When Adrian Peterson was running wild and helping Georgia Southern to Division I-AA championships and title games, he was obviously a huge media request.

            After all, people want to talk to the best player on the field, and Peterson was exactly that for the Eagles.

Players of the week

Backs
Andrew Carner, senior RB, Jones County: Carner ran 17 times for 226 yards and two touchdowns – of 60 and 80 yards – in the win over undefeated Ola.
Brandon Watkins, senir WR/DB, Northeast: He had eight catches for 208 yards and two touchdowns in the huge region win over Bleckley County.
Lineman: Ethan Wilson, junior DE, FPD: Wilson had 11  tackles, four for loss and three QB sacks, in the Vikings dominant region win over Mount de Sales.

            One problem: Peterson grew up with and went to Georgia Southern with a major stutter.

            He worked with a speech therapist he finally said wasn’t doing any good, but his parents wouldn’t let him give up.

            “At first, it was hard, being in kindergarten, being  a 5-year-old. I wanted to be just like everybody else.”

            As time went on, Peterson wasn’t like everybody else, and not because of the stutter.

            Peterson addressed the issue, even through college, and the 100 or so onlookers Monday night at the Macon Touchdown Club could never have imagined such an issue for the man who talked and talked for about 30 minutes, with nary a stumble.

            The club showed The Run, his legendary tackle-breaking, tackler-tossing carry against Youngstown State in the 1999 Division I-AA title game. He ran and spun and broke seven tackles and threw tacklers to the ground, finally going down 58 yards.

            He set records galore, and was part of a Super Bowl team with the Chicago Bears, but returned to Statesboro and works with student-athletes at Georgia Southern, as perhaps the second-most impactful Eagle behind Erk Russell.

            Each week, he came out and talked to the media despite the stutter, which made interviews long and not necessarily good for the broadcast media. He took a speech class his senior year to get more repetition and confidence.

            It prepared him for life in a huge media market like Chicago – where legend Gale Sayers became a friend - and for after football.

“I went from about seven or eight interviews in my four years in high school to doing about seven or eight interview per day. The Atlanta Constitution, the Macon Telegraph, the Savannah Morning News.”

He remembered telling his parents years earlier that he didn’t need any more speech work.

“My mom and dad knew that somewhere down the line, I was going to have to speak somewhere. I was blessed to have a mom and dad who didn’t let me use my speech impediment as a crutch.”