Rich Hofmann: Vick sounds sincere, but it's early in his redemption tour

PRESUMABLY, there will be another day and another school assembly for Michael Vick. Maybe by the third time, or the fifth time, or the 10th time, the dozen cameras and the whole circus atmosphere will cease to materialize. Maybe that will be the time to check in again.

Because yesterday never had a chance to seem real.

It isn't that Vick did not come off as sincere when he talked to a group of about 200 high school freshmen yesterday at Nueva Esperanza Academy in Feltonville, because he did. He seemed comfortable enough, and genuine enough, as he spoke for about 10 minutes, without notes, about dog fighting, and about peer pressure, and about how, "I did all the right things, great job in school, listened to my mom because she told me right from wrong, but when I walked out of that door, I had another side to me, a dark side to me."

The problem is not Vick. The problem is the Michael Vick Redemption Tour, which is still just taking its first steps, accompanied all along the way by cameras and microphones and notebooks and bright lights and speakers seeking attention and pep-rally applause and under-the-breath cynicism and everything in between.

It is too much. There is no way to avoid it, of course, this collision between public good and public relations, not at the beginning, not as long as the Eagles and the NFL have required all of this as a necessary exercise if Vick is again to make a living as a professional football player.

These are Vick's first acts in the Philadelphia community and they do need to be documented. But they do not reflect reality because the very presence of a dozen television cameras in the back of the room, plus assorted still cameras and radio, television, newspaper and Web site reporters arrayed on the side aisles of the auditorium, alters the reality.

It becomes a stage play: Act I, "See Michael Repent." There were elements of a revival meeting, too. In a couple of places, Vick referred to his remarks as "my testimony."

To repeat, he handled it well. Clutching a folded piece of paper tightly in his left hand as he spoke, Vick was not perfect in his delivery. Every argument or choice of phrase he made would not necessarily hold up under intense cross-examination. But he did seem real, which has to be his goal. He did seem real when he said, "I got sidetracked. I chose to do something that for the life of me, I can't understand."