Michael Vick talks to GQ magazine about America's racial divide over dogfighting

Michael Vick didn't want the Eagles, but he's glad he wound up in Philadelphia.

When he was getting out of prison and preparing to resume his career, Vick wanted to go to a team where he could start immediately, the quarterback said in a story in the forthcoming issue of GQ magazine.

"I think I can say this now, because it's not going to hurt anybody's feelings, and it's the truth. . . . I didn't want to come to Philadelphia. Being the third-team quarterback is nothing to smile about. Cincinnati and Buffalo were better options," Vick said.

But he told GQ that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and others persuaded him to sign with the Eagles, a more stable team where he could begin as a backup, out of the spotlight. "I commend and thank them, because they put me in the right situation," Vick said.

In the interview, which will be posted online Thursday and available on newsstands Tuesday, Vick also touches on the racial divide in how people view dogfighting and contradicts the popular narrative that says he changed as a person and quarterback while in prison.

"Some of us had to grow up in poverty-stricken urban neighborhoods, and we just had to adapt to our environment," Vick said in one part of the interview. "I know that it's wrong. But people act like it's some crazy thing they never heard of. They don't know."

The reporter asked Vick whether "white people don't understand that aspect of black culture."

"I think that's accurate," Vick responded, according to the article. "I mean, I was just one of the ones who got exposed, and because of the position I was in, where I was in my life, it went mainstream. A lot of people got out of it after my situation, not because I went to prison but because it was sad for them to see me go through something that was so pointless, that could have been avoided."

Later, he added, "It's almost as if everyone wanted to hate me. But what have I done to anybody? . . . But it's not fair. It's not fair to the animal. I know what to do now."

Vick, who said he has at least seven public relations experts working for him, also said he was changing before being convicted of dogfighting. He blamed his early ups and downs as a quarterback on constant change around him.

"I had changed my life long before then. I was just with the wrong team at the wrong time," Vick said.

Before going to jail, "I was turning the corner. I was cutting my braids off. I was changing my life. I wanted to live the life where football and family were the only things that mattered. I was ready to do it."

The Eagles, Vick said, "never tried to change me."

Now, he misses dogs and wishes he could own one.

"I miss dogs, man," Vick said. "I always had a family pet, always had a dog growing up. It was almost equivalent to the prison sentence, having something taken away from me for three years. I want a dog just for the sake of my kids, but also me. I miss my companions."