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Another Michael Vicks Bites The Dust By Farouk Martins, Omo Aresa
Africans have now moved into professional sports in Europe and America in a bigger way than those days of Thunder Balogun and Onyeali. Our brothers and sisters are carrying money home in carts, as we say in Nigeria. As much as the hope of saying good bye to poverty without getting involved in illegal dirty activities is laudable, we have to urge caution to sons and daughters of Africa. That first bonus is much more; it is seed money for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, even the salary may not last as there is always a clause in the contract to return some of it if plan does not go accordingly.
It is not only Michael Vicks or Marion Jones or Ade Chukwu or Ali Baba, it could be any of our sons or daughters. A cousin of mine got cut from a major sport house and the mother was happy he could find work because the parents insisted that he must finish college before being drafted. He was lucky that he had not left home on a spending spree when he was cut. The lesson of Michael Vicks rings home to those who want to listen.
Whatever the debate on what he did, I would be a proud father beside my son in court as he now decides to go to jail before sentencing. He did not steal, commit fraud, rape, drug or murder. As for murder, he placed bets on dogs for sports and some low performing dogs were killed. Some would argue that murderers start from small animals. I know how people feel about man’s best friend and I can not defend him for that. He has to pay to learn the hard way. Once we decide that dogs are man’s best friend, so be it. If we decide to kill rats and snakes because they are pest to man, fine. We have to stick to the rules.
Many people who have made it hide from their childhood friends because they do not want to be bothered. Money is sweet if you can find people who are close to you to spend it with. What good is money itself if you can not spend it well? We have to choose our friends carefully. Some friends have fallen by the wayside. There was a childhood friend of ours that our parents always told us to stay away from because he always won “try your luck” in those days. Little did we know that the father was also a highway robber.
As we got back home from college, friends and neighbors told us he had become one of the armed robbers. Those friends, you stay away from but remain polite to them if you happen to “jam” them on the street. I am not sure how choosy Michael Vicks was about his old friends but they got him into trouble. Unfortunately, he courted trouble with his own money. “Trouble only trouble people who trouble trouble.” These are the same friends who were ready to testify against him in a plead bargain to get lighter sentences.
Sometimes we go overboard and choose totally new friends in our new found social class and forget those we left behind. The danger is, where are you going back to if you loose it all? Life is very complicated and none of us has all the answers but we have to be very careful about our choice of friends. If you make all the right choices and still end up in a ditch, you can not blame yourselves. If there is any consolation, it is that people will rise to your defense.
If Michael Vicks was a cowboy and he was killing Indians, nobody would charge him to court because that was gallantry in those days. If he had wrestled a bear or a lion to a stand still or to a kill, he would not be charged to court. We know what they do to a raging bull in the arena before it comes out charging, all for sports and entertainment. It is not different to what the Romans did in those days as they watch wild animal devour a man in their arena. That was the rule of the game.
I am not trying to justify what Michael did, it is just that what may turn you off may be a sport for me, depending on time and the community. We still have human untouchables in many places around the world including my own Country. If these untouchables do not know their place, they will be forced by every necessary means to their rightful domain. Unfortunately some of them have died in the process and we shamelessly justify it
These are not dogs and cats, they are people and we condemn them to death. Well, do what the rule say, do not kill dogs for sport. But there are people who eat dogs and some of us are not sure why some people call certain food, hot dogs! I do not want to offend any country or people but some people eat cats. I had never eaten crocodile in my life until I went to a buka in Owo. It was delicious!
We do not want anything to touch us though, not even a tiny mosquito. How much can that eat out of our big body? Oh, it causes malaria! But we condemn people to death, we declare our enemy as less than human so that we can kill them and we also fill our jails mostly with certain people from certain class in our community. How many millionaires do we have on death row?
I feel sorry for Michael Vicks, I can stand with him but I can not stand up for him for breaking the rules. There are better ways to enjoy money. That he has to fall from grace for that offence bothers me because I do not think the punishment fits the crime. But he lives in a society where people leave millions of dollars to cats and dogs. Nothing for the poor people they made the money from through starving wages, minimum wage or horrible working condition. I wish they make me the caretaker of those millionaire cats and dogs. I will keep them out of my pot so that the money can keep on flowing in.
The problem with the high salary sport players make is that the duration of making that money is often short. Even if there is no injury, they are easily disposable for younger and more aggressive rivals that are waiting in the wings. All the money they make within that window of opportunity is not as much as working as a professional or as skill trades man all your life. Nothing is guaranteed, not even a professional career for ever. My point is that the money professional athletes make may not be enough to last them their whole life if they are displaced or spend it lavishly for the moment.
The glamour and ostentatious display of money never last anyway before responsibility, taxes, the law, poverty of others and mishaps catch us with us. The only money left is seed money and that is the one we must spend well. I do not know if Michael Vicks will regain his career and wealth. If he has to do it all over, it will be different. |