Prison will always define Michael Vick. But in a very tangible way, he's almost shed one of the heaviest burdens of his days behind bars: an $18 million debt.
Vick's career out of prison, six seasons, is now as long as his career before it. But as ESPN's Darren Rovell notes, much of the second half of Vick's career, which is now in low gear in New York, has been spent paing off a $17.8 million debt to creditors. Vick declared bankruptcy while in prison on federal dogfighting charges in July 2008.
Vick has spent the last five years on a budget in an effort to pay back creditors. Vick had to pay back the Atlanta Falcons $6.5 million in salary, among many others.
Now, granted, Vick is still making a substantial amount of money, an estimated $49 million in salary since his release from prison. Rovell adds sentences like the following, apparently without irony: "As part of the plan to pay off his creditors, Vick stuck to living on a $300,000 budget, because more than 50 percent of what he was making went toward taxes and legal fees." That budget, presumably after taxes, seems like enough to scrape by.
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As ESPN notes, Vick opted to go with Chapter 7 rather than Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which meant he paid back all that he was owed, not a small percentage. To him, it was an important and necessary step to demonstrate his willingness to atone. The deal with creditors is set to expire at the end of the year, and Vick will likely sell some property to close off the last of his debt.
"I feel blessed because I came out and found myself in a position where I had a lot of people that really believed in me, people who gave me an opportunity," Vick said. "At the time, it wasn't about trying to fulfill all the bankruptcy needs, I was trying to fulfill all the needs that I had in my life because I had nothing."
Vick will never escape the shadow of the events that landed him in prison. But he's shown through his actions that he won't remain defined by them. That's admirable, in its own way.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter.
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