

He’s going to be quite a teammate.

The punch line is that Vick will doubtlessly soon be the number two quarterback behind Philadelphia’s longtime QB Donovan McNabb. I’m a fan of McNabb, largely because I don’t think there’s ever been an athlete of his stature who’s been crapped on by his own fans so many times, starting with the announcement the Eagles drafted him (“The Philadelphia Eagles have selected Donovan McNa-” “BOO!”–the man was heckled before the team had time to say his entire name). Roughly once a season Philly gets sick of McNabb and demands a new quarterback, then returns to him when he reaches the playoffs and wins a game or two, then abandons him again when he fails to win a Super Bowl. The question is: will Philly fans cheer for Vick to replace McNabb? Will they put aside their moral revulsion and chant for a convicted felon? Will they turn on the man whose name has never been linked with scandal in favor of the dogfighter?

Stay tuned this season to see if the town that booed Santa Claus reaches a new low point.

__ of the Moment appears each Wednesday.

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