Goodell's power madness reaches new height

Adrian Peterson entered a no-contest plea to a misdemeanor for reckless assault on Nov. 4 in a Texas court room. This was a result of Peterson taking a switch to one of his 4-year-old sons in May at Adrian's Houston-area home.

In standing before the judge, Peterson said: "I want to say I truly regret this incident. I stand here and take full responsibility for my actions. I love my son more than any one of you can even imagine. I'm looking forward and I'm anxious to continue my relationship with my child.''

Peterson was ordered to pay a $4,000 fine, serve 80 hours of community service, take parenting classes and spend two years on probation. If the court deems him to have complied with those guidelines and to have avoided further incidents, the case would be cleared from his record.

The mother of the 4-year-old boy released a statement supporting the court's judgment in the case, and expressing confidence in Peterson's ability to be a good parent in the future to her son.

On Tuesday, two weeks after Peterson's plea, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell gave Peterson a minimum of a six-game suspension – effectively eliminating Peterson from returning to the Vikings and the NFL this season.

In his letter reprimanding Peterson, Goodell made this charge:

" … you have shown no meaningful remorse for your conduct. When indicted, you acknowledged what you did but said that you would not 'eliminate whooping my kids,' and defended your conduct in numerous published text messages.''

In laying out his no-remorse case against Peterson, Goodell went back to text messages that were sent to the mother of the 4-year-old in late May, and to late summer when he testified to a grand jury and said he would not give up ''whooping'' his kids.

Once the indictment was revealed, the Vikings first said Peterson would continue to play, then got together with Goodell and had Adrian placed in a mysterious limbo – where he couldn't play but got paid.

While on what I call the commissioner's whim list, the word from Peterson's camp was that he had been seeing a therapist. I'm guessing they talked about the days that Adrian was whooped by his father, and that this was no way to treat a child.

On Tuesday, Goodell decided to judge Peterson on what he wrote in text messages to the 4-year-old's mother, and what Adrian said as a man still obtuse about parental discipline when testifying before a grand jury in late summer.

Goodell paid no attention to the remorse expressed and responsibility for what Peterson now clearly saw as a wrong act when appearing before the court on Nov. 4.

Goodell revels in using the muscle that the cowardly NFL Players Association gave him once again in the most-recent labor agreement. He relishes in his unilateral power to steal players' money.

This time, though, Goodell's pomposity has reached a new height.

Back in August, in the wake of the Ray Rice elevator tape, Goodell gave himself the power to change his discipline on the run and implement a suspension of a minimum of six games in a domestic abuse case.

Certainly, Goodell had the power to slap Peterson with those six games on Tuesday. In doling out the suspension, he also had the right to refer back to Peterson's text messages from 5 ½ months earlier, and even his comments before a grand jury in late summer, as part of the league's punishment for the original act.

But for Goodell to sit in New York and refute what Peterson said this month in court, and to say that he knows better than the Houston court as to what is required of Peterson to become an acceptable parent, is a power madness run amok.