Out of America: The football superstar and the dog-fighting ring

When Robert Byrd, the longest-serving Senator in US history, takes the floor on Capitol Hill, it is usually to denounce the Iraq war or expound in his courtly Southern style on the neglected splendours of the American constitution. But last Thursday evening, the two dozen tourists in the visitors gallery above an otherwise virtually empty Senate chamber had a surprise.

His robust voice belying the bodily frailty of almost 90 years, Byrd launched into a typically florid Philippic, with the Bible and Dante among others providing the quotes. This time, though, his ire was directed not at the folly of Bush's Iraq "surge" or the way colleagues had trampled upon some arcane point of Senate procedure. He was talking, of all things, about dog-fighting.

Every now and then, some celebrity slip-up turns the spotlight on a nasty hidden corner of American life – and so it has been these past few days with Michael Vick, the superstar quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons NFL football team and one of the half-dozen highest-paid professional athletes in the US. For a British equivalent, think Steven Gerrard or Michael Owen.

Last Tuesday, Vick and three associates were indicted for running a dog-fighting ring, called Bad Newz Kennels, out of a house he bought six years ago. The charges detail the gory evidence that leaves no doubt that dog-fighting had indeed taken place in a complex of sheds and outhouses behind the main property at 1,519 Moonlight Road in Smithfield, south-eastern Virginia.

Vick is accused of arranging, financing and betting on fights, dating back to 2001, and of being present at the brutal killing of animals that failed to measure up in test fights, or "rolls". He appears in court next week, on the very same day his Falcons teammates assemble for training for the 2007 season that starts in September. Dog-fighting is a crime in all but two of the 50 US states, and if convicted he faces up to six years in jail and a $350,000 (£170,000) fine.

Thus far he has been convicted of nothing and denies all involvement – though you wouldn't think so from Byrd's overheated oratory. "I am confident," the Senator thundered, "that the hottest places in hell are reserved for the souls of sick and brutal people who hold God's creatures in such brutal and cruel contempt." On a more mundane level, Nike has suspended the launch of a new sports shoe named after Vick. His NFL career is also in jeopardy. Its image tarred by a string of incidents implicating players with guns, drugs and domestic abuse, the league has embarked on a disciplinary crackdown against offenders. One player has already been banned for a full season. Vick may be similarly punished, whether he is convicted or not.

Other American sporting icons, of course, have fallen foul of the law: remember Kobe Bryant, the basketball superstar accused in 2003 of sexual assault, not to mention O J Simpson? But Vick's case illustrates a familiar theme of hubris and nemesis: the vulnerable young athlete who suddenly finds himself earning a vast amount of money – the Falcons' quarterback is midway through a $130m (£63m) contract – with no experience to handle it.

Inevitably, race, too, has raised its head. Vick is black. Just as with OJ and Bryant, some have accused prosecutors of deliberately going after a high-profile African-American athlete. Nor does it help that in his own youth Byrd was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. All of this, however, might have been expected. The real shock for me was just how widespread dog-fighting is here.

Like cock-fighting (which Louisiana, incidentally, became the last state to ban a few weeks ago), dog-fighting has been around here for generations, at least since the early 19th century and probably before that. Blame those early British colonists, and the popularity of the pastime back home in the old country.

For a long time, it was above all a rural pursuit, entrenched in the South and in the mid-Atlantic states, where the Vick case occurred. Today, however, dog-fighting is spreading across the country – as attested by recent police busts in Illinois, Arizona and California. And in the process, organised canine combat has moved from the backwoods to the back streets. Dog-fighting now flourishes in America's cities too. Glorified by rap songs, it has evolved into a macho subculture, part of contemporary urban cool. As the Vick case also suggests, it has growing links with professional sport, notably football and basketball.

The Humane Society of the US, at the forefront of the campaign to eradicate this savage pseudo-sport, reckons up to 40,000 people are involved nationwide. Dog-fighting has at least a dozen obvious and not-so-obvious websites, and the money involved can be huge, with stakes of $10,000 or $20,000 routine at major contests.

According to experts, there are three types of contest. On the lowest rung are so-called "off the chain" fights, put together by enthusiasts who own one or two animals at most. Next come the "hobbyists", who usually own several dogs and organise fights on a loose local basis. The really big boys are professionals, with sophisticated facilities and operations involving dozens of animals. Here, top-rated dogs fight for purses of up to $50,000 (though the largest mentioned in the 18-page Vick indictment was $26,000). This is a subterranean universe of drugs, guns and big-time gambling.

What happens is cruel, almost beyond imagination. An estimated 90 per cent of fight dogs are American pit bull terriers. They are elaborately bred for toughness and aggressiveness, and even more elaborately trained. Test fights weed out the weakest, who are usually killed. According to the Vick case indictment, dogs at Moonlight Road were drowned, shot and battered to death; one was allegedly electrocuted after first being doused in water.

Investigators found all the paraphernalia of the business – a "dogmill", a sort of treadmill for canines employed to get the animals in the toughest fighting condition, sometimes with a caged domestic cat as bait. On the property they discovered iron posts buried deep in the ground to which dogs were tethered, as well as a "rape stand" to hold recalcitrant females in place for mating. In all, 54 live pit bulls were recovered, plus the corpses of half a dozen others. Most fights took place late at night or early in the morning and lasted several hours. By the end one or both contestants, bloodied, bones broken and chunks of flesh torn away, might have to be killed.

And, if anything, this grisly business is growing further, despite intensified police efforts. Dog-fighting, a Humane Society official told National Public Radio the other day, "is more pervasive than people realise". With the continuing influx of immigrants from Asian countries in particular, where dog-fighting is still practised, it is likely to become even more common.

Hence the anguished cri de coeur of Robert Byrd. "Let the word resound from hill to hill, from mountain to mountain, from valley to valley across this broad land. May God help those poor souls who would be so cruel. Barbaric! Hear me." Just maybe, this time America will.