Adrian Peterson has his defenders in the NFL ranks.
Lions?running back Reggie Bush has backed Peterson, saying the Vikings star should be allowed to continue playing football despite being indicted on charges of child abuse for hitting his 4-year-old son with a tree branch, resulting in cuts to his child’s legs.
“I have a 1-year-old daughter, and I discipline her,” Bush?said Tuesday morning on WFAN. “I definitely will try to — will obviously not leave bruises or anything like that on her. But I definitely will discipline her harshly depending on what the situation is.”
Bush, who previously dated Kim Kardashian, recently married Lilit Avagyan, the mother of his child.
When asked if he would consider using a “switch” on his child, Bush said: “I would possibly consider it, depending on what she did.” But later he tried to edit that remark:?“No, I didn’t say a branch or a stick. I said spanking. Spanking is different than a branch or a stick.”
“I was punished the same way,” Bush said. “And I know a lot of my friends and a lot of the guys I played with, they were punished the same way, too.”
NBA Hall of Famer and TNT broadcaster Charles Barkley expressed a similar sentiment on Sunday.
“Whipping — we do that all the time. Every black parent in the South is going to be in jail under those circumstances,” Barkley told Jim Rome of CBS Sports. “I think the question about whether Adrian Peterson went overboard … Listen, Jim, we all grow up in different environments. Every black parent in my neighborhood in the South would be in trouble or in jail under those circumstances.”