Thanks to a new government memo that links Michael Vick to steroids, the DALLAS MORNING NEWS today published allegations from convicted Dallas drug dealer David Jacobs that he supplied Vick with steroids.

(David Jacobs said he supplied Vick with steroids) 

The Dallas outlet did not publish Jacobs’ claim until TheSmokingGun.com obtained a government investigation memo that quotes a DEA informant linking Vick to steroids.

A Drug Enforcement Administration informant told agents that Michael Vick once spoke about steroids and human growth hormone with a dealer, telling the man that he “liked his product,”

During the FBI’s investigation of Vick for running a dog fighting operation, TSG reports:

A federal prosecutor asked Vick about a December 2006 Atlanta Falcons team party during which the alleged conversation about steroids occurred. “Vick was reportedly overheard telling” the dealer (whose name was redacted from the memo) that he “liked his product.”

Some have speculated that the informant who ratted out Vick was in fact Jacobs, who oversaw a huge steroids trafficking ring until he was arrested in 2007. After his capture, Jacobs made his claims about supplying steroids to Vick to the Dallas Morning News.

A year later, he committed suicide.

Based on Jacobs’ claims to the DMN, Vick may be extremely lucky that the drug dealer took his own life.

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Ryan Ballengee at the excellent golf blog WaggleRoom.com finds ESPN video of Tiger Woods criticizing Michael Vick in 2007 for waiting too long to apologize to the public about his dogfighting operation.

“If you made that big a mistake, you’ve got to come out and just be contrite, be honest and just tell the public that ‘I was wrong.’”

“Waiting a long time got a lot of people polarized. … If he would have come out earlier, he would’ve diffused a little more of it.”

In case you think that’s actually an SNL script, there’s video of Woods making the comments after the jump - plus a very interesting new tidbit about Woods caddy Steve Williams.

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Tim Tebow probably never wanted to see the day when he’d be lumped in with such damaged goods as LeGarrette Blount, Michael Vick, and - ugh - Jeff Fisher. But here it is and here we are, Tebow: Tony Dungy has come rushing to your aid. Yes, the St. Jude of sports, the patron saint of lost causes and dog killers. Dungy. Accept it.

Dungy’s latest comments came to Dan Patrick this morning when talking about drafting a quarterback for a team with a Top 10 pick. Patrick threw out alternative choices like Sam Bradford, Jimmy Clausen, Colt McCoy, and Jake Locker. Nnnnnope. Because Tebow’s a winner, you see. Winners win games. Oh yeah.

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Suppose - just suppose - there were a “7 Restaurant” that popped up in the middle of Virginia, just about 100 miles from where Michael Vick went to college at Virginia Tech. Also, just suppose there are pictures of Vick on the wall. And jerseys of his. It wouldn’t take too much of a leap in logic to assume it’s his restaurant, right?

Ah, not so. First of all, thanks to bankruptcy, he doesn’t have any money. Further, the restaurant was indeed started by a standout Virginia Tech Hokie from that 2000 runner-up team, but that would be Andre Kendrick, not Vick. Incredibly, according to DIGITALCITY.COM, Kendrick and his co-owner say the restaraunt’s name has “no association” with Vick. Thank God; there’s no telling what the menu would look like.

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One might think that Michael Vick protesters and Oakland Raiders fans would be natural allies — the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and so forth. But one would be wrong. Animal rights advocates and Raider Nation angrily went at each other outside of the Coliseum on Sunday prior to the Eagles game, almost coming to blows.

Yeah, lost in all the commotion over the Raiders’ unlikely 13-9 victory over Philadelphia, we almost forgot that it was Vick’s first NFL road game since returning from his federally mandated vacation. So the Bay Area group In Defense of Animals had organized a little welcoming committee, with about 30 people on hand to protest Vick’s refusal to visit some of his rescued pit bulls, which are now being rehabilitated by the organization. Read more…

With the media seemingly sated on the Michael Vick story, Vick’s girlfriend Kijafa Frink, slipped onto a Philadelphia hip-hop station this morning to talk about the couple’s current lifestyle.

(Kijafa Frink (future Vick doco star!) slips onto Philly radio to confront ‘haters’)

Interesting stuff. Transcript and audio after the jump. Read more…

One of the odder stories of the past couple of weeks concerns Michael Vick and his amazing disappearing Nike contract. What exactly possessed Vick’s endorsement agent, Blue Equity Sports Television Managing Director Mike Principe, to announce this past Wednesday that Vick “just became a Nike client” and “has a new deal” with the company?

Could it have been a way of testing the waters; a “What if?” type scenario to see if the villagers would take up pitchforks and boycott Nike products if Vick reentered their orbit? Or is Nike simply paying Vick under the table to wear their stuff, thus avoiding the wrath of PETA? Read more…

For as feel-good a story as this whole Michael Vick thing might be (a relative interpretation of the term, that), let’s not lose sight of one fact: the man owes an unholy amount of money. Even the lawyers trying to figure out how much he owes in bankruptcy have requested $2.6 million of their own, which doesn’t make sense until you realize that leprechauns who sell cocaine are a business expense. As for the more obvious clingers-on, well, you know where this story goes.

(Let’s not trust this man around your valuables and bank accounts just yet.)

So even as Vick collects his Eagles paychecks and thanks his lucky stars he doesn’t have to work construction to make his money (like he told a federal judge), it turns out that even being in court has its own debilitating costs. Oh, like you’ve never been told by a judge to pay your own pension plan over $400,000.

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I was one of the first to report yesterday that Michael Vick signed an endorsement contract with Nike. If you only picked up the news from a mainstream outlet that caught on later that day or this morning, you missed the true, original source of the story. Here it is:

(What started the Vick-Nike misinformation campaign)

It all started with a Tweet by a woman named Kathleen Hessert, at SportsBusiness Journal’s Sports Sponsorship Symposium in New York.

We later found out that Michael Principe, the president of Vick’s rep firm and not Vick’s personal rep Joel Segal, had mentioned an “endorsement deal” between Vick and Nike while serving on a panel at the symposium.

Now, if this was such an earth-shattering endorsement agreement with Nike, do you think Nike and/or Vick’s direct agent would want the news to get out that way? Of course not.

So it appears there’s chance that Segal’s boss either exaggerated the nature of Vick’s agreement with Nike in what he thought was an off-the-record setting, or just got the whole thing wrong. Read more…

You’ll recall yesterday that we passed along the announcement from the SPORTS BUSINESS JOURNAL’s “Sports Sponsorship Symposium” that Michael Vick had reached an endorsement deal from Nike. It was a bit of a shock, all things considered, but it’s not the first time Nike’s given one of their athletes a second chance after a PR disaster (see Bryant, Kobe).

(Still not yours.)

But yes, about that. Nike’s spokesperson, Kejuan Williams, decided to clear this morning. According to Darren Rovell at CNBC, Williams and Nike declared unequivocally that Vick, in fact, has no endorsement contract with Nike.

So where did the snafu come from?

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