Well it looks like the Adrian Peterson Football Camp that is occurring Thursday and Friday will be missing one person Adrian Peterson. According to PFT, Kids paid $199 to attend the camps, but Peterson will be taping a segment for ESPN. I would bet that 100% of those kids paid for the chance to meet the person who attached his name to the camp, but on short notice apparently he will not be there.
Honestly, this coupled with his slavery comments from earlier this offseason have irritated me. Peterson comes off as a genuinely nice guy, and we’ve heard of the handshake, but to skip the camps for a taping for 100 Greatest Players for ESPN seems like a dangerous PR move. As a commentor said, he would’ve looked great to have his taping at his camp, you know, since it’s his camp. With smiling kids as a backdrop, there’s nothing better for public image….do this for the kids I say. Either way, with this stupid lockout, these stories are popping up and people take more notice.
UPDATE: According to NFL Network the taping isn’t scheduled to take place until July 3rd. Ugggh, even worse. I hope he addresses this since he hasn’t addressed the slavery. Again, I really like Peterson, and liked to hear about his cool Vegas buffet experience when he paid for a bunch of people’s food and hung out with them, that part is cool.
Per Star Tribune:
"“Adrian Peterson will be live in-studio for NFL Network’s final Top 100: Players of 2011 – Reaction show on Sunday, July 3 to discuss the final episode unveiling the Top 10 players,” Dennis Johnson, the director of communications for NFL media, wrote in an e-mail to the Star Tribune. “There is no conflict with the camp.”"
UPDATE #2 The story came out last night that the mix-up was actually the fault of ProCamps and the scheduling of the camp. ProCamps released a statement taking full responsibility, and Peterson also released this statement:
"“I want to apologize to all the fans about the confusion regarding the camp in Norman,” Peterson said in a statement issued to the Associated Press through his agent. “I hosted camps in Palestine and Tyler, Texas, last week that went great. Due to ProCamps misunderstanding of my schedule, I was never able to host this year’s Norman camp on their scheduled dates, but look forward to being back in 2012.”"
I’m still not sold on this being a coverup, but then again, maybe it’s not a big deal at all, it certainly could be worse. Hopefully this lockout will be over soon and we can report on more interesting things.
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