Bill Dwyre: In NFL, game will go on, long after Adrian Peterson case outrage fades

Perhaps the most interesting part of the Adrian Peterson kerfuffle is that it really won’t matter.

Will NFL TV ratings go down? Of course not.

Will the big corporations demand to pay less for those Super Bowl commercials? Will TV viewers boycott the game over this issue? Giggle.

Is this really about Peterson, or about commissioner Roger Goodell? Is it about sending messages of child abuse?

Or is it about us?

Ray Rice cold-cocked his wife-to-be in an elevator in an Atlantic City casino hotel. Unfortunately for Rice, that elevator had a camera and we got to see it. We were shocked and appalled. Broadcasters bellowed and typists tapped. Baltimore Ravens fans lined up to turn in their Ray Rice jerseys. The moral stage upon which we all gathered was in danger of collapsing.

Soon, we were checking Sunday’s point spreads and figuring out how we could get our errands done before the NFL games came on.

Moral outrage did not eclipse our Sunday violence fix.

A case could be made for there being only minimal human progress since the Romans and the Christians in the Coliseum. That was disgusting, but wow, some of those lions were really fast. Some didn’t attack. Just the bad ones.

Same thing in the NFL. Rice doesn’t represent all the NFL players. Heck, a bunch of them appear on TV ads now, telling us how horrible domestic violence is. They really seem sincere. It must be coincidence that they didn’t start doing this out of concern for the issue, but only after Rice connected in the elevator.

The progress to which we pay lip service in all this is nothing but a lot of noise. The messages of social significance being sent by Goodell and the NFL, about which both the NFL and we in the media like to pontificate, is a lot of hot air.

Nothing changes. Life goes on in the NFL. The games are sold out. We still get five or six concussions a week, all featured on a news loop played with great journalistic consternation on ESPN, one of the networks that writes big checks for broadcast rights to the very mayhem its commentators criticize.

The NFL has a marketplace made in heaven. U.S. sports fans make up that market, one of great disposable income and little discernible conscience.

Let’s call it like it is. Peterson is only a blip on the NFL radar. So is Rice. The NFL is fun, exciting, stimulating entertainment. It’s not our fault that there are so many bad apples in the barrel. It would take huge numbers of us to stand up and walk away in protest of the bad apples and their game. We won’t.

The Super Bowl is a couple of months away. By then, Peterson and Rice will be quick mentions and fading memories.

When it comes to the NFL and its constant trespasses, we forgive and forget.

Because we want to.