AC

This Sunday, barring an unexpected bout with sanity, a multimillion-dollar, high-profile American company -- a company whose owners have lined their pockets with nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money -- will be represented publicly by a man whose son told police he stuffed leaves into the 4-year-old's mouth while indiscriminately whipping him with a stick. This man, whose son bore defensive wounds on his hands, police say, after trying to fend off his heavily muscled 217-pound father, may be allowed to be the public face of the Minnesota Vikings because his team can't convert a third-and-2 without him. The decision is embarrassing and disgusting and about a million miles detached from reality. It's also a hundred other things that make you wonder, in this season of its public contempt, just how deep soullessness and cynicism runs through the NFL. It's the Ray Rice video and the Greg Hardy 911 calls and now the photos of Adrian Peterson's little...