Quickly – who’s your favourite sports star ever to be imprisoned for running a genuinely nightmarish dogfighting ring?

Michael Vick? We were going to say Michael Vick too! Jinx! What a small world the world of athletes imprisoned for running dogfighting rings is. Anyway, we’re glad that Michael Vick ranked so highly for you, because he’s getting his own reality TV show.

We should reiterate that Michael Vick’s TV show is not a show about dogfighting. Which is a shame, because it’s traditionally quite difficult to find TV shows where dogs maim each other for public entertainment. Not counting Loose Women, obviously.

Now, if you’re not American this might take a bit of a preamble. Michael Vick is a professional NFL footballer who was arrested and jailed in 2007 for his role in operating an extensive illegal dogfighting ring. The nearest comparison for you would be to imagine that Peter Crouch was arrested for sparrow-mumbling, or that Wigan Athletic midfielder Won Hee-Cho had been caught throwing bits of gravel at a penguin’s head. That’s the kind of sick bastard we’re dealing with here.

You might remember Michael Vick hitting the news when Whoopi Goldberg decided to defend dogfighting shortly after his arrest, in what we presume was a special ‘Say The Most Obviously Appalling Thing You Can Think Of, Go On I Dare You’ episode of The View. Don’t worry if you can’t, because it wasn’t very good. And also Michael Vick is getting his own reality TV show now that he’s out of prison, so he’ll be able to carp on about dogfighting as much as he likes anyway. The LA Times reports:

The quarterback… is partnering with BET for a new eight-part docu-series scheduled to air early next year. The program, tentatively titled “The Michael Vick Project,” spotlights his controversial comeback with the Philadelphia Eagles while also examining his tumultuous past — including his troubled childhood and his 2007 arrest for running a dogfighting ring.

Now don’t expect this Michael Vick TV show to be all that entertaining – he’s done wrong and he wants to make amends. Unusually for an American Football star who’s committed a serious crime, Michael Vick isn’t doing this with a jawdroppingly ill-considered hidden camera prank show, but with a serious programme where he will contritely revisit his prison and the area where he used to hold dogfights while musing on the effect that the arrest had on his fiancee and children.

Even though the fact he has a TV show at all has infuriated animal rights protesters from around the world, we have to admit that we’re looking forward to seeing The Michael Vick Project – especially the part where he ruminates on the last few years by recounting wise old saying from his youth like “My mother always told my that life was like watching two dogs try to kill each other in a pit”, “Life is 10% inspiration and 90% forcing dogs to try and kill each other in a pit” and the all-time classic “If life gives you lemons, throw those lemons into a pit and get a dog to bite its face off.”

Oh yes, we’ll be watching.

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