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Chris Broussard On NFL “Slavery” Comments: Slavery “Was Race-Based…The NFL’s Not”

When star Vikings running back Adrian Peterson likened players’ position in the NFL to “modern-day slavery” a few days ago, it unsurprisingly caused quite the stir, but some defended his remarks – among them Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall. Mendenhall tweeted the following three days ago:

@AdrianPeterson is correct in his anology of this game. It is a lot deeper than most people understand.

@AdrianPeterson Anyone with knowledege of the slave trade and the NFL could say that these two parallel eachother

Naturally, this caused further ruckus, but Mendenhall wasn’t backing down:

If you look back and disect [sic] what I said, I ddnt say that the NFL was slavery, I said that they parallel eachother. Look up the word parallel

This means that they’re not the same thing, but they run the same course. These paths will never cross, but they mirror eachother.

It’s a subject tailor-made for debate, so today, ESPN’s First Take held one. And while Chris Broussard didn’t quite hit the heights he reached yesterday, he still said some powerful things, particularly as he opened his argument:

“I’m pretty sure the inner workings of the NFL don’t include castration, or wives being raped, children being sold away, keeping players from reading, making it against the law for players to read…all of this stuff took place in slavery – U.S. slavery, in America.”

He went on to say that yes, while NFL players are predominantly black and the league’s owners are all white, it’s not in a way that’s by design, like in slavery – in fact, he was willing to bet the owners, as well as commissioner Roger Goodell, would prefer “more of a racial balance.”

One thing we took issue with – Broussard mentioned Bill Rhoden of The New York Times, wrote a book on the history of black athletes called Forty Million Dollar Slaves. Rhoden, though, according to Broussard, Rhoden “would not compare the players today to being slaves.” Now, we haven’t read the book, so we can’t speak to that, but…isn’t that exactly what’s going on in the book’s title?

Overall, though, another strong segment from Broussard, and a potentially fascinating topic…especially if Mendenhall gets a platform to further explain his comments. Video of the segment below, via ESPN.