One of my first posts way back when on this sacred blog was one that I considered to be a thoughtful, informed, impassioned and accurate stand on where I thought the runningback fit into today's NFL. I was the one leading the charge. This was going to open eyes around the country. The Knowshon Morenos, Alfred Morrises, Joique Bells, and Shane Vereens of the world had an advocate. A loud, well-written and well-spoken advocate of what they do and who they are. The financial tide would turn back in their favor and the world would once again come to see the simplistic beauty of what they do for our nation's pastime. Yep, the NFL is our nation's pastime now. Sorry, Major League Baseball, but nobody cares about you. Anyway, the runningback. He was gonna come running back (*rimshot*) to the forefront of our collective football consciousness. Because of me.
I wanna give you, my dear readers, a small glimpse of what it's like to be me. Zane. Y'know, minus the part where I never get laid, or very rarely have social plans. That's already implied. I just wanna show you how my luck tends to hold up when I feel strongly about something.
In the small amount of time between when I wrote my Antone Smith blog and now, two professional runningbacks have been arrested for violent crimes. One of them, Ray Rice, went all Super Saiyan on his wife in a closed elevator. The other one, Adrian Peterson, whom I specifically mentioned in the aforementioned blog, beat a four-year-old kid until he drew blood. Injures to various parts of the kid's lower body, including the scrotum. Hopefully this will be the last time I mention a child's scrotum on this blog. So who looks like a big doofus now, huh? The guy that was singing the praises of these jackasses? Ahhh, yeah. Welcome to Zane World.
The Ray Rice saga has been a shot horse for about a week now. Everyone talked about it, punishment was handed out, sparks flew, emotions ran high, and Roger Goodell is still on suicide watch right now. Then this Peterson thing comes up. Indictments are handed down, pictures are released to the media, and we all get to see and hear the sordid details. The Vikings already deactivated him for this Sunday's game against New England, and you can bet your bottom dollar that the NFL is going to set him on fire. People have too many negative feelings about this sorta thing, especially now in the Rice aftermath. He's screwed.
I don't wanna get into any debates about child discipline. It's a debate with no winner, ever, in history. One side says physical discipline is never justified. The other, regardless of age or era, swears they got the same thing when they were little, and always with the qualifier of "and I turned out just fine." My only point will be to say that if you believe something like what Adrian Peterson did to his son is ever justified, you did not "turn out just fine." But that's just me, the co-purveyor of a sports blog nobody reads.
Now, about Peterson specifically. If you ever get into a debate about pro football, one word that will come up nine times out of ten, regardless of the context of the debate, is "elite." Elite, I suppose, means the best of the best of the best. It's really only for a handful of people. If elite is the best of the best, then Adrian Peterson is the elite of the elite. A finely-tuned, supremely-conditioned superhuman machine of a man with a natural violence about him on the football field that has rarely been seen. What could a four-year-old boy have possibly done to deserve that sort of punishment from that sort of man? I don't know. But I have to think this kid will eventually be OK. And that is an important detail. He will eventually recover from whatever wounds he suffered, and maybe he'll one day forgive his dad. He'll go on.
The last one of Adrian Peterson's kids who ran up against a father figure wasn't so lucky.
And you can read that here.
It's worth noting that the little boy that died was an illegitimate child living with his mother. And it's also worth noting that following this incident, Adrian Peterson did not take one game off. Not one.
This is not a guy who puts a great deal of value on the life of children, it seems.
He needs to go. Swiftly, permanently, without a lot of delay.
Because Antone Smith never did this shit.
All Antone Smith does is score touchdowns.
Until Monday.
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