Adrian Lewis PetersonESPN - NEXT 2005 Adrian Peterson (born March 21, 1985 in Palestine, Texas.), nicknamed "A.D." (for "All Day") or "Purple Jesus" http://www.cnbc.com/id/21672828, is a professional American football running back for the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football as a running back for three years at the University of Oklahoma. At Oklahoma, Peterson set the NCAA freshman rushing record with 1,925 yards (as a true freshman and not a redshirt freshman) as a first team All-American, when he also set the freshman record of runner-up in the Heisman Trophy balloting, and finished as the school's third all-time leading rusher.''''

Peterson was selected by the Minnesota Vikings with the seventh overall pick in the first round of the 2007 NFL Draft. Coming into the league, he was known as a tall, upright runner possessing a rare combination of speed, strength, agility, size, and vision, along with a highly aggressive running style. His rare talent as both a great breakaway and power runner has often raised comparisons to past legends, including Eric Dickerson, O.J. Simpson, Walter Payton, Gale Sayers, and Jim Brown. As a rookie in the NFL, he has broken numerous franchise and league records for rushing yardage, foremost being the NFL single-game rushing record when he ran for 296 yards on 30 carries on November 4, 2007, against the San Diego Chargers. Following his stellar first pro season, Peterson was a near-unanimous choice as the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year . In the 2008 NFL Pro Bowl, Peterson rushed for 129 yards and two touchdowns, achieving the second highest rushing total in Pro Bowl history. Peterson was awarded the MVP award for his performance in the Pro Bowl, which led to a 42-30 victory over the AFC.

A running back (RB) is the position of a player on an American or Canadian football team who usually lines up in the offensive backfield. The primary roles of a running back are to receive handoffs from the quarterback for a rushing play, to catch passes from out of the backfield, and to block.

There are usually one or two running backs on the field for a given play, depending on the offensive formation. A running back may be a halfback (HB for short, in certain conexts also referred to as a tailback) or a fullback (FB). While a fullback is technically a running back, in modern parlance the terms "running back" and "RB" are frequently used to refer only to halfbacks/tailbacks.

The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Vikings compete in the National Football Conference of the National Football League. They have been a member of the North Division since the NFL realigned in 2002. Prior to the realignment, they had been a member of the Central Division, also known as the Black & Blue Division. The Vikings have won one NFL championship (Pre-1970 AFL-NFL Merger) losing 23-7 to the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl IV and were the first team to both play in and lose four Super Bowls. The Vikings have won their division 16 times, third most among teams currently playing in the NFL.

The club was founded in 1961 after the ownership group withdrew membership to the American Football League and agreed to join the NFL as an expansion team. The team played home games at Metropolitan Stadium through the 1981 NFL season and have played their home games at Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome (the home of the American League baseball team Minnesota Twins) since 1982. However, the future of the Metrodome is in doubt, as the Vikings (significantly encumbered by lease conditions at the stadium) are attempting to secure a new stadium for their own use.

The Super Bowl was first played on January 15, 1967 as part of an agreement between the NFL and its younger rival, the American Football League (AFL) in which each league's championship team would play each other in an "AFL-NFL World Championship Game". After the leagues merged in 1970, the Super Bowl became the NFL's championship game, played between the champions of the league's two conferences: the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC).

Since the NFL season extends into the New Year, the Super Bowl uses Roman numerals to identify each game, rather than the year it was held. For example, Super Bowl XLII, played in February 2008, was actually part of the 2007 season.

The National Football League (NFL) is the largest professional American football league. It is an unincorporated 501(c)(6) association controlled by its members.For example, "The Oakland Raiders is a professional football team owned by Al Davis, with a membership in the National Football League (NFL), which is an unincorporated association governed by its own constitution and bylaws." Oakland Raiders v. National Football League, 41 Cal.4th 624, 629 (2007). It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association (the league changed the name to American Professional Football League in 1921 and then settled on its current name in 1922). The league currently consists of thirty-two teams from American cities and regions, divided evenly into two conferences ? the American Football Conference (AFC) and National Football Conference (NFC) ? of four four-team divisions.

The regular season is a seventeen-week schedule during which each team has one bye week and plays sixteen games. This schedule includes six games against a team's divisional rivals, as well as several inter-division and inter-conference games. The season currently starts on the Thursday night in the first full week of September (the Thursday after Labor Day) and runs weekly to late December or early January.

At the end of each regular season, six teams from each conference play in the NFL playoffs, a twelve-team single-elimination tournament that culminates with the championship game, known as the Super Bowl. This game is held at a pre-selected site which is usually a city that hosts an NFL team. The following week, selected all-star players from both the AFC and NFC meet in the Pro Bowl, held in Honolulu, Hawaii.

While baseball is known as America's "national pastime," football is the most popular sport in the United States. According to the Harris Poll, professional football moved ahead of baseball as the fans' favorite in 1965 and has remained America's favorite sport ever since. In a Harris sports poll done in 2008, the NFL was the favorite sport of nearly as many people (30 percent) as the combined total of the next four professional sports ? baseball (fifteen percent), auto racing (ten percent), hockey (five percent) and men's pro basketball (four percent), http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=866 Additionally, Football's American TV viewership ratings now surpass those of other sports.National Football League, "NFL:America's Choice," January 2007, http://www.coldhardfootballfacts.com/Documents/NFL_all_about_SB_1-07.pdf

The NFL has the highest per-game attendance of any domestic professional sports league in the world, drawing over 67,000 spectators per game for each of its two most recently completed seasons, 2006 and 2007. However, the NFL's overall attendance is only approximately 20% of that of Major League Baseball, due to MLB's much longer schedule (about 162+ games).