Punishing PacMan Jones and Chris Henry and Tank Johnson is easy for Goodell to do because it sends a message through non-stars in the NFL. The question is whether Goodell has the stones to suspend a marquee player for a considerable length of time.
Let's think about this for a second:
1) It seems like Vick's actions may not be as terrible as PacMan's (his directly lead to a death of a bouncer), but worse than Chris Henry's (perpetual acting like an idiot).
2) That being said, while Vick's actions have allegedly been occurring over time, he has not been a repeat offender like Henry and PacMan in the sense that he hasn't had different crimes come to light at different times.
3) I wonder if that makes his case the most comparable to Tank Johnson. It should then be interesting to find out whether he gets the same fate as Johnson.
Thought experiment: The league finds out Tom Brady hits his girl friend out in public and is tried and convicted of some sort of domestic abuse, what do they do? What if he does it again? Does he get comparable punishments? How does the league order crimes? It cannot be arbitrary because then it opens the door to threats of racism and protection of stars.
This should be interesting...
Also, and this is obvious, but...there had been discussion about trading Vick and going to Schaub for a year or so. Arthur Blank tells his new coach that Vick is the man this year, they trade Schuab, and Vick gets busted. Talk about a raw deal.
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