During his 13 season playing career, Michael Vick established himself as one of the most talented quarterbacks in the NFL, earning four Pro Bowl selections. Yet Vick will forever be remembered for his involvement in an illegal dogfighting scandal. In 2007, Vick plead guilty to charges and spent a total of 21 months locked up in federal prison.

Michael Vick isn’t the only member of his family to have an NFL career — or into legal trouble. His younger brother Marcus had a brief tenure with the Miami Dolphins. He’s also run into trouble with the law on several occasions. Here we recap Marcus Vick’s stalled football career and his various struggles staying on the right side of the law.

Marcus Vick’s college football career

RELATED: Michael Vick’s Best Season in the NFL Wasn’t With the Falcons

Marcus Vick established himself as a talented quarterback prospect while attending high school in Newport News, Virginia. He was good enough to earn himself an athletic scholarship to Virginia Tech — the same school that his older brother Michael had played quarterback for. Vick was redshirted during his freshman year in 2002, and showed flashes of promise during the following season.

By most accounts, Vick was primed for a breakout season in 2004. Instead, he was suspended for the entire year due to a variety of criminal convictions brought against him. The main case involved Vicks’ consensual sexual involvement of an underaged girl. Although he was ultimately cleared of sex charges, Vick received three guilty verdicts for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Later that year, Vick was also charged with possession of marijuana and reckless driving. He was reinstated the following year, and his strong play quickly moved him up from third-string to starting quarterback. Yet further legal troubles and on-field incidents finally led Virginia Tech to dismiss Vick from the football program in January 2006.

Marcus Vick’s brief NFL career

The day after his dismissal from Virginia Tech, Vick declared himself eligible for the 2006 NFL Draft. Although many analysts speculated that he could get picked as early as the third round, Vick ended up going undrafted. His various legal issues — and his questionable character and work ethic — likely played a large role, since he remained an intriguing talent.

Following the draft, Vick went to a Dolphins free agent minicamp, and was ultimately signed by the team to a league minimum free-agent contract. He spent one year with the team, only seeing game action on a single occasion. In that game, Vick came in as a wide receiver in the 4th quarter, but did not receive any passes. At the end of the season, the Dolphins chose not to resign him.

Continuing legal troubles

RELATED: Was the NFL Too Quick to Forgive Michael Vick?

Marcus Vick continued to find himself getting into legal and criminal trouble following his brief stint in the NFL. On one occasion, a drunken Vick was arrested on charges of DUI, fleeing the police, and reckless driving.

Although he received a 12-month jail sentence, a judge reduced it to a fine and a suspension of his license. Various parole violations and related fines followed.

In 2016, Vick was arrested on charges that included felony assault on a police officer, according to The Roanoke Times. At the time, the officer was attempting to serve Vick an arrest warrant for evading a 2013 civil court hearing.

Later in 2016, Vick was arrested again — this time on charges of drug possession, according to Bleacher Report. Vick once again was able to negotiate a plea deal that spared him any jail time.

Another drug arrest — and suspended sentence — followed in March 2017. Since then, Vick has managed to stay out of legal trouble. In July 2020, his period of supervised probation is set to end. Hopefully, Vick can celebrate that milestone by setting himself on a less troubled path through life. 

“I am deeply saddened, truly pained and plain angry.” That was part of a statement from former NBA great Michael Jordan on the situation surrounding the death of George Floyd. In recent days, several current and former professional athletes have voiced their concerns about the ongoing problem of police brutality against minorities.

A white officer in Minneapolis was caught on video kneeling on the neck of Floyd, a black man, for several minutes as three other officers stood by. The four officers involved have since been fired and Derek Chauvin, the officer who was kneeling on Floyd’s neck before he died, has been arrested and charged with murder.

Why is the government seeking to drop charges against Michael Flynn even though he pleaded guilty — in two admissions in court — to committing the crime at issue?

The short answers: The Justice Department is giving him a break. And Flynn has played his cards well.

The long answer: It’s a long story.

The deal

Flynn admitted to lying to the FBI about conversations he had had with Russia’s then-ambassador to the United States as he and the rest of President-elect Donald Trump’s camp waited in the wings early in 2017.

That case appeared clear. But the former Army lieutenant general also had been involved with other enterprises that might have resulted in more charges — including undisclosed foreign lobbying — and his deal with prosecutors swept that off the table.

It also apparently avoided prospective charges for Flynn’s son. Flynn and his attorneys considered the deal to be the least bad way out of the jam.

“My guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with the special counsel’s office reflect a decision I made in the best interests of my family and of our country. I accept full responsibility for my actions,” Flynn said in late 2017 at the time of his plea.

All the same, few knew at the time of that submission how problematic Flynn’s fateful interview with the FBI would be for nearly everyone else involved, including the specific FBI agents, the leadership of the bureau and the Justice Department.

The conversation

Former FBI Director James Comey since has described the question about whether Flynn had lied, or whether to charge him, as “a close one.”

U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea quoted that statement in his brief about the Flynn case filed Thursday to seek the dismissal of the charges, along with the notes of the FBI agents that also have since come to light.

In those materials, the investigators appear to wonder what they’re doing preparing to interview Flynn.

“What is our goal — truth, admission or to get him to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” one note read. Another says: “[White House] will be furious” and “protect our institution by not playing games.”

Flynn’s attorneys fought to get this material unsealed after their dealings with the government soured. They call it the basis for their claim that the FBI effectively entrapped him.

The Justice Department’s new brief cites these materials and argues that the bureau had all but concluded that Flynn wasn’t a counterintelligence risk as it was looking into prospective links between Trump’s camp and the Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In this new reasoning, Flynn’s false statements to investigators weren’t ‘”material’ to any bona fide investigation,” Shea wrote — so the case shouldn’t continue.

What about the guilty pleas?

Attorney General William Barr was clear in an interview with CBS News on Thursday evening: “People sometimes plead to things that turn out not to be crimes, and the Department of Justice is not persuaded that this was material to any legitimate counterintelligence investigation. So it was not a crime.”

Change in the weather

Also unknown to the public at the time of Flynn’s interview were the disputes about it taking place within and between the FBI and the Justice Department.

The procedures — or lack thereof — that were followed then helped create the opening for the new legal interpretation by Barr that the Flynn case was improper.

Comey’s fingerprints and those of other former bureau leaders were all over the decisions made about what to do and whom to tell and not tell about Flynn’s interview. Those names are now mud with most Republicans, and that, separate from the legal interpretations, make the politics safe within the GOP for Trump and Barr to let Flynn go.

Democrats argue that Trump and Barr have made a mockery of what was intended to be an independent Justice Department, first with the intercession in the sentencing of Trump’s friend Roger Stone and now with Flynn.

The player

Through all this, Flynn and his attorneys sought the best deal they could get at each juncture. First, they turned state’s evidence.

Intitially, prosecutors called him a model cooperator and told a judge they would be fine if he received a sentence of only probation, even though federal guidelines contemplated at least a few months in prison.

The longer Flynn cooperated, however, the more fraught became his relationship with the feds. After giving prosecutors everything they wanted in the Russia matter, Flynn became less forthcoming when the government brought a case against his former business partner, prosecutors said.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Washington D.C., which took the prosecutorial baton from special counsel Robert Mueller’s office, told a judge that it thought Flynn should be sentenced to as many as six months.

That could include probation, it said — but didn’t rule out the prospect of prison time, given how much less helpful prosecutors said Flynn had become.

By this point, in mid-2019, Flynn had changed out his legal team, and it howled at the prospect of prison after all the work he had done for the Justice Department.

That “stunning and vindictive reversal,” as Flynn’s lawyers called it, was one basis for their request to withdraw the guilty plea earlier this year, notwithstanding Flynn’s admission of guilt and months of cooperation.

It also fueled their quest to obtain more of the core documents about Flynn’s interview, which revealed the notes from the FBI investigators.

The sentencing that wasn’t

In a strange twist, what might have set the stage for Flynn’s eventual release was an encounter with an outspoken judge who raised the prospect of punishing him more severely.

Nearly everyone, including Trump, expected Flynn to be sentenced in late 2018 when he appeared before Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington. Flynn and prosecutors invited family members to be with them in court.

But the judge yielded surprises and headlines with his spirited remarks about the case.

“I’m not hiding my disgust, my disdain, for this criminal offense,” he said.

Sullivan asked prosecutors whether Flynn might have committed “treason,” raising the prospect that Flynn might get prison time after all. No, the government said, it didn’t consider that part of the case.

Ultimately, Sullivan deferred the sentencing because he said he had more questions about the matter, adding more months to Flynn’s legal saga.

If Sullivan had issued a sentence then and resolved Flynn’s case, Flynn’s admissions and guilt might have stood. His legal odyssey might have ended there.

Instead, the judge’s delay led to the phase of the story in which Flynn replaced his attorneys and broke with the government. His new legal team fought for and obtained the FBI memos and sought to rescind the guilty plea.

That dispute was still ongoing when the Justice Department decided this week to drop the case. In the end, Flynn and his lawyers outlasted everyone.

ATLANTA — Starting June 1, college football and basketball players will return to campus and get back to work as COVID-19 continues to spread (the SEC will allow it on June 8). The NCAA says the workouts are “voluntary” and must be initiated by athletes. But those words don’t mean much when there’s a power imbalance between players (who have little) and coaches (who have a lot).

It’s clear what’s happening. College sports programs are facing enormous pressure to make money. They especially need football games in the fall for that goal. The NCAA’s decision to end the moratorium on athletic activity is the first step in getting unpaid, revenue-producing athletes back on the job during a global pandemic.

Given the track record of college sports, there is good reason to believe that the health and safety of athletes will be a low priority in this pursuit of money. That’s the case during normal times. The shameful outcomes of that mistreatment include the mismanagement of concussions suffered by athletes, covering up the sexual abuse of athletes and football players dying from heat strokes during workouts.

Now college sports programs are charged with looking out for player health and safety during a global pandemic. That’s because the NCAA (predictably) punted on creating real rules to do it. There’s no one without conflicts within the NCAA power structure advocating for athlete health, and no independent authority forcing the organization to do it.

Ramogi Huma advocates for athletes as executive director of the National College Players Association. Huma started doing it while still a football player at UCLA because he saw that athletes have few basic protections.

Huma said he’s not opposed to college sports staging competition this year so long as there are real health protections for athletes, they are fully informed of the potential risks and they don’t feel pressured to play.

“Rules need to be enforced and safety standards should be set by public health experts, not sports administrators with conflicts of interest,” Huma said. “Everyone should agree with that.”

That should include people who believe college athletes should be denied their basic economic rights. If they aren’t getting paid, they should at least have health protections.

The leaders of college sports programs say that the safety of athletes and staff are their top priority. While lifting the moratorium, the NCAA’s Division I council said it “emphasized the importance” of protecting player safety. It said access to facilities “should be provided in compliance with” state and local regulations.

But notice that those are suggestions, not mandates with penalties for failure to comply. This is standard procedure for the NCAA.

When it purportedly is looking out for the welfare of athletes, it issues “recommendations” to member schools with no oversight or consequences for violations. Meanwhile, the NCAA goes to court and “denies that it has a legal duty to protect student-athletes.”

It’s a different story when the NCAA wants to protect its exploitative “amateur” model. Then it creates a labyrinth of detailed rules to prevent athletes from earning their true market value with stiff penalties for players and programs who violate them.

The NCAA’s lack of oversight on player safety and the financial motives of sports programs have always been a detriment to real reform. COVID-19 raises the stakes for player health. Unlike concussions, it’s a contagious virus that’s difficult to control.

Public health experts expect additional waves of COVID-19 in the fall (just in time for football). With no mandatory NCAA protocols, player safety is in the hands of coaches, medical staff and administrators who are desperate to generate revenue. It’s not a good situation for athletes.

Huma offered the hypothetical of a quarterback at a big-time program waking up on game day with a cough and fever, two symptoms of COVID-19.

“We already know what’s going to happen,” he said. “We’ve seen players suffer concussions on national TV and being kept in the game while staggering around. There’s no accountability. It is unreasonable to think coaches and athletic programs will do right by players.”

The NCAA’s toothless efforts to improve player safety haven’t worked. It adopted “recommendations and best practices” for an independent model of medical care in 2017. The goal was for physicians and athletic training staff to provide care for athletes “free of pressure or influence from nonmedical factors.”

As usual, those guidelines for athlete welfare came with no NCAA oversight or penalties for failure to comply. The results were predictable for anyone familiar with how college sports works.

Only 53% of respondents to a National Athletic Trainers’ Association survey last year said their programs complied with the independent medical care model. About 19% of respondents said a coach allowed an athlete to participate after the athlete had been declared medically ineligible.

If so many programs ignored NCAA guidelines on player health before the pandemic, there’s little reason to think they’ll do it now when there’s even more pressure to play games to make money.

“Self-policing doesn’t work,” Huma said.

Not when people in power view labor as expendable. Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy said that quiet part out loud in April. He called for the quick return of players to campus because they are healthy young athletes who can fight off the virus and, anyway, OSU needs “to continue to budget and run money through the state of Oklahoma.”

It dehumanizes athletes to say they should play because COVID-19 isn’t a big threat to them. It’s disgusting when it’s said by a coach who’s become a multimillionaire by extracting the value of his players’ labor. It would be easier to dismiss Gundy’s comments as an outlier in college sports if the NCAA model weren’t built on a foundation of that exploitation.

Another problem with the view that COVID-19 isn’t much of a risk for players: the possible long-term health effects is one of many unknowns about the virus. And anyone who thinks athletes who get sick won’t have it so bad should read Florida State football player Andrew Boselli’s essay on his experience with COVID-19.

Boselli was infected in March along with his father, mother and brother. Boselli wrote on the team’s website that he didn’t initially take the coronavirus seriously. Now he offers a warning.

“I promise, even if you’re young and healthy, you do not want this virus,” Boselli wrote. “Although I had what doctors consider to be a ‘mild’ case of it, my experience was anything but mild.”

Boselli’s father — former NFL All-Pro offensive tackle Tony Boselli — ended up in intensive care when his condition worsened. That’s a reminder that the issue isn’t just about young athletes. It’s also about the older people they might interact with. The list includes coaches, staff, administrators, professors and family members.

Nor can it be assumed that all college athletes are mostly immune to the harshest effects of COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists underlying conditions that may place people at higher risk of severe illness. Among them are heart disease, obesity and hypertension.

Ted Tatos, writing for The American Prospect, notes that multiple studies show football players, especially larger linemen, are at higher risk for those conditions.

Said Huma: “I’ve not heard one word about what programs’ plan will be with players that fall into those categories.”

Huma believes schools should be required to fully inform players about the risks of participating in sports now. That includes information about their susceptibility to those underlying health conditions. For players to have a real choice in the matter, they must be assured that they will keep their scholarship if they aren’t comfortable participating in sports during the pandemic.

Huma’s hope is that legislators eventually intervene to create rules for player safety based on guidance from public health experts. He’s calling for that effort to be financed by NCAA schools and enforced by an independent third party.

Pressure from lawmakers eventually forced the NCAA to give athletes (incrementally) more rights to their name, image and likeness (NLI). I’m skeptical the same can happen with player safety. Huma said he’s optimistic after talking with lawmakers while in Washington for a U.S. Senate hearing in February.

“Both sides of the (political) aisle understand that the NCAA is taking advantage of athletes in many ways, not just NLI,” Huma said.

Lifting its ban on sports activities is the latest way the NCAA is doing that. Now member schools will bring unpaid athletes back to campus during a pandemic so they can prepare to play and make money for those schools.

———

©2020 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Atlanta, Ga.)

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Fremantle has sanctioned two of the three players involved in a house gathering on Sunday night.

Despite the WA Police not charging the three Dockers players investigated for breaching coronavirus restrictions by attending a raucous house party, the Dockers have taken a stance.

The club has imposed sanctions on Luke Ryan and Jason Carter, with first-year player Michael Frederick avoiding a fine.

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Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Michael Bennett turned himself in after being charged with a felony stemming from an incident at last year’s Super Bowl, ESPN reported.

Bennett was charged with injury to the elderly after being accused of knocking over a 66-year-old paraplegic female security guard while trying to get to the postgame celebration on the field.

What happened?

According to the district attorney’s office, Bennett was at Super Bowl LI in Houston in 2017 to watch his brother, Martellus, who was a member of the New England Patriots.

The Patriots beat the Falcons for the championship, and Bennett allegedly shoved his way onto the field through security personnel who were telling him he had to access the field another way.

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said Bennett told security, “You all must know who I am, and I can own the motherf***er. I’m going down to the field, whether you like it or not.”

The woman Bennett is charged with harming suffered a sprained shoulder in the incident.

Bennett was released after posting $10,000 bail.

Has Bennett responded?

Bennett hasn’t commented publicly, but his lawyer fully denied the alleged crime took place.

“He just flat-out didn’t do it,” attorney Rusty Hardin said. “It wasn’t a case of, ‘He didn’t shove her that hard,’ or anything like that. … He never touched her.”

What did the police say?

Acevedo called Bennett “morally bankrupt,” “morally corrupt,” and said it was “pretty pathetic that you’d put your hands on a 66-year-old paraplegic and treat them like they don’t exist.

It’s not certain whether there is video of the incident, although Deadspin reported that Houston police did not review any video in its investigation, and the case is based on recollection of an officer who was present.

Bennett’s relationship with police

Bennett has been one of the NFL’s most vocal players on the subject of police violence against minorities.

He was also involved in an incident last fall in which he was mistaken for a gunman in Las Vegas and briefly detained by police.

Bennett claimed he was threatened and racially profiled during that encounter, but police deny any wrongdoing and video does not clearly show that Bennett was threatened. He was released once they confirmed there was not the gunman and that Bennett had done nothing wrong.

HARRIS COUNTY, Texas — Michael Bennett, a defensive end for the Philadelphia Eagles, was taken into police custody after appearing in a Harris County courtroom Monday afternoon for an indictment.

Bennett, 32, is facing a third-degree felony charge following allegations he injured a 66-year-old and wheelchair-bound NRG security guard during Superbowl LI in 2017. A Harris County grand jury indicted Bennett on Friday.

The judge set his bond at $10,000 and instructed Bennett to have no contact with the victim.

The NFL player came to Houston to watch his younger brother Martellus Bennett of the New England Patriots. Investigators claim the older Bennett shoved the victim while making his way to the field for the post-game celebration along with several other player families and friends.

NRG security personnel told Bennett he would have to use a different entrance for field access. Bennett allegedly ignored the employees’ request and pushed his way through security, shoving people— including the elderly woman who was part of the security team.

[RAW VIDEO: Michael Bennett’s attorney Rusty Hardin speaks after player taken into custody]

“When this is all over, everybody will no that Michael is not guilty— he didn’t do this,” Bennett’s attorney Rusty Hardin said. “The furthest from anybody’s imagination; if you look at this guys career, his personality, his family, he would never assault — not only an elderly person — but any disabled person.”

The attorney added the Houston Police Department and the Harris County District Attorney’s Office do not have the entire story.

“I’m not going to fault the DA’s office for that at all. They presented what they have to a grand jury, but they didn’t have everything,” Hardin said.

Bennett has been charged with injury to the elderly, which includes intentionally and knowingly causing bodily injury to a person 65 years or older. The offense carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison a $10,000 fine.

NFL star Michael Bennett surrendered to police Monday after being indicted by a Texas grand jury on the charge of injury to an elderly woman at the Super Bowl. After the New England Patriots’ historic comeback against the Atlanta Falcons, Bennett could not have been happier to see his brother, Martellus, win a Super Bowl, and wanted to join him on the field. Cops say Michael Bennett, 32, pushed a 66-year-old woman in a wheelchair out of the way to get to the field.