Kareem Goes After Aaron Rodgers’ Endorsements

BUCK: We have a lot of people in the media very freaked out about one covid case, one covid case in particular. That’s the one that’s, “Oh, my gosh,” and it is my favorite NFL player — perhaps the greatest NFL player of all time, and I don’t even know who else would be close. I mean, this guy —

CLAY: (laughing) Some people would say Tom Brady, but yes.

BUCK: Oh. Yeah, okay. Well, and he’s cool too. I like him. So, I can get Aaron Rodgers jersey, Tom. I’ve never owned a professional sports jersey, but I’m gonna start buying Rodgers jerseys now because he’s just not backing down off this thing, and they are just coming after him from all over the place saying, “He put people at risk! Oh, my gosh, he put people at risk!

Look, if he was walking around coughing everywhere, knew he had covid and refused to stay away from people, maybe you could say that’s a little bit irresponsible. But having natural immunity and going about your life and not getting immunized does not put — does not mean you’re being reckless at all. But Kareem Abdul-Jabbar calls out Aaron Rodgers here of course.

ABDUL-JABBAR: Rodgers deliberately mislead his team and the public with a lie of omission. And, um, those type of lies really are the type of things that destroy confidence. So, as a liar, how can he be trusted to entrusts (sputters) endorse products? Worse, he’s damaged the image of professional athletes as role models and potentially hurt their financial opportunities as spokespersons.

BUCK: Clay, I know there are professional athletes who have killed people, have abused their spouses, drunk driving, all these things. This is what’s going to tarnish the image of professional sports? (laughing) Give me a break.

CLAY: This is so utterly… I am the sports guy here, right? I could give you a thousand, probably, almost — if you let me sit here long enough — athletes that have done things that have legitimately been crimes that have legitimately devalued the overall brand of their sport, their team, their league. Just in the last 10 days, the Las Vegas Raiders had a player driving 156 MPH while twice the blood alcohol level drunk and kill a woman in Las Vegas!

And people are angrier that Aaron Rodgers does not believe he needs the covid vaccine than they are at people who commit actual crimes. And that has been something that’s symptomatic, Buck, of a larger issue, which is we wildly over-punish words and we wildly under-punish, in my experience, actions. We got it backwards because of social media. Aaron Rodgers would have been better off… Think about how crazy this is, Buck. Aaron Rodgers would have been better off to drive drunk than he would to say, “Hey, I didn’t want to get the covid vaccine because I don’t think it’s necessary for me.”

BUCK: Does he go against the narrative, Clay, the orthodoxy of the left? That is the unforgivable sin. If you go with that, then a lot of things… Maybe you kill a few people on a bar fight, you know?

CLAY: “It happens. Who among us hasn’t nearly killed a man in a bar fight?” That’s the way the sports media will respond, and this is one of the things that I was on the front edge of, Buck. The sports media is more left wing than the political media, which blows people’s minds, which is how — yes — Aaron Rodgers got eviscerated like he did.