My colleague, Derek VanRiper wrote a post explaining why he dropped Adrian Peterson (when Peterson was initially slated to play in Week 3) in the Stopa 10K league. While he initially tried to trade Peterson, after talking with his wife, he decided to cut him. Here's the key exchange:

My wife asked me a very simple question:

"What would you tell our son to do, if he had Adrian Peterson on his roster right now?"

(It's a hypothetical question, as we do not have any children.)

Without hesitation, I said:

"I would tell our son to cut him."

She asked a very poignant follow-up question:

"So you are not doing that…because of the money?"

Exactly.

Wait, what?

My mind, which was still processing the list of players I would have gladly accepted in return for Peterson via trade that night, finally started to focus on what I was really trying to do.

I was attempting to earn every penny of that $10,000 at all costs – in this case, at the expense of my personal beliefs and values.

After all, if I was truly appalled by the Vikings' willingness to try and continue to make money with Adrian Peterson on the field, how I could I be anything less than appalled by my own willingness to profit from him in my fantasy league?

It took me far too long to figure this out. It's embarrassing, really.

I grabbed my phone, opened the app for the league, withdrew the trade offer to Payne, and dropped Peterson.

Let's parse what's going on here. Apparently, DVR changed his mind about how to handle the Peterson situation when presented with a hypothetical about what he would tell his son. But he never explains why he would tell his son that. And he doesn't seem open to the possibility that even if he would tell his son that, that doesn't mean that advice is valid for adults who play fantasy football.

The closest thing to an explanation he offers is that he's appalled by the Vikings reinstating Peterson, so he should be appalled by fantasy owners rostering Peterson. And that it was embarrassing not to have seen the moral equivalence between the two initially.

But there is no moral equivalence between the two because the Vikings employ Peterson in real life, rather than in fantasy. Therefore real life concerns like the message it sends to the fans, the community and the national audience about child abuse don't apply to his fantasy team. The real life team has to worry about the real life Adrian Peterson. And the real life Adrian Peterson appears to have done something pretty terrible. But the fantasy team is dealing with the fantasy Peterson. That team has no fans, no community, no audience. It doesn't serve as an example to anyone. It is agnostic as to who real-life Peterson is because it has never met him, has no interaction with him, is neither an implicit spokesperson for or against him.

The only equivalence he actually cites is that the Vikings can make money off of him (apparently they've decided it would be a negative amount since) and so might your fantasy team. That's not a moral equivalence, but an incidental one.

After that, he just seems to leave it at "My stance is my stance," and doesn't explain further.

He concludes with a sidebar on one's motivation for playing fantasy football (for DVR it's about the money) before mischaracterizing the post I wrote as a way to "absolve yourself from any internal struggle" in rostering Peterson.

But actually, my post is saying just the opposite. It argues dropping him (or not tweeting about which of his backups to pick up) is the way people are absolving themselves of the internal struggle. DVR feels like he did the right thing, but in reality he did nothing. He now feels better about playing and promoting fantasy football because he cut a player from his fantasy roster. His conscience is clear.

My point is that just won't cut it. Neither of us is absolved from complicity in supporting the NFL product and paying relatively little heed to society's ills given how we apportion our spare time. And while it's perfectly okay to pursue non-altruistic hobbies one enjoys, at least we should be honest about our priorities. The notion that cutting Peterson is a tough but correct moral choice strikes me as bizarre. In fact, I'd argue DVR didn't even cut Peterson, he cut RotoWire NFL Player ID 5215 and in doing so made a category error: He mistook a symbol for reality.