In 2008, the Texas Rangers served as an unofficial home for the wayward ballplayer, providing refuge for some of baseball’s most undesirable types – the crackheads, the ones with anger management issues.

Apparently, Donovan McNabb’s utopian vision for the Eagles would have them employing the ideology of the Rangers of ’08 when building their team this season. After all, he was the one who petitioned on behalf of Michael Vick. What’s more, just yesterday, he mentioned in yesterday’s press conference that he wouldn’t mind bringing Plaxico Burress – of Trapped in the Latin Quarter Club fame – on board as well.

What a hotbed of scandal and fun that’d be! But in a town like Philly? Where everything’s so…nice, pleasant, full of cheer and, well, brother love.  Could they handle all that real-life grit?  I mean, these are people who are scared of Santa Claus.  (True story: They snowballed him so that he’d go away and leave them to live peacefully in bucolic bliss.)  And he’s never been convicted of so much a misdemeanor.

If public outcry is any indication, many Eagles fans are no more eager to roll out the red carpet for Vick than they were for old St. Nick. A quick search on Craig’s List produces several listings by Eagles fans looking to dump their season tickets in protest. According to a philly.com poll with close to 39,000 participants, 51.1% of respondents were against the signing, 48.9% were for it.

It’s hard for me to be terribly objective when it comes to Vick. As I’ve mentioned before, I value the lives of most people more than the lives of most animals, and you’d be hard-pressed to get me to forgive a guy like Vick.  There is no sentence long enough to clean that slate in my mind.

That said, Vick did serve the legally mandated sentence, so the question becomes one of whether or not he’s allowed to continue to play football for a living. Of course, as we all know, Roger Goodell recently made that ruling and the answer was an unequivocal yes.  The Eagles were then quick to make that ruling a practical reality by offering him a job.  The question is was this right? Was any of this right?

In my gut, I say no.  People will argue he served his time, but the NFL rules stipulate that additional suspensions and fines may be doled out“ at the discretion of the commissioner.”  Playing professional sports, and getting paid millions of dollars to do so is a privilege.  No one will ever convince me otherwise.

The sometimes unjust reality of the world is that a person may continue to pay the consequences for a criminal action long after he’s served his time. Some industries or companies have stricter guidelines for people with criminal records. Some industries – such as professional football – have PR considerations.  Not to mention the fact that there is a code of conduct that dictates that “conduct undermining or risking the integrity or reputation of the NFL will be subject to disciplinary action, even if the conduct is not criminal.”

You’d be hard-pressed to convince me that Vick’s was not behavior that undermined the integrity of the NFL.

People have been drawing a lot of comparisons to players such as Donte Stallworth, who was convicted of killing a man while driving under the influence of alcohol. Stallworth was allowed to play in the NFL again. The argument for many, on this one, was fairly clear-cut.  Stallworth took the life of another person.  Vick, only the lives of dogs. Let’s leave aside the question of whether it’s reasonable to value the lives of animals as much as I do. The fundamental difference here, for me, is that Stallworth behaved recklessly, and in so doing, he robbed another person of his life. While it was wrong to drive under the influence of alcohol, it was an accident nonetheless – not indicative of a pattern of behavior or malicious intent. Michael Vick willfully tortured, abused, starved, and killed countless dogs for no better reason than profit and recreation. And he did it over and over and over again.  If the issue at hand were that Michael Vick had gotten high and hit a dog with his car, we’re not having this same debate.

But Goodell has spoken, and so have McNabb and the Eagles.  While the NFL ultimately had little to lose from this decision, the Eagles may yet pay the price. Only time will tell how permanently their fans will take to heart this lapse in judgment. I, for one, was pretty diligent about hating the Jets during their affiliation with Fav-ruh but was willing to forgive when his brief tenure with them had concluded. Of course, all he did was un-retired. He never tortured any dogs. (Though he wasn’t what you’d call a friend to the animals.)

Whatever the case, looks like McNabb is on his way to building his dream team. Though it’s fairly unlikely that his fantasy about bringing Plax on board will become a reality. Generally speaking, Plax may have a hard time nailing down a contract because of the inevitable suspension that he faces as soon as he does. For reasons that are unclear, Goodell is withholding the terms of said suspension until such time as this mythical signing take place. While there’s obviously no way of getting around a suspension in a case like this, in my mind, Plax is an example of someone who truly has already paid his debt to society.  He paid it in quad.