Possibly banned QB Mike Vick might find a new home playing football...even if the NFL continues his indefinite suspension.
Michael Huyghue, the commissioner of the new four-team league, says the UFL is willing to give Vick a place to play -- provided there are no pending legal issues. His rights belong to the Orlando franchise.
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The UFL will have teams in Orlando, New York, Las Vegas and San Francisco, playing games mostly on Thursday nights in October and November. The championship game will be Nov. 27, the day after Thanksgiving.
Orlando acquired UFL rights to Vick in an allocation draft of players not under contract in the NFL.
"I don't know if the NFL will suspend Vick," said Dennis Green, coach of the San Francisco team and the chairman of the UFL's competition committee -- a role he also held while coaching in the NFL. "What he did was very wrong, and he paid his debt to society. He was a model inmate, otherwise he never would have made it out from prison early.
Now the UFL is a joke (four teams?!) but if Vick plays there it's going to give them a level of football publicity that they would NEVER get any other way. I'm sure the NFL isn't worried about the UFL, but I don't know if they want the publicity of seeing "There's Mike Vick playing football", "There's Mike Vick saying he's sorry", "There's Mike Vick building houses for Orlando Habitat For Humanity", "There's Mike Vick feeding orphans" every single week.
At some point, people are going to think the NFL is just abusing Vick. Some people think that now.
Don't underestimate how fickle people are. The entire world seems to have forgotten that Michael Jackson probably molested children. If that can slip by, Vick's crimes will be easily put aside in the right situation.