Bad Newz Kennels

NORFOLK, Va. - An animal-rights group has bought Michael Vick's former dogfighting compound in Virginia and plans to turn it into a rehabilitation center for chained and penned dogs. The Philadelphia Eagles quarterback pleaded guilty to federal felony charges and served 18 months in prison for running Bad Newz Kennels from the property. He eventually sold it to a developer who had difficulty unloading it following Vick's conviction. Dogs Deserve Better of Tipton, Pa., bought the five-bedroom home for about $600,000.

Michael Vick's last two co-defendants pleaded guilty yesterday at federal court in Richmond, Va., and implicated Vick in bankrolling gambling on dogfights. One said the Atlanta Falcons quarterback helped drown or hang dogs that didn't do well. With his NFL career in jeopardy and a superseding indictment adding more charges in the works, Vick faces a hard choice: Cutting his own deal to hold jail time under a year or go to trial and sit through detailed descriptions of the ghastly operation known as "Bad Newz Kennels.

Corey Simon's mysterious absence from the Indianapolis Colts entered its second season yesterday with no immediate resolution. Nearly 10 months after the Colts put the former Eagles Pro Bowler on the nonfootball illness/injury list with an undisclosed ailment, the 6-2, 300-pound defensive tackle was absent. Published reports last week indicated Simon planned to report on time. But he wasn't seen at camp before the players' reporting deadline and was missing again when his teammates took the field for the first time yesterday morning.

If federal prosecutors had their way, the man who gave them most of the gruesome details about Michael Vick's dogfighting enterprise wouldn't go to prison for killing dogs and helping create "Bad Newz Kennels. " U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson disagreed, saying it wouldn't be right to let Tony Taylor walk after sentencing Vick to 23 months in prison and two other defendants to 18 and 21 months. "You were as much an abuser of animals as any other defendant in this case," Hudson told Taylor yesterday before sentencing him to 2 months in prison.

MICHAEL VICK says he's sorry and will spend the rest of his life trying to save more dogs than he harmed. Jeffrey Lurie said he needed to see a lot of "self-hatred" before he was willing to give Vick 1.6 million of his dollars. Andy Reid spoke of how second chances make both this country, and the NFL, "a great thing. " I am not smart enough to discern the sincerity of each and all. What I can discern though is the squeamishness felt among many fans in the Delaware Valley who are caught between the love of their Birds and the love of their dogs.

Five sacks of dog food for every sack? A heap of chow for each kapow? Yesterday, Main Line Animal Rescue, in an ad in the Washington Post, put a pledge behind its distaste for Michael Vick, the convicted Bad Newz Kennels conspirator. Each time the Eagles' new gadget guy-backup quarterback is tackled during the Oct. 26 away game against the Redskins, five bags of dog food will be donated to a D.C. animal shelter. "Because there are no second chances on an empty stomach," the ad says.

A property in Virginia owned by Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick was used as the "main staging area for housing and training the pit bulls involved" in an alleged dogfighting operation, according to court documents. The papers, filed by federal authorities Monday in U.S. District Court in Richmond and obtained yesterday by the Associated Press, contain the address of the Vick property that has been the center of the investigation. Vick is not named in the documents. Federal agents again searched the property yesterday.

Court cases against Michael Vick make it clear he funded and participated in a dogfighting ring, and he was likely present when dogs were drowned or hanged. It's slightly less clear whether he personally killed animals. Here are the some key points in Michael Vick's dogfighting career and the resulting criminal cases: June 2001 - Two months after he joins the Atlanta Falcons as the NFL's No. 1 draft pick, Vick buys a 15-acre plot in rural Virginia. On it he builds sheds, kennels and a five-bedroom home.

Michael Vick moved one step closer to being tried on state dogfighting charges yesterday at a hearing to make sure he has legal representation. An attorney for the suspended Atlanta Falcons quarterback appeared in Surry County (Va.) Circuit Court and was asked to return Nov. 27 to set a trial date. Vick, who did not attend the hearing, is in the midst of a big week. Today, representatives from the Falcons, the NFL management council and the NFL Players Association are scheduled to meet in Philadelphia for a contract arbitration case.

Former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick put family pets in rings with pit bulls and thought it was funny watching the trained killers injure or kill the helpless dogs, a witness told federal investigators during the dogfighting investigation that brought Vick down. In a 17-page report filed Aug. 28, 2008, by case agent James Knorr of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and released yesterday under the Freedom of Information Act, a person identified as confidential witness No. 1 said Vick placed pets in the ring against pit bulls owned by "Bad Newz Kennels" at least twice and watched as the pit bulls "caused major injuries.

In one of the greatest favorite-son-returns stories in sports, Michael Vick goes back to the Georgia Dome for Sunday Night Football . And if Atlanta were any kind of sports town, the fans would boo him unmercifully. Look what this guy did to that town. The Falcons were sailing along as one of the perennial contending teams in the NFC - a far cry from where they usually flew, which was at a much lower altitude - and Vick decided to get into that dogfighting nonsense.

HERE IN PHILLY, we think we know everything about Michael Vick. We know the big stuff: The hardscrabble youth in Newport News, Va. The breakout stardom at Virginia Tech. The 2001 draft, in which he became the first African-American quarterback to be taken first overall. The sold-out games in Atlanta. The $130 million contract with the Falcons - the biggest in NFL history. We know the horrible stuff: The five years as a full-blown dogfighter. The 54 dogs rescued from his Bad Newz Kennels.

AS YOU MAY HAVE READ, Eagles quarterback Michael Vick's former home in rural Virginia is going to the dogs. Literally. A Pennsylvania-based, animal-rights advocacy group called Dogs Deserve Better plans to move onto the 15-acre property in Surry County, Va., formerly owned by No. 7, and convert it into an animal sanctuary. In early July, Tamira Thayne, the group's founder, will take up residence on the second floor of the white-brick, five-bedroom McMansion featuring vaulted ceilings, a chandelier and two whirlpool tubs, leaving the entire first floor as a temporary home for nine rescued dogs.

NORFOLK, Va. - An animal-rights group has bought Michael Vick's former dogfighting compound in Virginia and plans to turn it into a rehabilitation center for chained and penned dogs. The Philadelphia Eagles quarterback pleaded guilty to federal felony charges and served 18 months in prison for running Bad Newz Kennels from the property. He eventually sold it to a developer who had difficulty unloading it following Vick's conviction. Dogs Deserve Better of Tipton, Pa., bought the five-bedroom home for about $600,000.

THERE WAS a terrific scene in "Animal House" (arguably the greatest piece of cinematography ever) in which a fraternity pledge is with a date who passes out in bed. As the young man contemplates taking liberties with his guest, an angel appears on one shoulder and counsels him to act morally. On the other, a devil encourages the alternative. The would-be fraternity member is left to weigh their competing advice. I think of that scene whenever I watch Michael Vick and contemplate whether I should root for his success.

MICHAEL VICK'S still-sore ribs likely will preclude what surely would have been one of the more interesting story lines this fall, maybe even on a par with Donovan McNabb's return to Lincoln Financial Field as a Washington Redskin or a potential Roy Halladay vs. Cliff Lee pitching matchup in the World Series. When the Eagles host the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday afternoon, Kevin Kolb is expected to get the start at quarterback in place of the injured Vick with a local kid, Matt Ryan, taking the snaps for the visitors.

THIS SUNDAY, again, I'll do something uncomfortable for me - I won't root for the Eagles, "my team" since the pre-Dick Vermeil days, when they were a skunk at the picnic. I won't root for the Redskins, because they're not my team. But neither are the Eagles with Michael Vick at the controls. When he was signed, I accepted it, but I didn't like it. The deal was, he'd be a backup for a year or two. He wasn't the face of the team. I could put up with that. Now that he's the starter, and possibly the Eagles' future, I can't root for them.

Early 2001   Michael Vick, Quanis Phillips and Tony Taylor decide to start an illegal dogfighting operation. Later that year, Purnell Peace joins the venture.   2002-07   Vick and his co-defendants establish "Bad Newz Kennels," host dogfights and participate in fights in other states.   April 25, 2007   Police raid Vick's Virginia property and find several neglected pit bulls and evidence of dogfighting.   June 7, 2007   Federal investigators raid Vick's property.

There isn't anyone outside of Michael Vick himself who really knows if Vick is a changed man. You can look him in the eyes, as Andy Reid and Jeffrey Lurie did last summer, or study his actions, which has been a media parlor game since he signed with the Eagles, but the truth is that a person's thoughts are his or hers alone. Vick was smart enough to know that, whether factual or fanciful, his "change" had better look genuine. He had a whole lot of old white men sitting in judgment on his future, and that isn't an equation that always went well previously.

In this town, Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb has his detractors and his staunch defenders. McNabb's backup, Michael Vick, is an even more divisive figure - but on a national scale. Since he pleaded guilty to running an interstate dogfighting ring in 2007, the athlete has been the target of vituperative attacks by people who feel that he organized and bankrolled unforgivably heinous acts of animal cruelty. Others see him as a guy who has apologized and paid for his mistakes (with bankruptcy and 23 months behind bars)