Sports leagues have relied on inconsistent and overly strict COVID protocols for their 2021 seasons. Sports media, meanwhile, have taken their obsession with vaccination to a bizarre level, as evidenced by their coverage of Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
Rodgers recently tested positive for COVID-19 and must miss 10 days of team activities as a result of not being vaccinated. But several sports media figures are apoplectic because Rodgers said earlier in the year that he was “immunized.” Now, in their minds, Rodgers must pay for lying to them.
It must be emphasized that the NFL, the NFL Players Association, and the Green Bay Packers all knew Rodgers wasn’t vaccinated. These are the only people for whom this information is actually relevant. But several in sports media have decided they must be able to hand down moral judgments against players who are unvaccinated.
That includes NBC Sports’s Mike Florio, who claims that “Rodgers managed to conceal that he is not vaccinated.” Florio demands to know how many times Rodgers has been fined. Sports Illustrated’s Conor Orr says that Rodgers “could avoid vaccine scrutiny for only so long.” You see, Orr and others were bound to find out eventually. It was just a matter of time before he and other media figures could begin their shaming session.
Yahoo Sports’s Shalise Manza Young suggests that vaccinated Packers fans won’t support Rodgers if the Packers lose to the Chiefs this Sunday because it may affect their playoff position. ESPN’s Kevin Seifert has a snarky explainer that he concludes by saying the most important “worry” is Rodgers’s health, despite the fact that he is a 37-year-old athlete who simply is not at increased risk of serious COVID symptoms.
The NFL’s ridiculous rules certainly didn’t help this situation. Rodgers did violate some of the league’s protocols, but they were ridiculous rules to begin with, such as the mandate that unvaccinated players wear masks during indoor press conferences. Rodgers is not putting vaccinated media members at risk, nor would he be putting vaccinated players at risk by being in the building at any point.
Rodgers probably should have been vaccinated, if only because of the NFL’s looming 10-day quarantine. But his teammate Davante Adams was vaccinated, and when he tested positive, the NFL forced him to miss the team’s contest against the Arizona Cardinals anyway.
The NFL was inevitably going to invite players such as Rodgers to decline to get vaccinated because its rules were all over the map. Meanwhile, sports media are simply sitting around waiting for news on which players are unvaccinated so they can name and shame them, as they did before the start of the NBA season. The NFL’s rules do almost nothing to prevent the spread of the virus. They only serve to chum the water for self-righteous sports media figures who would like to conduct a leaguewide inquisition to discern every player’s vaccination status.
