Ok, all you wanna be gangstas who think you're above the law because you can shoot a basketball, run fast with a football or hit a baseball very far ... listen up!

When you finally make it big in professional sports do you ...
Still want to have an entourage of your boys following you around everywhere you go?
Still want to run with guys from the old hood ... guys you might've outgrown a long time ago?

Do ya still want a posse of your very own?

If the answer to any one of those is yes, do me a favor ...
Call Michael Vick first.

Vick, the Atlanta Falcon's quarterback and one of the most recognizable athletes in the world, is looking at serving at least 9 months of a probable one-year jail sentence after his three co-defendants in an interstate dogfighting ring coped guilty pleas with federal prosecutors and turned state's evidence against him.

He just found out ... first hand ... what it means when people say if you lay down with dogs, you're bound to get fleas.

Yes, pun intended.

This whole thing is so stupid and dumb, Vick deserves to have fun poked at his silly ass at every turn!
And if the story wasn't so sad, it would be funny.

But, it's not.
It's a terrible indictment of what happens to too many of our young athletes, black and white, who don't know how to let go of their old ways once they finally make it out of the hood.

Vick's boys started flipping like pancakes once the feds threw serious jail time in their faces if they didn't cooperate and give him up.

They have apparently told authorities that Vick is the money man behind the operation. Vick is the one they all work for.
Vick is, the man. 

You see, there is one thing folks like Mike ... high profile people whether they be star athletes or wealthy businessmen ... don't understand about the way law enforcement people operate:
It doesn't do them much good to chase down small-time thugs. They squeeze those idiots to get to the big cheese.

It is never, ever their intention ... particularly the feds ... to go after anybody but the lead dog, so to speak.

In this case, that dog was Vick.

He was doomed from the time he first signed his name on the dotted line to buy the Virginia house where the illegal dogfighting ring was headquartered.

And when the house was raided by authorities during a drug investigation, that's when the story about Bad Newz Kennels ... owned by Vick ...  started to unravel.

He originally told investigators his cousin lived in the house and he didn't know what was going on there.

But he must've thought the feds had just fallen off the back of a police cruiser yesterday.
He forgot they do this stuff for a living ... try to determine who is a criminal and who isn't, that is.

Telling them you own a quarter of a million dollar piece of property, but you have no idea what's going on with it is like throwing blood in the middle of a gang of sharks. 

They start circling for the kill.

Vick denying knowledge of anything that was going on at the house was like turning a 50,000 watt spotlight on himself.
Now, he is not only looking at significant jail time, but an equally harsh and long suspension by the NFL for violating its personal code of conduct policy once he gets out.

It could very well be at least two years before we ever see Michael Vick in a football uniform again ...
if ever at all.

Vick did this all to himself.
But he can also thank his boys, his trusted posse, for a lot of it, too.


(Darron Patterson is an award-winning freelance journalist based in Detroit)