Michael Boddie

I doubt that Michael Vick is happy about what his father, Michael Boddie, has been saying.

Their relationship has Jerry Springer written all over it.

ATLANTA -- Michael Vick's father said he asked his son to give up dogfighting, or to at least put property used in the venture in the names of others to avoid being implicated, according to a report in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Also Thursday night, a report on ESPN.com cited an unidentified ESPN source saying Vick will not admit to killing dogs or gambling on dogfights when he enters a guilty plea in a Richmond, Va., federal court Monday.

ESPN reported that Vick's defense team met with federal attorneys Thursday afternoon to determine the "summary of facts" to which Vick will plead. But ESPN's source said Vick maintains he never killed dogs and never gambled on a dog fight. The source told ESPN the Atlanta Falcons quarterback will plead guilty to the charge of interstate commerce for the purpose of dogfighting.

It sounds like Vick is holding out hope that he can salvage his career.

If he did plead guilty to killing dogs or gambling on dogfights, I think he'd be finished in the NFL. I think he's finished anyway.

As Vick struggles to keep his head above water, his father, Michael Boddie, is pushing him under.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution interviewed Vicks' father.

Boddie is eager to talk.

Michael Vick's father said he pushed his son to quit dogfighting years ago or, at least, put property used for the fights in the name of friends to avoid being implicated some day.

Michael Boddie, in two sometimes tearful interviews with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution this week, said some time around 2001 his son staged dogfights in the garage of the family's home in Newport News, Va. Boddie also said Vick kept fighting dogs in the family's backyard, including injured ones — "bit up, chewed up, exhausted" — that the father nursed back to health.

Boddie, who is estranged from his son, dismissed the idea that Vick's longtime friends were the main instigators of the dogfighting operation.

"I wish people would stop sugarcoating it," Boddie said. "This is Mike's thing. And he knows it."

He "likes it, and he has the capital to have a set up like that."

Daniel Meachum, an attorney for Vick, said his client never mentioned situations described by Boddie, nor discussed Boddie in relation to dog activities. "It's a disgrace Mr. Boddie, who chose for nearly 22 years not to be part of Mike's life, would at this time seek to capitalize on his son's current situation."

Boddie definitely has an agenda. There's no question that he is trying to capitalize on Vick's troubles.

But in the final analysis, Boddie's disgraceful behavior is not nearly as disgraceful as what Vick has done.

...Boddie said he and the Atlanta Falcons quarterback have had a volatile relationship for years and that his son has refused to speak with him directly for the last 2 1/2 half months. Boddie said he is speaking out because he's been hurt by his son and wife's failure over the years to correct what he considers inaccurate media reports that Vick grew up without his father present.

"I've been drug through the mud," Boddie said.

He said he intends to write a damaging book about more of what he knows.

I don't think Boddie will be awarded the "father of the year" trophy.

I don't see how he could remain unscathed in his "damaging book" about his son.

Boddie doesn't seem to care. He certainly appears willing to pay a high price as long as he profits from the scandal in the end -- a cost-benefit thing.

Boddie, 45, lives in a Duluth apartment that his son has paid the rent on for the last three years. Vick, who has a $130 million contract with the Falcons, also gives him a couple of hundred dollars every week or two, the father said.

Boddie wanted more. Two years ago, he said, he asked Vick for $1 million, spread out over 12 years, enough to keep him comfortable for the rest of his life. Vick declined, the father said. In recent weeks, Boddie asked Vick, through an assistant, for $700,000 to live on.

I'm thinking blackmail.

...Boddie lives in an apartment, just a few miles from where his son lives in the upscale, gated Sugarloaf neighborhood. Posters of the football star are thumb-tacked to the walls of a guest bedroom. A picture of Vick's two young children is framed on a wall near the kitchen. Hung on a wall beside the kitchen sink is a long list entitled "Quick Drink Recipes."

In language blanketed with profanity, a sometimes sitting, sometimes pacing Boddie recounted what he said was some, but not all, of what he knows about his son. At times while discussing his wife and children, Boddie appeared to alternate between anger and anguish. His cellphone rang several times. At one point he answered, paused, unleashed an expletive-laced torrent of words and marched out of the apartment with the phone to his ear. He later said the caller was an assistant of Michael Vick's who asked what he planned to disclose to a reporter and urged him to keep quiet.

"I know some things," Boddie said. "That's why they're going crazy."

He said he's not perfect. He said he hasn't worked since 2003, went through drug rehab in 2004 paid for by his son, was sometimes high or drunk around his children when they were young, has gotten in trouble for drinking and driving and had his driver's license revoked.

"There are some things I wish I could go back and change," he said.

But Boddie said he gave Vick something that most kids didn't have in the Newport News housing projects where both grew up: "I never left his side. Never left his mother's side. And where we come from, this day and time, that's a hell of a thing."

I'm beginning to understand why Vick turned out the way he did.

Boddie wants an award because he didn't leave his wife and child.

What a model father!

Vick is supposed to be grateful that Boddie actually stuck around. As Boddie said, "And where we come from, this day and time, that's a hell of a thing."

Good grief.

...Boddie said that, over the last year, his son has been disrespecting him, "talking to me like I'm one of his . . . dogs."

Boddie said he's tried to look out for his son. Around 2002, while at Vick's rural property near Smithfield, Va., he warned his son.

"I told him basically, 'You don't need to be doing this. You got bigger fish to fry. You got more important things that you can do.' "

Boddie recalled telling his son to transfer the property to the name of one of his friends: " 'Take this place right now, put it in one of their names because if anything goes wrong . . . it's you they coming after.' "

Boddie said he doesn't recall his son's reply.

Boddie also said dogfighting occurred at the family's Newport News home on Terrace Drive. The family was in the house for about a year or more as Vick moved from playing college football at Virginia Tech to the pros.

Boddie said he cleaned out the home's garage three times in 2001 to make room for dogfighting sessions held by Vick and his friends.

"I hung around long enough to actually walk in there when an actual dogfight was going on," Boddie said, but he added that he didn't stay long.

"It wasn't my thing," he said.

He said he had already witnessed test fights of dogs — in which dogs battle to see how well a prospective fighter will perform.

"It's really something to stand there and watch. You have to have the stomach for it," he said.

Boddie said Michael Vick kept pit bulls in eight cages in the backyard of the Terrace Drive home.

However, a neighbor, Willie-Mae Hansell, said she only saw one dog at the house, and never heard anything unusual there.

"I fed the dogs," Boddie said. "I've nursed them back to health, dogs that have been in fights. Raised litters of puppies."

How much of this is true?

Who knows?

Boddie obviously has an axe to grind. He seems to be engaged in a mix of revenge and extortion.

He claims that Vick has been dissing him. He hasn't been successful in getting the sort of money that he wants from his multimillionaire quarterback son.

Poor Boddie feels like Vick has treated him like one of his dogs.

Really? Is it that bad?

John Goodwin of the Humane Society said the manner in which losing or unwilling dogs were killed was especially troubling.

"Some of the grisly details in these filings shocked even me, and I'm a person who faces this stuff every day," he said. "I was surprised to see that they were killing dogs by hanging them and one dog was killed by slamming it to the ground. Those are extremely violent methods of execution -- they're unnecessary and just sick."

I think both father and son are royally screwed up.