SPARTANBURG, S.C. (AP) — Sam Huff has a solution should Michael Vick ask for NFL reinstatement.

“I think they ought to turn him loose with the dogs,” Huff said. “That’s what I think of Michael Vick.”

Huff was among the Southern Conference’s first Hall of Fame class, a group that included some of the greats of their sport like golf’s Arnold Palmer and basketball’s Jerry West.

Huff, the talkative, confident linebacker from West Virginia, is always ready with an opinion and Monday’s gathering of inductees was no exception.

He is angered at how agents and million-dollar guaranteed contracts are robbing pro football of the drive Huff and his contemporaries had to show simply to stay employed.

“This is what’s happening in the world of sports. It’s like insanity,” Huff said.

The late New York Giants owner “Wellington Mara must be turning in his grave,” he said.

Some of Huff’s harshest comments were aimed at Vick, the former Atlanta Falcons star serving 23 months in federal prison for financing a dogfighting ring.

Once Vick is released, he must ask NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for reinstatement. If he is reinstated some in the NFL might see value in Vick.

Huff, a Washington Redskins broadcaster, won’t be one of them.

“I have no sympathy for Michael Vick,” he said.

After Huff’s stellar career at West Virginia, he was picked in the third round in the NFL draft by the Giants — and earned a whopping rookie salary of $7,500 in 1956.

Three years later, Huff was the league’s defensive player of the year. “I made twelve thousand” dollars, he said.

That might not even be tip money for today’s first-rounders, Huff said, with most guaranteed several million dollars before they’ve ever taken a snap. “Why should they try and get better?” he said.

Money has also changed the NBA, said West, the Mountaineers’ basketball star who went on to win NBA championships as a Los Angeles Laker guard and executive.

“There’s so much more money into it and the players themselves, they know what’s at stake for them,” West said.

Players can spend their offseasons weight training and working on their games. West, like many other players of his day, had to find a job for his downtime.

He and Frank Selvy, the former Furman star who scored 100 points in a college game, recalled working at the Great Western Savings and Loan when they were Laker teammates nearly a half century ago.

Selvy was also one of the inductees honored Monday night. Others in the inaugural class were Duke baseball player Dick Groat, who won World Series titles with Pittsburgh and St. Louis; and the late Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice, the national player of the year in 1948 with North Carolina.

Palmer, golf’s “King” who played at Wake Forest, was in Europe and could not attend.

The Southern Conference, established in 1921, was once home for several schools in the Atlantic Coast and Southeastern conferences.

West says coaches and their increased emphasis on defense has choked off some of the flow of the pro game. “It’s been the biggest factor in changing the dynamics of the game,” he said.

“We used to shoot 100 shots a game. Rarely does anyone shoot 90 shots.”

West retired as Memphis Grizzlies GM in 2007 and has used the down time to recuperate from the never-ending routine of an NBA executive.

He continues to follow the game, but doesn’t miss his involvement.

“Frankly, the last year and half, it’s been really good,” he said. “It gave me a chance to do something for myself instead of trying to do things for everybody else.”

For West, it’s about tracking players he’s drafted and developed like Kobe Bryant or scouted and watched blossom elsewhere like Cleveland’s NBA MVP, LeBron James.

He’ll be as interested as anyone should the Lakers and Cavaliers meet in next month’s NBA Finals.

“That would be the NBA’s dream,” he said.

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