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In sports, winning always takes precedence

If the NFL selected a Fan of the Week, serious consideration would have to go to the young woman who was photographed Sunday near TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis while wearing an Adrian Peterson jersey and holding a stripped down tree branch in her right hand.

If the NFL selected a Fan of the Week, serious consideration would have to go to the young woman who was photographed Sunday near TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis while wearing an Adrian Peterson jersey and holding a stripped down tree branch in her right hand.

She was smiling broadly beneath her horned Viking helmet and fake Helga braids, a can of Coors Light in the other hand, and all you can guess is that this somehow seemed funny at the time. Of course, the outfit might not have been even as complicated as a misplaced sense of humor. It could be she was just supporting her team, and if brandishing a switch was good enough for Adrian, then it was good enough for her. With fans, it's hard to tell.

It hasn't been a very good couple of weeks for the National Football League as it has dealt clumsily with the situation surrounding Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice and his domestic abuse issues and the one involving Peterson and his apparent inability to distinguish between discipline and child abuse.

Anheuser Busch cleared its throat on Tuesday and said it wasn't very happy with how the league was handling things. Radisson ended its commercial partnership with the Vikings. Nike discontinued its affiliation with Peterson. Like magic, Peterson went from the active list for the coming weekend to the Exempt/Commissioner's Permission list.

"We made a mistake," Minnesota owner Zygi Wilf said Wednesday, barely a day after the Vikings announced Peterson would be back on Sunday.

The reversal of field was met with approval from advocates for child safety and, predictably, dismay from fans who have Peterson on their fantasy teams. No word on the reaction from child advocates who also have Peterson on their teams.

These recent weeks have provided an interesting window into fan behavior, although not a new or surprising one. Some fans in Baltimore showed up for last Thursday's game wearing Rice jerseys, just days after the video surfaced of the running back knocking out the mother of his child with a straight left that slammed her head into an elevator railing and could have killed her. Whoo hoo. Go, Ray. We're still behind you.

And then there was Helga and the other Vikings fans who are all for children and everything, but they like to win football games, too. Maybe it just gets back to that lovely aspect of human nature that people will do things as part of a crowd that they wouldn't do as individuals. In any case, it is worth wondering what we will tolerate from our local stars simply because they wear the right uniform.

It would be no different if either Rice or Peterson had been playing for the Eagles. Some people would have still showed up in their jerseys, minus the horned helmet perhaps, but they would have showed up. The same thing would have happened in any NFL city, no more, no less.

If a player is good enough, the team organization and the fan base is going to grade character and off-the-field issues on the curve. That happened here with Michael Vick, and if it can happen in the case of a guy who electrocuted dogs with jumper cables, it can happen with a player who punches women or one who beats children.

The organizations are caught in a complex push-pull. Players are hired for their ability to help win games and while it would be great if all of them were individuals the teams were proud to have represent them, that doesn't have to be the case. The winning takes precedence.

Even when it comes to something as relatively harmless as Jonathan Papelbon's enthusiastic crotch grab in the direction of booing fans, at some level the Phillies are forced to admit that economics and performance outweigh the discomfort of having an employee who embarrasses the uniform.

It would cost the Phils a lot of money to simply tell Papelbon to get lost and the team is already aware it can't even give him away to another organization, both because of his contract and because Papelbon is universally regarded as a jerk.

The indisputable truth, however, is that if the Phillies were in contention, fans would cheer for Papelbon when he saved an important game even if aware that he is a reprehensible individual. That's the way it works. The winning takes precedence. That's the way it worked in San Francisco when bubble-headed Barry Bonds was cheered as he cheated his way to records. That's the way it works when any miscreant wears the proper colors.

The teams and the fans have to be saved from themselves sometimes, although that might occasionally raise concerns about due process, mess with fantasy league standings and imperil next Sunday's result. There are some guys - even very talented ones - you don't want wearing the uniform, and guys whose uniforms you shouldn't be wearing, either. Sometimes, unfortunately, people just need to be reminded of that.

"We made a mistake," the Vikings said.

No kidding. Even Helga probably realizes it by now.

bford@phillynews.com

@bobfordsports