It was another Sunday of tuning into the NFL hoping to see the focus on football games, but knowing it was not to be as yet another player has repulsed us with his behavior off the field. This one hits home for me because Adrian Peterson plays for my team. And it appears ESPN commentator Cris Carter felt the same way, since Peterson plays for his team too. But in his comments on yesterday's pre-game show, Carter addressed a lot more than just the Vikings' football decision to deactivate Peterson for their game against the Patriots. Carter really cut to the heart of how we understand the discipline of children, and how we draw the line between true discipline and abject brutality.
And in the process, he was surprisingly candid about what he describes as the mistakes of his own mother on this score. Watch:
Cris Carter has more than his share of critics - some simply because he is an outspoken Christian and some who just don't like his style. He is certainly not unfamiliar with the dark path and has never been shy about acknowledging that. (Indeed, the decision by then-Eagles coach Buddy Ryan to release him early in his career ultimately proved to be the wakeup call he needed, and it set the stage for the Hall of Fame career he enjoyed with the Vikings.) Along the way, Carter developed the ability to distinguish between necessary correction and simple violence fueled by anger.
Adrian Peterson's situation is different from that of Ray Rice in the sense that we don't have a video and much of what we "know" is not knowledge at all but innuendo based on limited leaks of information. But what has come out is horrifying, and it suggests Peterson simply unleashed his violent rage on his four-year-old son without any appreciation for what constitutes truly effective discipline. As Carter says, you don't beat good behavior into a child. You correct as needed, but it's not anger and it's certainly not violence that makes the correction effective.
Peterson is also a professing Christian, which is great, but a lot of his own actions and choices (not unlike the young Cris Carter) are at odds with that profession - including the apparent fathering of multiple children by multiple women, none of which he is married to. Last season we learned shortly before a Vikings game that another of Peterson's children - a two-year-old boy - had died in what may have been an abusive situation at the hands of a man living with the boy's mother. The story became stranger, though, when Peterson nonetheless showed up to play that weekend and it came out he had virtually no real-life connection to the boy.
Carter didn't go this far, but as man dedicated to his wife and his children, I'm sure he also recognizes that you can't expect men who go around fathering children without the marriage or family commitment to understand true love and discipline in the same way as those who wait to do so under the right circumstances.
Adrian Peterson clearly shouldn't be a father at all at this point in his life, but that's true of lots of baby daddies who are dotting the landscape nonetheless. We can't change that reality and we have to deal with it. It starts by establishing that certain things are beyond the bounds of acceptability, and if the full investigation concludes that this is a case of child abuse, then Peterson will have to pay a high price for it.
Carter's comment about men (or at least men in the NFL culture) not respecting women or children - but only respecting the consequences they face on the field - is also as jarring as it is undoubtedly true.
I really don't know what the Vikings will do or should do when we have all the facts. Peterson is an amazing player - one of the best running backs of all time - and strictly speaking as a fan, I don't want them to just cut their most valuable on-the-field asset loose for nothing. With Peterson, the Vikings might have a shot at the playoffs this year. Without him they might be a disaster. That is certainly not as important as what happened to that child, but a smart team still has to handle the situation in a way that minimizes the price they will pay for what has to be done.
Minimizing the price society pays for the rejection of righteousness is a much more complicated proposition. But I'm glad we have solid men like Cris Carter around to speak the truth. I love that man and I love what's in his spirit, and I never felt that more so than I do this morning.
