After Virginia Tech’s 35-24 win over Louisville in the Gator Bowl, Tech officials said they would review a play in which it appeared that quarterback Marcus Vick maliciously stomped on the leg of Elvis Dumervil a Louisville defensive player just before halftime.

In fact, AD Jim Weaver went so far to say that the school was not only embarrassed by Vick’s behavior, but also said that, “we will not condone such acts of unsportsmanlike conduct” and “we will review and assess this incident further and deal with it accordingly.”

Please.

Right now everyone in the athletic department offices down in Blacksburg is looking out the window making sure the coast is clear. It’s ok guys, the Rose Bowl lived up to the hype, anyone talking about college football is only mentioning the name Vince Young, and you don’t have anything to worry about. Everyone will forget about Marcus Vick and his actions until next season, and then we can say something cliché like, “he has learned from his mistakes” or some other cover up crap. Well at least we know that the Hokies have a good PR department.

Truth is, Virginia Tech isn’t going to do anything about Vick. I wish we could just stop going through the formality of pretending like they would though. This façade of threatening players who commit wrongful actions in the public eye is all a smoke screen. It looks good for the university to come out and say that Vick’s actions were wrong and that he will be punished. This places the blame on the player and puts Tech in the clear (you learn these things in Public Relations 101).

Yes, there are reports surfacing that say that disciplinary action will be taken, and I applaud that. Weaver has said that, “the decision [for Vick’s punishment] will rest with me. We’re going to deal with it in what we think is an appropriate manner, and one that’s fair and firm.” Right now the rumor is that Vick will be suspended for an “undetermined” amount of games next season.

What that means is that if he gets suspended, he won’t start against Southeast Missouri State Tech, and Lehigh, or whatever warm up teams Tech plays at the start of the year. He’ll still get to practice with the team, and you can be sure that he won’t miss the Miami or Florida State games.

Be original Tech, suspend the kid for the season. Don’t think of it as ending his future – he did that to himself, both off the field and on it.

It’s simple, here are the team rules: do anything to disgrace the University off or on the field and you’re done. Get convicted of a felony -- see ya later. Show intentional malice on the field or try to deliberately hurt a player whether it is in a game or in practice and we void your scholarship. And we won’t turn around and give it to another football recruit; we’ll use it on a kid who got a 1400 on his SAT’s. I even have a name for it; we’ll call it the Bill Romanowski policy, and to be fair we can institute it at every university.

Tech has no reason to suspend Vick, for one reason: money. How much money does Tech’s football team bring in every year? What about national attention, or kids wanting to go to school there simply because of their strong athletics? The better Tech is the more money they’ll make and Tech will be better as long as Vick is there. It helps that he’s a legacy (like a fraternity were if your brother was a member than you have to be too type of deal). His brother helped put Virginia Tech on the national power map, was on the cover of Madden and is trying to revolutionize the quarterback position at the next level.

The situation did not draw as much attention as it might have during the regular season, because there are bigger and better football games to worry about the next day. And so Virginia Tech can fade back into the offseason knowing that all its fans are too preoccupied with the other college football games, and for the few that aren’t, they’ll just say the right thing and let it past.

Unfortunately, Tech isn’t the lone culprit in this case, but they are part of a system that feeds a growing problem. For every Adrian McPherson that gets thrown off a team, there are ten Marcus Vick’s. What they’ll do by ignoring an investigation and an appropriate punishment is show thousands of prospective college football players (and in turn future NFLers) that you can get away with bending and breaking the rules just because you play football.

In recent years we have seen the power of status of being a pro football player off the field, power that allows players to step over the red tape and the laws that bind the rest of us. Remember Leonard Little, the Rams defensive end, who in 1998 after celebrating his birthday, got behind the wheels of his SUV drunk, ran a red light and plowed into an intersection where he ended up killing a woman? He took someone else’s life, and destroyed at least one family. His punishment: 90 days in a workhouse and 1,000 hours of community service. That’s it. 

Equally as sad as that crime is the state in which the public has become accustomed to athletes not being treated as regular people. It’s as if we’ve grown numb to these actions because it’s happened so many times. It seems odd that we try to control their lives so much on the field and then give them so much freedom off it. However recently football players are pushing the limits of what they can do and get away with on the field, Vick’s cheap shot was just the latest example.

There have always been dirty players in sports, not just in football and not just now. The Raiders are famous for it. Todd Bertuzzi ended a guy’s career and is still playing in the NHL.  But recently it seems that things have gotten worse on the football field. A couple weeks before the Vick incident, when the Jaguars hosted the Colts, Jacksonville was flagged for unsportmanlike conduct twice – in the same drive. A late hit on a receiver who was getting up to go back to the huddle, and a defensive player holding and then driving Edgerrin James’ head into the ground after the play had been stopped.

This has to end. Fines aren’t nearly enough at the NFL level. If you’re a dirty player, then you’re a dirty player; nothing is going to deter you at that point. By the time a player reaches the NFL, its been engrained in his head that his actions on the field are a) part of his game or b) that if they are bad, he can get away with it.

Start with Vick and start sending a message to all high school and college players that these types of actions will not be tolerated at any level.

By writing about this I’m bringing in the risk that all I’m doing is writing another negative story about a prime time athlete. I know there are plenty of good guys in the sport (see Warrick Dunn) who give so much back to the community and all they receive from the media is a short mention at the end of a mostly negative article. But I feel that it’s a risk I have to take because this has to stop. The actions (or rather the fact they get away with these actions) are destroying a sport that so many of us love. Hopefully one day, we can get rid of the Marcus Vicks and only write stories about the Warrick Dunns. Hopefully.