And I wonder how much different the former Falcons quarterback's life would be if he had found joy in petting dogs instead of torturing them.

Anyway, the man who once had a $130 million Football contract is still in Leavenworth. His cash has gushed away, and he's apparently bankrupt.

Ponder this figure from Vick's recent court-filed financial papers: $928,073.

That's how much he has been forced to pay for the care and housing of the 47 pit bulls who survived his reign of terror.

Or this: $3 million.

That's how much unaccounted money a ''friend'' Vick put in charge of his finances went through since Vick entered the joint.

Folks, this quarterback has been sacked.

- Chicagoans, do you still want the 2016 Olympics?

Officials in London have said publicly that if they had foreseen the global economic rampage that is on the loose and has no end in sight, they never would have bid for the 2012 Games, which they are in the initial stages of undertaking.

Summer Olympics cost hundreds of millions -- even billions -- of dollars to put on, and where that money comes from is always a dicey proposition, even in the best of times.

I'll tell you a couple of Olympics things for sure: Cost overruns are the norm. Disruption of local daily life is the norm. Unfulfilled promises are the norm.

If you know what the economic climate will be like in 2016 and the year or two preceding it, please take over my 401(k). Then tell all us Chicagoans whether these Games -- if we get them -- will ruin us or not.

- Former starting defensive end and 2007 Big 12 all-academic selection Steven Cline graduated from Kansas State last year with a degree in social sciences and heavy disgust about his education.

Cline wanted to be a veterinarian but was steered into the social-sciences major, joining more than a third of his teammates, according to a recent report in USA Today about ''beating the system'' in NCAA money sports. Now, Cline feels ill-prepared to do much of anything.

''I look back and say, 'Well, what did I really go to college for? Crap classes you won't use the rest of your life?''' he told the paper. ''Social science is really nothing specific. ... I was majoring in Football.''

His story, the report shows, is a sadly common one in the world of Division I revenue sports. ''Clustering'' is what it's called when a bunch of jocks take the easiest major there is, the one least intrusive on their athletic duties and their coaches' demands.

''Clustering by itself is replicated in many parts of the university,'' NCAA president Myles Brand said. ''It's not necessarily bad.''

This is true. Except when the clusterers have no interest in the major and have been led to believe their future is pro ball.

Which it almost never is.

- How amazing and consistent is Allen Iverson?

The new Pistons guard missed an hourlong Thanksgiving Day practice -- one set up largely to help him acclimate to his new club -- to chow down on turkey and pumpkin pie instead.

The serial practice-skipper, who will make about $21 million this season, probably doesn't care about fines, teamwork or anything else. But if he did -- and I'm just noodling here -- he could hire one of the many Vick leaches/castoffs at, oh, $100,000 a year or so to wake him up and drive him to the gym every so often. And it would be profitable.

- This is from a clipping I saved a few weeks ago. I didn't have time to get to it then, but think I should.

Back on Oct. 27, obese/chain-smoking/beer-guzzling/all-my-exes-wear-Rolexes pro golfer John Daly got drunk and was taken to a jail in Winston-Salem, N.C., to chill out for the night after he was found outside a Hooters and deemed by police to be ''extremely intoxicated and uncooperative.''

No charges were filed, and Daly said it all could have been avoided -- here's the good part -- if people just realized that he tends to sleep with his eyes open when he's exhausted, stressed and blotto.

Interesting. What it means, I'm thinking, is that one of these days somebody is going to have to use a mirror to figure out if Daly is hammered or dead.

- Lastly, the BALCO grand-jury testimony has been ordered unsealed by a federal judge in San Francisco, which means thousands of pages of performance-enhancing-drug testimony finally will be available for all to peruse.

No longer will we have to rely on journalists Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams for our peek into the dirty world of late-1990s and early-2000s West Coast juicing.

Here's one reporter who thinks bigheaded Barry Bonds, who is under indictment for 10 felony counts of lying to the same grand jury, is -- at long last -- screwed.