If Cincinnati’s Chris Henry got eight games and Tennessee’s Pacman Jones got a year, how long should Michael Vick be suspended if he is found guilty in the investigation into dogfighting on his Virginia property?

How about life? That sounds about right.

Commissioner Roger Goodell has proved himself to be a no-nonsense guy when it comes to the violent and illegal activities of the NFL’s players. He’s not just giving lip service to cleaning up a league that has allowed itself to become the butt of too many jokes about crime.

And it doesn’t take criminal convictions to earn suspensions in the NFL. That much is spelled out in the league’s personal conduct code.

In Vick’s case, Goodell has to proceed very slowly. This is a marquee player. Vick is as much the face of the Atlanta Falcons as Peyton Manning is the face of the Indianapolis Colts.

And this, potentially, is a very serious charge, a felony in the state of Virginia. It’s more important to get this one right than to rule on it quickly.

The grand jury that will consider the evidence that is being compiled by Richmond authorities is not even scheduled to convene until July 24, about the time that NFL teams go to training camp.

Beyond that, the inevitabilities of trial delays mean a verdict might not come until 2008.

My advice to Vick is to have a good 2007 season. If he is found guilty of some of the charges that are being considered, if he is truly a “heavyweight” in the dogfighting community as an ESPN informant said on Sunday’s “Outside the Lines” segment, then we shouldn’t have to see Vick on a football field for a long, long time.

I mean really : dogfighting?

I understand that young athletes, some of whom may have grown up without much money and who suddenly find themselves millionaires in their 20s, are going to make mistakes. Sometimes they are really big mistakes.

We hear of far too much domestic violence, players hitting wives or girlfriends, in professional sports. I’m not going to commit career suicide by coming out in favor of domestic violence, but listen carefully.

We have all argued with wives, girlfriends, children and parents. Sometimes those exchanges get heated and we do or say things that we instantly regret. I am not condoning any acts of violence, but I can at least understand how they happen.

How does someone decide to buy a house and turn it into a dogfighting arena where pit bulls are trained to kill each other, where blood is put in their food to give them the taste for it?

I am not accusing Vick of this. But he did own the property where dogfighting paraphernalia was seized. Oh, and by the way, 66 dogs were seized, and since those dogs may be too violent to be distributed around your neighborhood, there is a realistic chance that they will be put to sleep.

How nice.

We don’t know how this will play out. We have already heard authorities talk about the difficulties of obtaining a conviction in these cases. But if nothing else, at least a light is being shone on a really sick bunch of people that some of us didn’t even know to exist.

For Vick’s sake, I hope he is innocent and that the informants and sources that have come forward are somehow mistaken.

For society’s sake, I hope that the dogfighting industry is a fading link to our violent past, not a glimpse of our future.