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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Kathleen Hessert, who on her Twitter account touts herself as “reputation manager”, Tweeted today:

“BREAKING NEWS: Micheal Vick just signed Nike endorsement deal.” Read more…

Our story so far: Pro athletes are out of control with Twitter, embarrassing themselves and their organizations at an unprecedented rate. We’re going to need a Presidential decree to stop it at this point, I fear. Mr. Obama, you need to act now. Health reform can wait. The latest to enter the SbB Social Networking Hall of Fail: Marquis Daniels of the Boston Celtics.

CELTIC HUB happened to notice on Wednesday that Daniels had tweeted a rather discomforting message to one of his readers. Unfortunately, as Twitter is available to read by everyone (you knew that, but pro athletes apparently do not), what was apparently a crude joke is now out there for everyone to enjoy. Dog lovers and Michael Vick fans may not be amused: Read more…

So, yeah, Santonio Holmes wore a Michael Vick Eagles jersey on Thursday night after the Steelers/Titans game. The story here? That there isn’t much of a story. Blogs that have covered this have nearly unanimously said that it’s not a big deal, and we can’t really disagree. Vick and Holmes are buddies; they share an agent, profession, and union. Why wouldn’t friends support each other?

In fact, the real only criticism of the move seems to be of Holmes’ fashion sense. As someone who has been known to wear a jersey to a game (but nowhere else), we’re not going to pile on there. But my, how far we’ve come in the few short months since Vick was released from prison.

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• Threesomes, nudity, threatening to have sex with others - this Shawne Merriman-Tila Tequila story just keeps getting better & better!

• But sleeping around isn’t always so much fun - especially when it’s leading to the divorce of Melanie Oudin’s parents.

• The Dallas Cowboys are the hottest ticket in the NFL this year. It’s so hot, it’ll burn a $800-per-game hole in your wallet.

• Bode Miller wants to start his very own winery. Bottoms up!

• Ex-NFL lineman Orlando Brown breaks into his ex-wife’s house & trashes the place - but not before leaving a little present in her toilet.

Read more…