By Mike Tanenbaum

Controversy over the Eagles’ acquisition of quarterback Michael Vick has hit the sales floor. Dick’s Sporting Goods, with 409 stores nationwide, has announced that it will not carry Vick’s number 7 jersey until demand for the product makes it economically sensible. The company denies that its choice has anything to do with animal welfare, but meanwhile both Modell’s and the website of the NFL Shop have listed the jersey among its top sellers.

Two years ago, as Michael Vick moved through the legal process for his criminal involvement in a Virginia dog fighting operation, the NFL Shop suspended sales of his then-Atlanta Falcons jersey. Reebok, which along with Adidas holds the right to sell officially licensed NFL apparel, simultaneously cut off shipments to retailers. Vick’s name was so reviled that the Atlanta Humane Society received donations of jerseys to be used for cleaning kennels.

Michael Vick's Eagles jersey is selling well for Modell's Sporting Goods

The NFL, generating an approximate $7 billion in annual revenue, is fiercely protective of its name and image. The league has very thorough guidelines for determining what ends up on the back of a jersey for any of its 32 teams. While star players have their uniforms mass produced and sold all over the world, the fan who admires the second string safety, or wants to see “No. 1 Dad” printed on midnight green, is directed to a page for customization. Here, the NFL plays censor, and sometimes, as with Vick, the messages get mixed.

Consider a separate Michael Vick incident from 2005, a civil lawsuit in which a woman charged that the quarterback knowingly gave her herpes under the alias “Ron Mexico.” Fans then rushed to NFLshop.com, or another league-monitored site, for their very own custom Mexico jersey, only to receive a message that “the personalization entered cannot be accepted.” T-shirt versions, “shirseys,” did eventually turn up and sell on other websites, but none of these were licensed by the NFL. The woman’s lawsuit reached a settlement whose resolution was undisclosed.

There are a handful of similar cases involving former NFL players. You can no longer buy a New York Giants Plaxico Burress jersey, after Burress accidentally shot himself in the thigh with an illegal firearm (his own cover-up alias, “Harris Smith,” is also blocked). Rae Carruth, a former Carolina Panther wideout, is now serving a prison term for conspiring to murder his girlfriend in 1999. He too, like O.J. Simpson and compulsive gambler Art Schlichter, cannot be accepted.

6 of 1159 words that the NFL doesn't want on their sports apparel

According to Outsports.com, the NFL currently prohibits 1,159 words from appearing on its licensed products. Almost none of them can be repeated in polite company (though“Barf Face” and “420”, for national pot-smoking day, are good indicators of where the imagination travels). Anything inappropriate that does happen to initially slip past detection is bound to be flagged by one of the three manual checks that the NFL conducts before the completion of an order.

In 2005, the NFL’s policy was challenged over inclusion of the word “Gay” on its blacklist—not least because there is an actual New England Patriot named Randall Gay. The league, apologetic, reversed its decision and admitted that the word should not have been in its filter, yet “Lesbian” is still deemed across the line.

And now, as fans and players prepare for the excitement of the 2009-2010 season, the NFL is looking to reconcile Vick and his victims: for $39.99, the league has sanctioned the right of a fan to customize number 7’s jersey for a dog. Let’s hear it for rock bottom.

Mike Tanenbaum was a 2009 summer intern for WHYY News