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Michael Vick Cheered in Eagles Debut

Warm reception for once imprisoned player.

Philadelphia fans are notoriously tough to please (they famously booed Santa Claus at an Eagles game), but new hire Michael Vick seems to have won them over with ease. In his first game since returning from prison on dog-fighting charges, a 33-32 preseason victory over Jacksonville, Vick received warm cheers whenever he was on the field for the Eagles. "I didn't think it would be that positive," Vick said in the postgame news conference Thursday night. "I was very pleased." Vick will miss his first five regular season games due to suspension and be on thin ice with the league given his checkered past. In the meantime, however, things are looking up: even much publicized anti-Vick protests outside his first game turned out to be relatively small and drowned out by counter protests led by the NAACP in support of Vick.