After deciding to activate their franchise running back for their game against the New Orleans Saints, the Minnesota Vikings reversed course and placed Adrian Peterson on the exempt list late Tuesday.
Peterson, the center of a national discussion on child abuse after images and reports first surfaced of him beating one of his four-year-old son with a switch, was suspended with pay from team activities, was arrested for “reckless or negligent injury to a child” has managed to make the proverbial hot seat of NFL commissioner ever hotter for embattled league commissioner Roger Goodell after the Ray Rice domestic violence incident with then-fiancee, Janay, Carolina Panthers defensive end Greg Hardy, who communicated threats to kill former girlfriend, Nicole Holder and San Francisco 49ers defensive end Ray McDonald also being charged with domestic violence.
After receiving public criticism from women’s groups, politicians, fans and team sponsors, the Vikings decided to send a message in deactivating the one-time NFL MVP to save face.
With Minneapolis-based hotel and tourism chain, Radisson suspending their relationship with the hometown Vikings, their message—along with other NFL sponsors such as Visa, Budweiser and Anheuser-Busch expressing concerns over the NFL’s inept stance on domestic violence sends a bigger message to the NFL, than the one the Vikings did in deactivating Peterson.
While it’s a start in the right direction, until both the NFL and Vikings rid themselves permanently of bad seeds such as Peterson, Rice and Hardy in banning them for life, hollow symbolic actions such as merely placing a player such as Peterson on the exempt list do nothing to spare the NFL’s newly tarnished shield.
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