Two Tarnished Images…

Today’s athletes seem to work awfully hard off the field polishing their image – or in the modern parlance “advancing their brand”.  I want to focus on two NFL players today whose image polishing has not been totally effective recently.  Let me start with Aaron Rodgers…

I have always liked watching Aaron Rodgers play football; even if you are a diehard Bears’ fan and hate the Packers’ as a team and an organization to its core, you have to appreciate that Rodgers is one of the best ever at his position.  Off the field, he seemed to be intelligent, understated, and insightful while carrying an aura of Snoopy’s alter ego, “Joe Cool”.  I do not watch Jeopardy; so, I cannot say if he would have been a good replacement host for the program.  His low-key presence would seem to have fit the role.

However, over the past year, Aaron Rodgers has come across to me with an added dimension to his image/brand – – and it is not flattering.  Last year, he engaged in a long-term feud with his team management leading to stories about how he would never play for the Packers again and how he wanted to be traded and – – you remember all that.  Then came the NFL regular season and Rodgers worked his magic on the field again until the Packers lost in the playoffs to the Niners on 22 January.  That was six-and-a-half weeks ago.  A day or so after the game, Rodgers said that he would make up his mind about what he wanted to do with the rest of his career quickly so that the Packers could get their ducks in line and go forward with plans for 2022.  So, what has happened in those six weeks or so?

• We have had reports that Rodgers is going to retire.  If that were the case – and if he and Tom Brady actually “stay retired”, then Rodgers, Brady and Ben Roethlisberger can headline the Hall of Fame class 5 years from now.  [Aside:  I wonder if any of those three QBs would be happy “sharing that stage” with the other two inductees.  Just a thought…]
• We have had reports that Rodgers and the Packers’ management have patched up their relationship leading to the team making him a “huge offer”.
• We have had reports that he has made a list of teams where he would accept a trade – – and of course that led to speculation about what any potential trading partner might give to the Packers in exchange for Rodgers.

It has been six weeks, folks; no one forced Aaron Rodgers to say he would makeup his mind quickly; he did that all by his lonesome.  So, that leads me now to see him and his image as tending toward “attention whore territory” which is not even close to the image he has projected for the past decade.  Think about it; if he had been seen as an “attention whore” over the years, do you think he would have even gotten an audition for the Jeopardy host role?

The other player whose image/brand was blindsided and is taking on water would be Falcons’ WR, Calvin Ridley.  He has been suspended indefinitely – at a minimum for all of 2022 – for “violating the NFL policy on gambling”.  That is the sugar-coated version of the issue here; reports say that Ridley bet on NFL games last year including bets on the Falcons to win in parlay bets.  To be fair, he made those bets when he was inactive and not on the field; that is a small plus in this open ocean of stupidity.

Spare me the diatribe about the NFL’s hypocrisy for bellying up to the trough and taking millions of dollars from gambling institutions and websites.  There is a fundamental difference between the league allowing “strategic partnerships” with betting companies and the league allowing gambling ads on its programming on one hand and having an active player or coach or official betting on actual NFL games.  If anyone needs that distinction explained to them, I fear they will never understand it.

Ridley left the Falcons last year in October for “mental health reasons”.  That covers a broad landscape and I profess no expertise in the area.  However, according to reports sometime in November, he placed parlay bets on NFL games while he was away from the team.  Try as I might, I cannot cobble together a set of events whereby whatever healing processes/therapies/counselings he underwent for his mental health led him to think that betting on NFL games as a player in the NFL was OK.  Please do not try to convince me that it was a gambling addiction that was the mental health issue that caused him to leave the Falcons because if he had been betting on NFL games before that as an active player on the field, that makes it 100 times worse.

Ridley has subsequently Tweeted:

“I don’t have a gambling problem.”

Well, if that is unassailably true, then as far as I am concerned, he has an intellect problem.  The NFL has a history regarding players and gambling:

• In the 1960s, Paul Hornung and Alex Karras (both players inducted into the Hall of Fame) were suspended for 1 year for betting on games.  [Aside:  Karras also was a part owner of a bar in Detroit that was allegedly associated with organized crime there.]
• In the 1970s, the NFL “forced” Joe Namath (another Hall of Fame player) to sell a bar he opened in NYC because of “organized crime” association and possible illegal gambling activities.
• In the 1980s, the NFL had to deal with Art Schlichter whose gambling activities and gambling problem were chronicled even during his college days at Ohio State.  Rather than trying to summarize the train-wreck that was Art Schlichter, let me point you to his Wikipedia entry.

Aaron Rodgers is coming across as “annoying”; Calvin Ridley is coming across as “dumber than a bag of hammers”.  Neither “brand” is being advanced…

Finally, since I mentioned Alex Karras above, let me close with an incident that happened after he had been reinstated by the NFL.  As a game captain, Karras was at the 50-yardline with the officials for the coin toss; the referee asked Karras to call heads or tails and Karras reportedly replied:

“I’m sorry, sir; I’m not permitted to gamble.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………