The turning point in Rodgers’ public image came in 2021 when he was asked if he was against COVID-19. “Yes, I’m vaccinated,” he replied. Later that season, after he contracted the virus, it emerged that he was in fact unvaccinated and that he had not followed NFL rules requiring unvaccinated players to wear a mask indoors. He later explained that by “vaccinated” he meant that he had been treated by a holistic doctor and had filed a five-hundred-page appeal with the NFL to accept his alternative vaccination plan. The appeal was denied. (Rodgers said he was allergic to an ingredient in the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines and was concerned about blood clotting associated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Woody Johnson, a billionaire heir to Johnson & Johnson, now signs Rodgers’ paychecks as owner of the Jets.) People were angry that Rodgers wouldn’t get vaccinated and that he had been pretending. Rodgers blamed the “woke mob” for driving the nails into his “cancel culture coffin.”
I can’t be the only Jets fan who prefers the heroic version to the messier personal one. The interesting thing about Rodgers is that he seems to realize that this is a little dehumanizing. A common theme in the book is Rodgers, the former serial refusenik, testing how far he can stretch his fans’ loyalty. “I don’t feel like I have to sell myself to the fans,” he once said early in his career with Green Bay, when he was still unproven. “You have to go along with it now or shut up.” He has recently embarked on a campaign of provocation that culminated in him suggesting without evidence that Jimmy Kimmel was connected to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking. In an interview with Vanity FairO’Connor offered an explanation for the turnaround. Rodgers’ arrival was “a love fest like I’ve never seen in New York, at least with an acquired superstar,” O’Connor said. “I think he wanted to put that love to the test.”
At some points while reading O’Connor’s book, I felt a little, but still disturbing, like Laura Ingraham, the Fox News host who famously admonished LeBron James to stop speaking out on social issues and to “shut up and dribble.” This became a cudgel for conservatives during the Black Lives Matter protests, used against athletes who spoke out about racism. Those athletes actually included Rodgers. After quarterback Colin Kaepernick was effectively kicked out of the league in 2016 for protesting police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem, Rodgers declared, “I think he should be on the roster now,” and said he supported the movement. At that point, he was something of a liberal hero. Barack Obama compared himself to Rodgers in an interview. (Rodgers called Obama the best president of his lifetime in 2022.) You could argue that Rodgers was misinformed about vaccines but right about Kaepernick, but it’s hard not to notice that the public has largely switched sides. We never really cared about a sports star’s right to an opinion—we just wanted him to have the right opinion, or no opinion at all.
So what Do we want to know more about the people who produce the things we like? “Biographies used to be something you sought out, yearned for, actively pursued,” writes memoirist Claire Dederer in “Monsters,” a work that examines great art made by bad people. “Now it falls on your head all day long.” Separating the art from the artist is difficult when it comes to real art. The choices artists make reflect their values, their culture, their preferences, their tastes, their prejudices, their politics. Miles Davis, VS Naipaul, Alice Munro, Kanye West, Picasso – what I know about them can only color my experience of their work.
That’s not the case in sports. The structures of the games – the rules, who gets to play, what gets paid – are determined by society. But playing them is not art, even if it is sometimes artful. Throwing a ball is just throwing a ball. A Rodgers touchdown has nothing to do with who he thinks killed Kennedy. The storylines are actually not fixed.
On the other hand, being a fan of a sports team is a deeper commitment than being a fan of Mozart or Colleen Hoover. We’re not just grateful—we cheer for them. (In fact, we cheer for them even when there’s no gratitude: a “real” fan cheers for his team most strongly when it’s underperforming, as opposed to a follower.) Sports loyalty is not a preference but an inherited and usually permanent fact, like eye color. Nobody is a Bill Cosby fan because his father grew up in Philadelphia. If he goes to prison, you find a new comedian to have fun with. But I’m stuck with the Jets.
In some ways, modern cultural consumption is converging on sports fandom. Stan culture has many parasocial connections. Pop singer Chappell Roan recently expressed bewilderment at her fans’ perceived closeness to her. “This is a woman you don’t know,” she said. “I’m a random bitch, you’re a random bitch.” Political partisans increasingly share my sports instinct for willful ignorance. Have you ever met a Donald Trump fan who is interested in his actual biography? That can’t bode well. Dederer noted the particular dissonance that arises when the art monster is someone you thought was on your team. You think, not our Guy.
What did I want from Rodgers instead? If I’m honest, I wanted Rodgers to take it day by day. I wanted him to trust the process, to realize that iron sharpens iron, that he gave it his all on the field and is no stranger to adversity. I wanted the simplest thing you can find in sports. I wanted a cliche.
Does that make me a hypocrite? I write about sports regularly, and of course I prefer thoughtful answers that have been memorized. Earlier this year, for another article, I spoke at length with Rodgers about his recovery from Achilles tendon surgery. I found him likable and smart. Rodgers, as O’Connor notes, is known among sportswriters as a pretty decent guy. He makes a point of being available, preferring candid conversations at his locker to the sterility of a press conference. He admits to hobbies. He thinks, though often bizarrely, about how his sport fits into society. He does the only thing you can really ask, which is answer the questions you throw at him. And as a bonus, he often does so in colorful ways. Once, when he was publicly waffling about retirement, he called his future “a beautiful mystery.” Compare that to New York’s other superstar, Aaron Judge of the Yankees, whose reaction two years ago when he hit an American League record-setting home run was, “I was very relieved when I saw it in the fan’s glove.”
David Foster Wallace, reviewing Tracy Austin’s memoir, was frustrated and disappointed that she could not explain her profundity. Like most athletes, she was unable to move beyond cliches. Why? Wallace concludes: “Perhaps it is because cliches for elite athletes present themselves not as banal but simply as true, or perhaps not even as declarative expressions with properties like profundity or banality or falsehood or truth, but as simple imperatives that are either useful or not, and that, if useful, must be invoked and obeyed, and that is all.”
If you’re trying to understand athletes, to grasp how they do it and what it feels like, the stereotype is frustrating. If you’re trying to enjoy them, maybe it’s not as bad as Wallace thought. There’s a reason the stereotype prevails. Its appeal lies in the possibility that there’s something more interesting hidden behind it, that there’s a mindset too deep to reveal, or a secret that can’t be shared. The stereotype offers the prospect that the athlete is simply holding back rather than facing the reality that you wish they would.
As a sportswriter, you learn that most teams have a handful of assholes you’re not supposed to know. For a few years, the Yankees employed Aroldis Chapman, one of the league’s best closers, who had been suspended for allegedly choking his girlfriend and shooting her near the head with a gun. (Chapman denied injuring her.) Yuck –our Dude. Aside from the die-hard deniers, I think most fans deal with these inconvenient details with a certain degree of irony and embarrassment –our domestic abuser really had a great fastball today. I never spoke to him on TV. That takes away a lot of the charm. Fandom is nothing if it’s not serious. Chapman’s defining moment with the Yankees came when he allowed a season-ending home run against the Houston Astros in the playoffs. I was glad that happened to him, but that doesn’t mean I was glad it happened.
Rodgers’s transgressions are relatively minor. He is a nutcase and a provocateur, not a monster. I suppose I will cheer him on with a touch of irony. (“Touchdown, Tartaria!”) But is that any stranger than cheering for any other grown man you don’t even know? I think Rodgers is so frustrating for fans because he exposes the ridiculousness of our position. Why do we think we have a right to pleasure without conflict? Why do we want Care that much? The most brutal part of O’Connor’s book comes when, with the book nearly finished, the author finally visits the quarterback at his Malibu home to personally verify the facts, and Rodgers dismisses the whole project with polite ferocity. “Listen, man, you did a lot of research,” Rodgers says. “A lot of stuff that, frankly, I don’t care about.” On that point, I agreed. ♦
