Mendenhall Backs Peterson's 'Modern-Day Slavery' Comment

In a recent interview with Yahoo Sports, Minnesota Vikings' running back Adrian Peterson made the comment that the players' role in the NFL is like "modern-day slavery."

Those comments were met with a lot of backlash from fans and other NFL players, including Green Bay Packers' running back Ryan Grant.

But on Wednesday former Illini player and current Pittsburgh Steeler, Rashard Mendenhall backed up Peterson's comments. The following is the unedited transcript from Mendenhall's Twitter feed.

"@AdrianPeterson Anyone with knowledege of the slave trade and the NFL could say that these two parallel eachother. If you look back and disect what I said, I ddnt say that the NFL was slavery, I said that they parallel eachother. Look up the word parallel. This means that they're not the same thing, but they run the same course. These paths will never cross, but they mirror eachother. I could break down how, but that would take an amount of ideology and big words that a lot of you wouldn't understand.

"Learn to LISTEN before you pass judgement. Because speaking without knowledge of subject is truly ignorant. Outside of the dollar amounts you see on tv, you don't know what's going on with the innerworkings of this buisness. I don't know what goes on at your job. But how dumb would I sound if I read about it in the newspaper and tried to tell you what's going on? Its bigger than what you people on the outside see on sundays, see on ESPN, read about in the paper. Just like any job, any business anywhere. Really think about that."