Aaron Rodgers chose not to get the COVID-19 vaccine. This means he can’t be recognized as the best player in the NFL this season.
That’s according to one MVP voter, Chicago sportswriter Hub Arkush. Arkush declared that Rodgers was a “bad guy” and the “biggest jerk in the league” and said that Rodgers can’t be the MVP because he could have theoretically hurt his team by not being vaccinated. (Rodgers’s Green Bay Packers, meanwhile, clinched the top seed in their conference, rendering this argument moot.)
It may just be a coincidence that Arkush happens to be a fan of the Chicago Bears, a team that Rodgers “owns.” But Arkush also said he wouldn’t be the only guy not voting for Rodgers, meaning more MVP voters are considering Rodgers’s vaccination status than his play on the field despite the fact that Rodgers has been the best quarterback in the league this year.
Legendary stuff from Aaron Rodgers after scoring that last touchdown.
“I STILL OWN YOU! I STILL OWN YOU!” directed at Bears fans #Packers pic.twitter.com/c9NLKmMDwq
— packers clips (@packers_clips) October 17, 2021
This is yet another example of the rot of sports media due to liberal politics. Rodgers may not be the MVP this year, but he is certainly one of the top candidates. To rule him out because he didn’t get vaccinated and therefore is a “jerk” has nothing to do with sports. It’s a political justification for an award that is supposed to go to the league’s most valuable player, not the most vaccinated player.
Arkush says he made a mistake — but only because he talked about his reasoning publicly. He clearly has no regrets about making his MVP decision based on things that have nothing to do with football. And this is not something that would be tolerated if it cut the other way: No sports media figure with an MVP vote for the NBA would rule out LeBron James over his anti-police or pro-China stances, for instance.
The political rot in sports media has been apparent in the COVID-19 coverage and obsession with the vaccination status of individual players. The news cycle when Rodgers tested positive was predictably absurd and overdramatic. This is precisely what people mean when they say they want politics out of sports, and yet, sports media outlets have allowed this to permeate their industry, right down to their privilege of award voting.
