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Roger Goodell must love soccer, tennis and basketball right now. As we’ve been caught up in Team USA at the World Cup, John Isner’s first round match at Wimbledon and the most interesting NBA off-season in history, the NFL is not getting as much attention as it typically gets after the NBA Finals, when we typically start getting excited for NFL training camps. That’s a good thing when it comes to this story. Michael Vick and Brett Favre have dominated pre-training camp, off-season talks for the last few years. And Vick is back in the news again.
Michael Vick threw a 30th birthday party for himself at a night club in Virginia Beach. One of his co-defendants, whom he was not permitted to come in contact with for sixth months after his release from prison last year, was also there and a confrontation ensued. That same night, that man, Quanis Phillips was shot outside that night club. Vick is not a person of interest in the shooting and Phillips is currently in good condition.
The party itself and those in attendance could appear as a lapse of judgment to Roger Goodell and the NFL. Assuming nothing more incriminating comes out regarding Vick (or fellow attendee Roddy White), it may actually be in the league’s best interest to let the story die behind what was an exciting sports week and not draw any more attention to it. Ahmadu Garba, the producer of Michael Vick’s reality show on BET, joined WGFX in Nashvill with Brent Dougherty, Clay Travis, and Blaine Bishop to discuss the shooting at Vick’s party, driving Vick out of prison, Vick the person and a second season on the show.
On the shooting at Vick’s birthday party:
“I got a call last night from this guy whose name is John, he’s Vick’s wife’s assistant, Kiafa. It was probably about 4:00 am Nasvhille time. He told me that, ‘Something just went down. We’re at this party and shots rang out.’ As far as I know from what it sounded like, Mike was there and they left shortly after that… I have a couple of years of law school experience, so he was asking me,’What’s going on? Is everything going to be OK.’”
On if Vick knows who is involved in the shooting:
“Yes, they knew who was involved, yeah. Mike is the king of Hampton, Virginia. Everybody knows him. He knows everybody. When he had his welcome back home party, I was at the party. There was a bunch of guys where Mike had to say, ‘No you can’t let those guys in.’ Because he knew what was going on. Mike knows the guy who got shot. I don’t know who did the shooting. They don’t know. As far as I know, Mike didn’t have anything to do with it. Everybody wants something from Mike.”
On how this relates to Vick’s probation:
“I know Mike pretty well. I’m the one that drove him out of prison with my film crew. We drove across country with him and probably spent about three months with him when he was on house arrest. As far as his probation goes, the first six months he couldn’t be around certain people. Mike had a couple of parties, some house warming parties a few days after he got out. Some people tried to come to his house and people had to block them off and tell that they couldn’t come. As far as being on his parole, being around those people doesn’t matter now, but he was around weapons and there was violence, so that could be an issue… Mike couldn’t be around his co-defendants within a six month window of when he got out of prison.”
On driving Vick out of prison:
“There was a lot of media out in Kansas where we got him, so we snuck him out. They released him a few hours before they were supposed to. We snuck him out with his wife and drove him with my film crew. It took us two or three days to get him to Virginia because he had to get there and put on his anklet.”
On Michael Vick the person:
“Mike is a good guy as far as what I got from that (show). I thought he genuinely wanted to be better… I know for 100% that Mike is definitely trying to hang out with the right people and he is definitely trying to work on his marriage with his wife. Every time he goes out and does something social, his wife is there.”
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