Adrian Peterson and Rashard Mendenhall Misguided in NFL-Slavery Comparison

Adrian Peterson and Rashard Mendenhall recently compared playing in the NFL to slavery, sending an uncomfortable ripple through the sports world, where many have been content to leave race issues in the past with Tommie Smith, Jesse Owens and Texas Western.

Fans of the NFL simply don't want their favorite players talking about race. It wasn't widely appreciated when Jim Brown brought up the lack of black coaches in the 1980s. It was widely panned when Warren Sapp first invoked the NFL-slavery comparison just 20 years later.

Thus, the blowback from these comments has been negative, to say the least.

Doug Farrar, a writer whom I respect immensely, almost immediately removed Peterson's statements in order to give the young running back a chance to retract or explain further. The comments section in the original Yahoo! article echo similar statements made across the Internet and throughout social media.

Normally, I would make the argument that any line of thinking taking the rest of us out of our respective comfort zones (whether we choose to agree with it or not) should be lauded, but these two players are woefully wrong no matter what angle this is approached from.

First of all, slavery is one of those events that cannot be evoked to describe anything but actual slavery. Like some political rhetoric which foolishly uses terms like "Nazi" or "Holocaust," too many have wounds that are too fresh to get very far with comparisons to slavery.

On its very face, a comparison of the NFL to either slavery or the slave trade is laughable.

Young black boys in the 1800s did not dream that they could one day be slaves. They did not practice slave labor in anticipation that they might be picked for the next shipment. Today, NFL prospects are not imported to their respective teams in cramped cargo vessels which many of them will not survive.

Rather, after the draft, rookies are ushered in with fanfare on private jets. NFL players are allowed to retire any time they want and are now not even bonded to one team for their entire careers, let alone their entire lives.

Not all NFL players are ready to make these comparisons. Green Bay Packers running back Ryan Grant immediately took to his Twitter account and decried the statements as false. Grant wisely points to the fact that modern-day slavery does exist, and it looks nothing like the life of an NFL running back.

Yet it would be wrong to completely dismiss these two, and many have done so too easily. 

Their words: absolutely foolish.

Their emotions: a real and living thing that few of us are in any position to judge.

In response to the Peterson statement, Dave Zirin of The Nation recalled an interview he had done with former NFL player Anthony Prior. Prior is the too easily forgotten author of a very good book, The Slave Side of Sunday. Those with a chance to read the book should. Those who haven't are terribly undereducated on what the NFL once was and what it (in some ways) continues to be.

The argument can be made that the NFL has changed since the days of Anthony Prior, but it's imperative to remember Prior played from 1993 to 1998. The racism and degradation he experienced was real and not that long ago. Is it that amazing that remnants of that culture may exist today?

Is there institutionalized racism in football? Absolutely.

Without the Rooney Rule, meant to stab at the heart of a culture that once thought the possibility of a black coach laughable, young men like Mike Tomlin, Leslie Frazier and Raheem Morris might never have had a chance to break through a white-walled ceiling.

Even now, black general managers are few and far between, and black owners are nowhere to be found.

Is there racial profiling in football? Absolutely.

Fans and media are seemingly unable to separate the words "black" and "athletic" when talking about quarterbacks. In the same way, terms like "high-motor" and "high-character" always seem to accompany white athletes. Single events might be able to be explained away, but the constant recurrence is uncanny and sad.

Are there instances of blatant, in-your-face racism in football? All the time.

Once upon a time, "boy" was an appropriate diminutive term. Now, it carries so much racial baggage that its use is no more appropriate than when Howard Cosell inadvertently used "little monkey" to refer to a black athlete.

Ask any black professional athlete how many times a coach, fan or teammate has called them boy (or worse), and he or she will likely have some great stories.

To deny any presence of racism in sport means never having sat in or near a fan section at a college sporting event, courtside at any professional sporting event or near any belligerent fan under the influence of too much overpriced beer.

If one were to look closely, behind the poor choice of words from Peterson and Mendenhall is a discussion of race and athletics that needs to be handled maturely, rationally and more consistently than our culture currently finds palatable.

Sadly, Peterson and Mendenhall both seem to lack both the historical perspective and the tact to lead such a discussion. Jim Brown was not that man, nor was Warren Sapp. Hopefully, one day that discussion can be had without the noise created by these misguided young men.

Michael Schottey is an on-call editor for the Bleacher Report College Writing Internship. He is also an NFL Featured Columnist and an NFL Labor/Draft Expert. A member of the Pro Football Writers of America, he has professionally covered the Minnesota Vikings and the Detroit Lions, as well as NFL events like the Scouting Combine and the Senior Bowl. Follow him on Twitter.