None of us are perfect. Everyone will do something at one point in their life that they aren't proud of, that they're ashamed of, that they wish had just never happened – its a part of life that we'll all unfortunately go through. But when you're a household name making millions of dollars a year – when you're the face of a professional sports team, and when you commit a crime so heinous that the public are thrown into uproar, things are a little different.
The NFL is no stranger to controversy. As we've said before, there's no way that a franchise can get to be the biggest sporting league on the face of the earth without going through a few dark days along the way.
In it's 95 year history, it's seen it's fair share of game fixing, off-field assault, drug abuse, negligence and death. It's a league built on staying quiet, a league where a fall from grace that would kill the normal individual gets you a 2 week ban and a slap on the wrists; it's a dinosaur – and following the major events we've seen unravel this past year, there's no way that it can continue to plug it's ears and pretend like everything's gonna be fine. It's time for a serious change.
So with that in mind, we're here with the 10 most shocking controversies to ever rock the NFL.
10. Adrian Peterson
Few cases in recent years have come close to shocking the world to the level that the Adrian Peterson case has. Peterson was a model athlete, widely accepted as the best running back currently playing in the NFL and had the reputation of being an all-round good guy.
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This all changed in the blink of an eye when he faced accusations that he had been disciplining his infant son by beating him with a switch, (essentially a sanded down cane).
Photographs emerged that showed slash like wounds across the back of his son's body. Peterson did not deny the allegations, instead - immediately owning up to his actions. He stated that he firmly believed that he was just disciplining his son, claiming that this is the way that he himself was raised.
Peterson is currently sitting on the commissioner's exempt list. His fate with the Vikings franchise and the NFL as a whole remains unknown.