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Michael Vick’s attorney shared “highlights” of a revised bankruptcy plan he intends to file by the end of the week, according to a wire service story posted on several sites.

As part of the plan, the embattled former quarterback would pay 10 percent of the first $750,000 he makes off of his annual salary to creditors and 25 percent of earnings between $750,000 and $2.5 million.

Those numbers are an improvement over the first “plan”, which called for him to keep all of the first $750,000 and pay 20 percent of the amount between $750,000 and $2.5 million, and increasing percentages on amounts above that. He gets so generous that after $10 million he will pay between 33 percent and 40 percent.

How about this for a plan. He keeps enough off of the first $750,000 to live on - say $100,000. Everything from $750,000 on up goes to creditors until they are paid off.

This guy spends a couple years in custody, and then wants to have his cake and eat it too. Vick filed for protection under the U.S. Bankruptcy code in July 2008 after killing dogs and gambling got him in trouble with the law. He reportedly listed assets of $16 million and liabilities of $20.4 million.

It astounds me some of the financial issues professional athletes get themselves in. But with bad business deals, crooked advisors and other bad luck, I can see how it can happen sometimes. Vick, however, brought his troubles upon himself.

If he’s got $16 million in assets, as the filing claims, he should be liquidating those to pay the creditors first - the new plan does call for him to liquidate a $2 million home under construction and sell one of two Virginia homes.

Maybe I should be satisfied. It’s a better deal that the original plan, which called for Vick to keep ALL of the first $750,000 he makes. At least this extracts something from him. But to me this doesn’t seem like nearly enough.

What happens if Vick doesn’t get back to the NFL? It’s not unthinkable, given that while he was a fantastic athlete he never was a great passer. What if he is unable to ever earn a salary that gets to a level where the creditors’ bills are paid? And what is a guy coming off of a federal prison sentence and under bankruptcy protection doing building a $2 million house?

This is wrong. Vick needs to satisfy his creditors first. Then and only then should he be able to go and rebuild his own bank accounts.

He made bad decisions. He went to prison. But paying the people he is in arrears to should be part of the penalty for those decisions.

So, the attorney representing a committee of Vick’s unsecured creditors may claims in the CBSSportsline story that the committee supports the plan. I don’t. I realize individuals and companies file bankruptcy all the time in this country and creditors end up getting pennies on the dollar if anything.

This is a different case. This is a guy who A) has a ton of assets already, B) has the potential to get back into a lucrative game and make several millions more, and C) brought any financial problem he faces upon himself. This is a case where creditors can be made whole.

And as such I think this is a case where a message needs to be sent. You make mistakes and lose a bunch of money? Fine. Mistakes happen. But you don’t get off easy for making them. You pay them off first. Then you can worry about yourself again.

OK, we don’t honestly believe that Zoneblitz.com inspired ESPN to release their All-Decade teams (offense) (defense) (special teams) for the ‘00 decade–but we did have our Zoneblitz All-Decade Team up almost a full five months before their’s.

Of course, Bill Williamson and the ESPN crew probably had a lot more time and resources to devote to their team than Andy and I did–assuming they spent more than the morning before the Super Bowl hashing their lists out.

And frankly, that makes the comparison that more interesting…

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