Despite his stellar play, the Eagles seem to be concerned about giving quarterback Mike Vick a huge signing bonus that, under the current labor deal, couldn’t be recovered in the event that something happens in the offseason that makes him ineligible to play football in 2011 or beyond. After all, it will be the first offseason in which Vick once again enjoys superstar status since 2007.
And superstar status he will enjoy in the offseason, since he’s already enjoying superstar status during the 2010 season.
Vick got a glimpse of it when he showed up at Friday night’s NBA game between the Lakers and 76ers.
“This whole place went bananas,” Lakers guard Kobe Bryant said, according to the Associated Press, regarding the reaction to Vick’s arrival.
The sellout crowd, only the second of the year for the 76ers, chanted “MVP!” as Vick reportedly “slapped hands” with fans and waved to the crowd.
“You would have thought the president walked in or something,” said Matt Barnes of the Lakers.
The unabashed Vick praise comes the very same week in which former Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was booed at a Washington Wizards game against the Lakers. (It ended up being only the second-worst moment of McNabb’s week.)
We think it’s great that Vick has taken his game to new heights. But this will serve only to increase the potential for the return of the sense of entitlement that helped Vick become the guy who thought the rules didn’t apply to him.
“Everywhere I go, all around the world, people still support Mike Vick,” he said roughly a month after the dogfighting operation was found on his rural Virginia property, “so regardless of what I go through people gonna love me, man.”
Though he is now saying all the right things (most recently during a Friday morning interview on ESPN’s Mike & Mike in the Morning), it will be his actions and not his words that matter most once the games end and he’s left to his own devices from January (or maybe February) through April (or maybe May, June, July, or August).