Repeat the word: model. Michael Vick, it seems, has written the playbook - and Burress and his people have swiped it whole.
What once were uncharted waters - who ever heard of a convicted felon returning to play professional sports? - have found their cartographer. He plays quarterback for the Eagles.
Cynics will see it as a public-relations map and nothing more. True believers will see it as a well-conceived set of steps for a public man who has fallen terribly and who needs to find a path back to a public life. The cynics will never be true believers and the true believers will never be cynics - and that isn't what this is about.
Instead, it is a simple acknowledgment of the fact that, whatever the ulterior motives - cynical or honest or some combination of the two - Vick and his people devised a comeback strategy that worked so well that it is being duplicated here by Burress. It is being copied exactly, and two of the three elements are now in place.
First, there is mentorship. That is the Dungy role. He performed it for Vick, and he will perform it - along with Magic Johnson and also Vick, apparently - with Burress.
Dungy is the key, though. He visited Burress in jail, talked with him about what is ahead and, most important, publicly vouches for Burress' sincerity. That is crucial as teams begin to sniff around.
"It's an honor. [Dungy is] a man of great integrity, of great faith," is how Burress was quoted yesterday by the Newark Star-Ledger. "I have a lot of respect for him, with everything he's accomplished in life. For him to reach out to me in a time and a situation where a lot of people shied away, it meant a lot to me."
And Dungy?
