Peter King of SI.com unearthed a significant Mike Vick-related nugget in, of all places, Panthers training camp.

As King reports, UFL Commissioner Michael Huyghue was in attendance at Panthers camp, scouting the bottom fringes of the team’s roster for possible recruitment by the upstart league, which is due to launch in 2009.  (In unrelated news, Apple has invited the owners of a company that hopes to create a cheaper version of the world’s best-selling personal music device to visit an iPod manufacturing facility.)

But Huyghue’s biggest potential catch isn’t playing football for anyone right now — he’s sitting in a jail in Kansas.

That’s right.  Mike Vick.

“Michael’s not going to be able to walk right back into the NFL,” Huyghue told King.  “He’s going to need some kind of buffer before he signs in the NFL, and we’ll be able to provide that for him.”

Huyghue, a former NFL agent and Jaguars executive, puts the chances of the UFL landing Vick for 2009 at “98 percent,” which suggests that discussions between Vick and the UFL already have been taking place.

But before Mr. Vick considers signing a contract with the UFL, he might want to consider whether he’ll legally be permitted to do so.

Though Vick has been suspended indefinitely by the NFL, Vick remains under contract with the Atlanta Falcons.  And for the same reasons that then-suspended then-Titans cornerback then-Pacman Jones was prevented from “wrestling” for TNA, Vick would be prevented from jeopardizing his health by playing football for the UFL.

Whether it’s fair for the Falcons to enforce contractual rights as to a player they presumably will never welcome back to the field is another question, and likely is irrelevant to the Falcons’ legal rights.  Perhaps the Falcons simply will choose to preserve their ability to get value for Vick via the trade market, just as the Titans eventually did when shipping Jones to the Cowboys.

Still, the possibility that Vick could land in the UFL will, as a practical matter, force the NFL to make a tough decision not long after Vick gets out of prison.  If Vick is shunned by the highest level of the sport, he could become the first superstar for a brand-new league that is looking to chew into some of the NFL’s market share.

And, yeah, there would be buzz for the UFL.  A ton of it.

With a potential work stoppage on the horizon, a high-profile alternative place of employment for players and front-office employees is the last thing the NFL needs.