Michael Vick appeared on the “Today Show” with Matt Lauer on Tuesday to promote his new book “Finally Free.” In the book, Vick discusses and apologizes for his dog fighting past, and even admits he studied dogs more than his playbook.
The interview seemed to be going well until a few minutes in when Lauer asked Vick about football. The show’s production staff ran some “B-roll” video from an Eagles practice of what was supposed to be Vick. Instead, as you can see in the video above captured by Guyism, they showed footage of former Texas A&M quarterback Jerrod Johnson, who was with the Eagles for less than a month last year. Johnson, like Vick, is black, however, he throws right handed unlike Vick and wears a different jersey number.
At least “Today” corrected their error when they uploaded the video to the web:
I suppose these types of mistakes can happen when non-sports people are in control of a show, but there’s also an underlying feeling of “all black guys look alike” to the mistake. The ultimate irony is that the same websites that called out “Today Show” for being racist/making a mistake misidentified Jerrod Johnson as Vince Young. Yikes!
