At the tender age of seven-years-old, Adrian Peterson watched his older brother die at the hands of a drunk driver. This particular incident led Peterson into his obsession with sports guiding him to become a five-star recruit that would commit to playing his collegiate ball with the University of Oklahoma Sooners. During his freshman year in 2004, Peterson set an NCAA record for rushing yards by a true freshman with a total of 1,925 yards. Throughout his three-season college career, Peterson would go on to finish third in all-time Sooner rushing yards with 4,041.
His stellar performance in college led him to be the 7th overall pick in the 2007 NFL Draft by the Minnesota Vikings where he had an instant impact setting an NFL record for most rushing yards in a single game with 296 yards. His most prominent years, Peterson spent in Minnesota earning a total salary of $94.2 million dollars before being suspended for accusations of negligent injury to a child in 2014. Since then, Peterson has become a journeyman around the league playing for teams like the New Orleans Saints, the Arizona Cardinals, and now the Washington Redskins. While he's signed multi-million dollar deals with two out of the three of those franchises and accumulated over $101 million in his NFL career, Peterson claims that he is broke.