NFL got it wrong, Adrian Peterson should be allowed to play

Ritter Collett was a much-respected sports writer for the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News. Art Schlichter was raised an hour away and became a legend as a quarterback at Miami (Ohio) Trace High School.

Schlichter went to Ohio State, where he was a four-year starter for Woody Hayes. He was entering his senior season in 1981 when Collett and his publisher released a book titled “Straight Arrow: The Story of OSU’s Art Schlichter.”

The title might have had staying power, if Schlichter had not turned out to be among the most famous degenerate gamblers ever to populate sports in this country.

I’ve been duped myself, and very recently.

I’ve been doing a daily sports radio show for five years, and it has included an in-season Vikings segment with regular guests. Darren Sharper filled that role on Fridays in 2012 and 2013.

Those were 15 of the easiest minutes of the week. Sharper was insightful and humorous. More than once, we went off track and shared a laugh concerning his bachelorhood.

Once the conversation ended, it was routine for us at the station to say, “That Sharp is really a good guy.”

Yeah, except now Sharper is charged with being a serial rapist who drugged women in several states and could spend the rest of his life in prison.

I’m not comparing a rabid gambler to a rabid rapist. This is about assumptions. This is about hero worship.

This is about thinking we know the good guys from the bad guys by asking someone questions for 15 minutes on occasion, or hearing about visits to sick kids in a hospital.

The sports media is no less gullible than sports fans. We get snapshots of an athlete, and then offer an opinion of him or her as if it should be chiseled in granite.

Yet, the fans of the Vikings – the Purple Faithful, as I term them – are the people who get the most sympathy from me in the Adrian Peterson case.

They believed in this guy so much. I mean, you come back from a serious knee injury and rush for 2,097 yards, you have to be a wonderful person, right?

OK, I know. I’m not supposed to say that about sympathy toward the fans. I’m supposed to buy into the theory of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s child-rearing experts that the 4-year-old son who took the whippin’ from Peterson will be damaged psychologically for life.

If it continued, yes. For that reason, we all can be grateful that Peterson was caught after his outrageous act of discipline last May.

Goodell and his stooge, Harold Henderson, the arbiter behind last Friday’s decision to uphold Peterson’s six-game suspension, insist that Peterson has not shown proper remorse.

I don’t buy it. I found contrition on the courthouse steps after his no-contest plea to a misdemeanor charge of abuse.

More important, the mother of the 4-year-old seems to have found contrition with the father of her child. She sent a message to the court saying that she felt her son would have a healthy future relationship with Peterson.

I’ll go with Mom over Goodell and Henderson. As long as Adrian is going to be Dad on the lad’s Texas visits and not some guy with a tree branch, I say the 4-year-old is going to be fine.

I don’t remember a thing from when I was 4. The first event I remember is losing a quarter to my Uncle Harry when I took Cleveland against the New York Giants in the 1954 World Series, and I was 8 by then.

The 4-year-old would be a lot better off if Goodell lets his father go back to work, than if Emperor Roger makes Peterson spend hours meeting with the NFL’s hand-picked counselors to tell him the obvious: “Don’t beat your kids, Adrian.”

He knows that already. And if I’m wrong on that, if there’s an evil in Adrian Peterson that makes him want to whip small kids with switches, lying to Goodell’s counselors in a few therapy sessions isn’t going to matter.

I don’t think that streak is in Adrian Peterson.

I don’t know, of course. We never do. All we have are snapshots.