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Column: Hub Arkush isn’t ‘a bum,’ but his thoughts on Aaron Rodgers’ MVP candidacy were wrong — and he should recuse himself from voting

Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is a virtual lock for the NFL’s Most Valuable Player award — and a deserving one at that.

Hub Arkush is an NFL expert who works out of Chicago, writing for Pro Football Weekly and the Daily Herald and lending his expertise to WSCR-AM 670, where he’s known for having strong opinions on all things Bears.

It’s hard to imagine Arkush getting caught up in the middle of a vintage Rodgers controversy, but there he was Wednesday, trying to dig himself out of a self-made hole while the Packers quarterback assailed his credibility and called him “a bum.”

It’s already well-established that Rodgers owns Bears fans. Now we can confirm the Packers star also owns Arkush.

The latest in a series of Rodgers-centric controversies began Tuesday, when Arkush said on the Score’s “Parkins & Spiegel Show” that he couldn’t cast his MVP vote for Rodgers, calling out the quarterback for his summertime indecision about whether to play and his decision not to get vaccinated. Rodgers missed a game against the Kansas City Chiefs, which the Packers lost, after testing positive for COVID-19.

Arkush made it personal, sounding more like Joe from Cicero on Line 1 than a veteran NFL writer who has been around long enough to merit an MVP vote.

“I don’t think you can be the biggest jerk in the league and punish your team and your organization and your fan base the way he did and be the Most Valuable Player,” Arkush said. “Has he been the most valuable on the field? Yeah, you could make that argument, but I don’t think he is clearly that much more valuable than Jonathan Taylor or Cooper Kupp or even Tom Brady.”

Rodgers clearly is more valuable than Taylor or Kupp, and the debate over Rodgers versus Brady seems to be over as well. But the point is you can’t go around calling an MVP candidate a “jerk” and say you’re not voting for him if you indeed have a vote.

Arkush admitted Tuesday that “from where I sit, the rest of it is why he’s not going to be my choice.” That was mistake No. 1. He eventually added: “One of the ways we get to keep being voters is we’re not allowed to say who we are voting for until after the award has been announced. I’m probably pushing the envelope by saying who I’m not voting for. But we’re not really supposed to reveal our votes.”

Uh, yeah.

Arkush apparently believed he was getting around the rule by revealing only who he wasn’t voting for. But whatever he was thinking, he now needs to do the right thing and recuse himself from this year’s election, turning over his vote to another deserving writer before it’s too late.

Then let the Associated Press decide whether he should be allowed to vote again in the future.

By Wednesday Arkush admitted he was wrong to talk about it and should’ve kept his mouth shut. He didn’t take back his reasoning for not casting a vote for Rodgers but said he “screwed up” by mentioning it on the air. He also apologized to Rodgers in a column and said he “would love to be able to explain what I meant to say and butchered so badly,” but he didn’t want to add to the story.

But by then it was too late. Once those remarks hit the internet, Arkush was toast. And once Rodgers got a chance to respond, Arkush saw himself trending on Twitter.

“I think he’s a bum,” Rodgers said. “I think he’s an absolute bum. He doesn’t know me. I don’t know who he is. No one knew who he was probably until yesterday’s comments. I mean … to say he had his mind made up in the summertime, in the offseason, that I had zero chance of winning MVP, (in) my opinion should exclude future votes.

“His problem isn’t with me being a bad guy or the biggest jerk in the league because he doesn’t know me. Doesn’t know me. Doesn’t know anything about me.”

Rodgers accused Arkush of being on a vendetta over the quarterback’s vaccine stance, saying: “If he wants to go on a crusade and collude and come up with an extra letter to put on the award just for this season and make it the Most Valuable Vaccinated Player, then he should do that. But he’s a bum. And I’m not going to waste any extra time thinking about that stuff.”

Many Bears fans assuredly feel the same way about Rodgers as Arkush, but fortunately they don’t get an MVP vote. Because he is one of the chosen few who decides the MVP, Arkush’s only job is to look at the candidates’ performance on the field and make a decision based on that. Rodgers’s vaccine stance is irrelevant in this matter.

Even if Rodgers has turned into one of the most unlikable athletes in sports, you have to give the man his due.

Arkush should know better.


Source: Berkshire mont

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