It’s not often you hear about a business turning its back on a potential tax credit, so I was intrigued to read this week that the Philadelphia Eagles have done just that in signing star quarterback Michael Vick, fresh from his 18-month stint in federal prison for organizing dogfight tournaments. The city’s Mayor’s Office for the Re-entry of Ex-Offenders (MORE) offers a $10,000 credit for companies that hire ex-cons, according to this story in the Philadelphia Daily News. Chump change to the Eagles, of course; a spokeswoman for the franchise said the tax break was never considered, nor was the team trying to make any kind of statement about ex-offenders or re-entry in signing Vick.

Maybe so, but Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie has been laying on the rhetoric about compassion, contrition, and second chances a bit too thick, argues Bloomberg columnist Scott Soshnick in this commentary. Soshnick’s not buying it; the Vick deal “was about football, not forgiveness,” he writes.

I’d add one rather curious observation in support of that claim: The Eagles have a history of hiring people who later commit canine-related offenses, and they haven’t provided much evidence of a compassionate, second-chance mentality in these pre-Vick cases. In 2001, running back Thomas Hamner failed to show up for a court hearing after he was cited for beating his pit bull in public and was promptly fired. In 2004, safety Damon Moore was fined $2,000 for abandoning his pet Rotweiler puppy at a soccer field near his home in New Jersey. If he hadn’t been convicted for animal cruelty, he should have been for sheer stupidity: a microchip embedded in the dog led the police to the pet shop where Moore purchased it. And so ended another Eagles career.

But clearly these guys were not in the same league as Vick. ###