"Nearly 100 of them were out there, yelling, carrying signs. More people protested against Michael Vick on the night when he was one of 32 NFL players receiving an Ed Block Courage Award than at any single event during his season with the Eagles.

Almost all of the signs were printable.

Vick's Sick

Not Courageous

Shame on the Eagles!

Michael Vick has no courage!

Electrifying Dogs

Drowning Dogs

Dog Fighting

Since when is this courage?

You get the idea. The lesson is that this is not over. Even after a season with the Eagles, after all the emotions the town experienced at the time of his signing, after everybody got used to seeing him play, after the season wore on and he ended up doing a couple of good things (but only a couple), it is not over.

You look at those people, and you hear the cars driving by and honking in support, and you wonder whether it ever will end.

Vick's response, at a short news conference before the dinner, was an elongated blah, blah, blah. He is "very humbled," but thinks he deserves the award because his teammates thought enough of him to vote for him - which pretty much is what he said when the announcement was made. He wants to be a starter in the league next season, and the Eagles know it. He's glad the team is paying him the $1.5 million bonus due him this week and, well, "We'll see what happens."

As they say in court, "Asked and answered, your honor." Or not answered. And blah, blah, blah.

Vick also was on the radio yesterday in St. Louis, trying to drum up interest there with the Rams, just as he did the other day with the Carolina Panthers. What you are beginning to smell is more than a whiff of desperation. But that's business.

Much more interesting, and unknowable, is what he feels in his heart, what it felt like in his gut when he drove up and saw those people waving their signs and yelling in the street next to the catering hall where they hold this annual function, a banquet to raise money for abused children. It has to be exhausting, the unrelenting negativity he brought upon himself.

What we learned here was that Vick's next team, wherever it is, still will be dealing with protests. The lesson on this night was that any team that takes him on still will need to wrestle with the baggage. The Eagles proved that the problem can be contained and handled, but don't kid yourselves - they sweated it and committed untold organizational man-hours to it.

And now they cannot even pretend to tell potential suitors that the problem has vanished with time - assuming, of course, that they can find somebody to take Vick off their hands based on the football end of the equation, which still is filled with variables.

From the December day this award was announced, it has been more fascinating than outrageous. His teammates did the voting, after all. (In San Diego, the players voted for Shawne Merriman, he of the steroid suspension, so it isn't a perfect message everywhere.) But in Vick's case, the process has always said more about his teammates than about him, about how they think he has been treated, about their opinion of the severity of the penalties - in prison time and in lost millions - that he has had to pay for being a confessed dog killer."