Here I am with one of the richest men I've ever met, and I almost feel sorry for Arthur Blank. Almost. Not quite, but almost.

At halftime of the Bills-Falcons game on Friday night, I got an audience with Blank to talk about the circus known as Michael Vick. Now, you can blame Blank for a few things in this saga. He should have investigated Vick's background more thoroughly before handing him a $130 million contract two years ago. He shouldn't have been wheeling Vick around Texas Stadium in a wheelchair when he had a broken leg bone three preseasons ago. He should have been more skeptical about Vick's claims he had nothing to do with dogfighting when he confronted his franchise player earlier this year.

But Vick was the star of the show, and Blank ate it up, even when the star did some embarrassing things. Blank -- if you gave him sodium pentathol this morning -- would probably admit he hero-worshiped a little too much with Vick and took his word blindly, when deep down he probably had some of the same suspicions the public had about Vick.

Here's why the Home Depot founder (who, according to Forbes, is worth $1.3 billion) gets a sympathetic ear from me: He did everything for Vick and got kicked in the groin.

"It hurts,'' he said, standing in the back of his owner's box at Ralph Wilson Stadium and looking legitimately hurt, not just giving some somber look for the cameras, of which there were none at the moment. "I'm very distressed. We're all very distressed.''

When Blank bought the Falcons five years ago, he inherited Vick, the first pick in the 2001 draft. He tried to make the team better, signing Warrick Dunn for insane money that first offseason and telling Dunn he intended to help him as much as he could with the player's numerous charitable ventures. The Falcons have been free-agent leaders of the pack ever since Blank took over.

Around the Falcons facility in the spring, when it's free-agency season, Blank is known as The Closer. In 2004, he went to dinner with Raiders' free-agent Rod Coleman in Atlanta as the defensive tackle mulled free-agent options. Coleman is from Philadelphia. He told Blank he was probably going to sign with the Giants, and, in fact, he'd very nearly finished the deal with them that afternoon in New Jersey. He'd be a two-hour drive from home, Coleman explained, after being on the West Coast for the first five years of his career.

Blank knew this was going to be a part of the recruitment. "Let me show you something,'' Blank said, whipping out a flight guide. See? Blank said. There are 22 nonstop flights from Atlanta to Philly every day; you'll be home from Atlanta just as fast as it'd take you to drive the two hours from Giants camp to the Ben Franklin Bridge." Blank outbid the Giants anyway, and Coleman signed.

In 2005, Blank built a five-building complex -- four dormitories, one common building with a pool table, video room and other big-kid fun things -- to house the team during training camp at their 50-acre training site 40 miles north of town. "The guys should be comfortable at camp,'' he said. Each unit had huge beds, Internet access, cable hookup, a small kitchen, big couches. This was not your father's training camp. I remember talking to Vick the day I toured the place. He told me how much the players appreciated Blank going the extra mile for them in building the housing.

Rich men most often are not worth pitying. Blank's no exception. At one point in our conversation, I asked him what the moral of this story is. "That's a very good question,'' he said. "What I take out of it is that as we continue to build this franchise, we have to be even more careful about the decisions we make and the people we bring into the franchise.''

Then he stopped and said, "Let me ask you a question. What would you do if you were me?''

"Take $500,000,'' I said, "and go out and find the best FBI agent or Secret Service guy you can find. Pay him well and tell him, 'I want everyone we're about to give a big contract to to be checked out thoroughly.'''

Blank smiled -- not a big smile, but a slight one, because this was not a smiling night -- and motioned with his head to a balding man behind him. He said nothing, but his nod at the guy seemed to say, "We're trying."

The balding man was Bob McDonough, a former Secret Service agent who'd worked in the Clinton White House. Blank brought him to the organization when he bought the team, assigning him to run security five years ago. But he never told him: Go tail Player X for three weeks so we can be sure we're not going to be horribly surprised some day.

"I can tell you we're going to be more thorough in looking into players before we sign them, particularly before we commit a lot of money to them,'' Blank said. "With Michael, I guess looking back now, we should have been concerned about the time he spent away from our facility. When he went home to Virginia, it's like he disappeared. It seems clear now that Michael had a secret life we didn't know about.''

Unprompted, he detoured. "You know, I've been criticized for being too close to Michael, for doing things like wheeling him around the Georgia Dome when he was hurt. Being too close to your players is not a negative. I still think, actually, it helps to be close to them, to try to get to know what they're thinking and what's going on in their lives. I think what this proves is that you can try to get as close to them as you can, but you'll never truly get inside their heads.''

Blank now seems poised to do a few things differently. He'll likely give McDonough more authority to do background checks of players. Blank's not willing to say exactly what that means, and I doubt even he knows fully what he'll do. Could McDonough have uncovered suspicions of Vick's secret life? Who knows, though I'm sure Blank wishes he'd given him the latitude to try.

I also think Blank may encourage players to live in Atlanta year-round. Not that he'll try to impose a residency rule (and he couldn't do that, anyway), but the Vick story has driven home a point to him that when players leave town, they're sometimes back in the surroundings that led to trouble before they became pros. It's almost for their own good, in many cases (and certainly, as it turns out, it would have been good in this case) that some players cut ties with their past.

The only thing left is for the Falcons, sometime in the next few days, most likely, to forever cut their ties with Vick. "Will you cut Michael Vick whenever this plea deal happens?'' I asked.

"That is unanswerable right now,'' he said.

No, it's very answerable. I think we all know that.

One last point. After the game, I asked rookie coach Bobby Petrino about his philosophy in handling the Vick story with his team.

"When you have a crisis involving one of your players, and this certainly is a crisis, I believe you do three things,'' he said. "You mourn properly, you do something positive for someone deeply affected by the crisis -- someone like Mr. Blank -- then you get back to putting your energies into what was important before the crisis. That's what we've done.''

Nice point by Petrino. I have a feeling it's not much of a Band-Aid for the bloody gash Vick has inflicted, though.