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The Debriefing is a column that runs every weekday at 9:00 a.m. here on FanHouse. It goes deep into one issue and then bounces around to a plethora of smaller ones ... and does it all in a way that will make you feel like the prettiest girl at the cotillion. Bookmark this page, and visit daily.



Bad news for dogs in rural Georgia: Michael Vick just got some more free time. NFL capo di capi Roger Goodell ordered Vick to take training camp off ... which won't be a problem for the Falcons, because I'm sure that Vick didn't need that time to help fully understand Bobby Petrino's new playbook. He's a smart guy, he's got it all down.

It also gives Vick more time to hang out with his friends ... if he still has any. If Vick's spent any time this week reading newspapers, perusing the internet, or watching ESPN (and I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that PTI isn't a fun 30 minutes for Vick these days), he's learned that he has to sever all ties to his friends, post-haste.

Even Allen Iverson said so. Sort of.

"You know, I don't think it's fair to say, 'Stay away from the people you grew up with,'" he said. "It's hard to have a relationship with people once you're already rich. You have to have a relationship with the same people you grew up with.

"But at the same time, you've got to make sure the guys are not hurting you. You've got to be smart enough to know when they're hurting you and when they're helping you."

"I think he's got to figure out and find out if he's got the right people around him, and I'm sure he's smart enough to know who is good for him and who's not," Iverson said.

It's interesting coming from Iverson, because he's probably the world's foremost authority on the subject.

Iverson and Vick are from the same Newport News/Hampton Roads area, and they played in the same high school football league. They had similar upbringings, they've both had legal problems as professionals, and both have been told to disassociate themselves from the friends they've had since day they were knee-high to a duck.

I'm with Iverson. That's not fair.

Of course, fairness to Michael Vick isn't one of my chief concerns at the moment. If even half the charges against him are true, I hope he ends up sharing a cell with White Power Bill and a 6'8", 360-lb. penitentiary boxing champion who's doing time for having candle-lit, gentle, romantic sex with pitbulls, because he believed they were God's most beautiful creatures.

But I'm not quite ready to assume guilt, and there's a whole other aspect of this that's important to explore. It always comes up when an athlete like Vick gets into trouble. Everyone's shouting at him, "Get rid of your friends! They're losers! They're degenerates! They're dragging you down!"

And I'll grant you, in some cases, that is true. And it might also be true that Michael Vick would be in less legal trouble today if he had, the very second he signed his first NFL or Nike contract, decided to go live in a peaceful Amish community in Pennsylvania (and what a lucky community that would be) and spend all his free time raising barns, milking bulls, and bowling 15 frames (10 is for Quakers).

But that's not the reality we're dealing with.

Iverson's right, it's just not that easy to cut loose friends. The people Vick hangs out with now are people that have been with him his entire life. The second he gets money, he's supposed to forget about those people, and find a whole new group of people to trust? I'm sure that would work out well.

"Hey, I have $40 million dollars now, who wants to be my new friend? Okay, you, you, and you. I automatically trust you guys over the people I've grown up with my entire life, because you have very nice smiles, well-ironed clothing, and impeccable table manners. Sign me up, I've got new friends."

Think about your best friend in the world ... the person you trust the most, the person who'd do anything for you. Think about the person you'd call first if you accidentally killed an undercover cop posing as a prostitute in a seedy hotel room.

Under what circumstances would you say, "I will not be your friend anymore"? What price tag would you put on that friendship?

And sure, Vick's friends might be doing him more harm than good ... but Vick's still a human being with a sense of loyalty. Whether or not these people are dog murderers, they're still the people Vick's spent his life with. Good or bad, they've been together through a lot (and since it's the Vick family we're talking about, I mean a lot). And it's just not that easy to let go of a friend who's had your back since you were a kid.

Now, please don't see this as a defense of, or an excuse for Vick, his friends, or his activities. This would probably be a much easier column to write if the alleged crime was something less disgusting than, you know, bodyslamming a dog until it died. I can't expect, nor do I want, to generate any sympathy for a human being who did (if he, in fact, did) what Vick is accused of.

Vick's friends weren't doing anything different than what Michael Vick was doing. It's not like a group of them broke into his house every night, kidnapped him, drugged him, and made him attend the highly anticipated bout, Rover vs. Spot, the Skirmish in Smithfield.

If a friend of mine called me up and said, "Hey man, I just took some jumper cables, connected them to my car, and then to my dog's ears, and started up the engine ... yeah, I fried the little guy," I'd have to reconsider that friendship. That is not the norm for me.

But that's not what's happening here. We're not talking about someone corrupting Michael Vick's values ... these were people who apparently shared Michael Vick's values.

So what good would it do Vick to cut those friends loose, if after they're gone, Vick's still the same person and wants to do the same things? He is who he is.

No one corrupted Vick. No one tried to hurt him. Everything he's accused of is on him, just as it is for the other gentlemen named in the federal indictment. No one's telling P-Funk, Q, and T that they need to cut Vick loose because he's ruining their lives.

Unfortunately, there are cultural issues here, too. Where you are economically and geographically in life has a lot to do with the kind of trouble you can get into.

Michael Vick did not invent dogfighting. He (allegedly) got caught up in something that's existed for years and years before him, and will probably exist long after he's gone. Vick and his friends were born in an area where there's at least a small segment of the population that loves, celebrates, and sees no harm in dogfighting (Clinton Portis is the mayor there, I believe).

That doesn't make it OK, obviously. But someone like me, who grew up in a pretty standard, middle-class, white-bread community, would have never had the opportunity to get into trouble like that. Where I live, most people pet dogs, play fetch with them, rub their bellies, and ask them, "Who's a good boy?"

Where Michael Vick lives, some people train their dogs to tear other dogs' throats out, put them on dog treadmills, and ask them, "Okay, your choice, buddy ... kill Fido, or be electrocuted ... what's it gonna be?"

If you grow up on a farm in rural Indiana and you've got a tendency towards mischief, you might end up knocking over someone's mailbox or seeing how many bodily appendages you can stick in old Mr. Floyd's prize heifer.

But if you grow up in one of the rougher parts of St. Louis, or on the wrong side of 8 Mile in Detroit, and you feel like being a miscreant ... the bar for mischief is raised a little bit. If you feel like getting into trouble there, it's probably going to be an entirely different kind of trouble ... and not all trouble is created equal.

The same kid who just got into the "boys will be boys" kind of trouble in rural Indiana, had he grown up in the same public housing project with Michael Vick in Hampton Roads, might have had an inkling to put $10 down on Rover to disembowel Spot.

And then, had he grown up to be a multi-millionaire, might have wanted to purchase a few rape stands and train a few Rovers and Spots of his own. Where your life ends up has a lot to do with where it started.

The problems here are not ones of friend selection, they're of culture and individual moral beliefs on animal cruelty.

Michael Vick is in this predicament because his life presented with the opportunity to make very bad decisions, and he (allegedly) made them ... decisions that were bad in a legal sense, and also in a "dog torture is bad" kind of sense. You can tell him to get rid of his friends, but it's not going to do any good ... they are not his problem, his own sense of loyalty won't allow him to do it anyway, and even if it did, it's way too late to make a difference.





Since the Getty database was broken yesterday, we're taking you back a day for this breathtaking (okay, that's a lie, I still have my breath ... but still, it's lovely) shot of Padraig Harrington planting his lips on the Claret Jug.

Just out of curiosity, I wonder if they disinfect that thing between champions. For example, when Tom Lehman won it in 1996, the year after John Daly won it ... I mean, your blood alcohol level shoots up like .04 for putting your lips were Daly's have been. For Tom Lehman's sake, I just hope there's a thorough disinfecting process.






Manny Ramirez. Manny had a 2-RBI double in the top of the first inning for the Red Sox, the biggest factor in staking pitcher Jon Lester out to a 4-0 lead. I thought that was awfully nice of the Red Sox to do for Lester in his first start since his cancer went into remission. Takes a little bit of the pressure of a guy.

Not that he needed any favors ... Lester pitched well. He went six innings, allowed 5 hits, and 2 earned runs. He got into a little bit of trouble a couple of times, but he battled. It was everything anyone could have hoped for.

I'm glad he won ... I wanted him to win this game, and if that meant that Major League Baseball had to bring in Tim Donaghy to be the home plate umpire just once, I'd have been okay with it.

But more important is not that Lester won, just that he was out there doing what Jon Lester was born to do. Pitching, feeling good, feeling normal. For the first time in a long time in his life, he wasn't a patient, he was a pitcher.

And I hope he gets to continue being that until he's Julio Franco's age.

Runner-up: Alex Rodriguez. He has 100 RBIs. It's July.



Victoria Beckham. I'm gonna be honest with you ... I'm uncomfortable with the presence of Victoria Beckham in America. It's nothing against her personally, and I'm excited about the Beckham thing, I really am ... but I feel strangely uneasy every time I see his wife on television, which, recently, has been a lot. I don't know why, but it's very off-putting.

I think once upon a time, she might have been attractive, and she came off as charming and nice in this difficult interview (and this one, too)... and I hate to crack on someone's looks, but it's as if she decided, somewhere along the line, "I don't want to look like a human being anymore."

There just doesn't seem to be much natural about the woman, and ... I don't know. I just feel confused when I look at her. She should be attractive, and I suppose there's no reason why she isn't, but ... it just sort of seems like she belongs in a glass case.

Runner-up: Me. For two reasons ... number one, not being able to come up with a better candidate for Yesterday's Sad Sack, and also because I've yet to write much at all about the Tim Donaghy situation.

It's sort of like Victoria Beckham to me ... I really cannot decide how to feel about it, and when I try to figure it out, I just get confused. I can't decide if I'm unable to grasp the enormity of it, I'm just in denial about what it might mean for my beloved NBA, or if I honestly just don't care that much. I don't know yet.



Deserving Of Your Full Attention ...

10:00, ESPN. The Bronx is Burning. Last chance, ESPN ... or I'll be reviewing the final five episodes with the same ill-humor which I did the last five weeks of The Kornheiser Chronicles. Please don't make me do that.

Other Stuff ...

8:00, ESPN2. WNBA. Detroit Shock @ Connecticut Sun.
9:00, ABC. Shaq's Big Challenge.
9:00, FOX. House.
10:00, ESPN2. WNBA. Los Angeles Sparks @ Sacramento Monarchs.
10:00, TBS. Atlanta Braves @ San Francisco Giants.