Roughly three months after the NFL forced him off the playing field, Adrian Peterson says he's thinking about retirement. On Friday an arbitrator upheld the league's suspension of Peterson, and the 29-year-old Minnesota Vikings star is apparently close to giving up hope of reinstatement.
ESPN reports Peterson's attorneys will file a federal lawsuit against the NFL on Monday, and he's already thinking about other athletic pursuits.
"I've considered retiring from the NFL," Peterson said (via ESPN). "I still made $8 million this year. I've thought about getting back into the real estate [business in Texas] I'm already in. That's something I've been interested in, something I'm involved in. I've thought about getting back into that. I've thought about going after the Olympics — you only live once. It might be time for me to pursue that, as well. I love playing football, don't get me wrong, but this situation is deeper than that. For me, it's like, 'Why should I continue to be a part of an organization or a business that handles players the way they do? Making money off the field anyway, why not continue to pursue that [Olympic] dream and pursue other dreams and hang up the cleats?'"
Football has been Peterson's primary athletic focus for most of his life. He was an All-American running back at the University of Oklahoma before the Vikings drafted him in the first round of the 2007 NFL Draft.
Since then, he's built up a Hall of Fame resume, which includes the league record for rushing yards in a single game with 296.
"Of course I'd miss it," he said. "It's my first love. But the reason I would be walking away from it would be [if the next steps in the process] kind of solidify that hurt from these incidents. I would know that, 'Hey, you're walking away not because you've given up. You're walking away because they're handling you all the way wrong in this situation. They're painting you out to be a guy that you're not.'"
As previously reported, Peterson faced serious public and legal scrutiny after beating his 4-year-old son with a smoothed tree branch (or "switch") this September until the child bled through his clothes.
Although he was indicted by a grand jury in September, he has yet to gain access to the playing field.
— Adrian Peterson (@AdrianPeterson) November 25, 2014
