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Steve Kim: Someone might want to tell ESPN’s Sarah Spain to save some of her Aaron Rodgers disgust for Henry Ruggs
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Steve Kim: Someone might want to tell ESPN’s Sarah Spain to save some of her Aaron Rodgers disgust for Henry Ruggs

In today's society, or at least within sports media, not being truthful about your vaccination status is worse than actually killing someone.

You think I'm being hyperbolic, right?

Tell that to Aaron Rodgers, the Green Bay Packers superstar quarterback. Rodgers tried to execute a play-action vax, and now he's in major trouble for his incomplete vax.

According to veteran NFL reporter Ian Rapoport, Rodgers "received homeopathic treatment from his personal doctor to raise his antibody levels and asked the NFL to review his status. The NFL, NFLPA and joint docs ruled him as unvaccinated. Now, he has COVID-19."

The reaction from those who cover sports was typically one-sided and judgmental. And no, this is not a defense of Rodgers, who should have been clear and transparent about his vaccination status from the beginning. But it is interesting to see the outrage from those who are castigating him in contrast to Raiders receiver Henry Ruggs and his situation.

Early Tuesday morning, police charged Ruggs with a felony DUI and felony reckless driving. He drove his Corvette 156 mph and accidentally rammed it into the back of another vehicle, causing it to burst into flames and killing a 23-year-old female and her dog. It was reported that Ruggs also had a loaded gun and that his blood alcohol level was over twice the legal limit.

The Raiders organization acted swiftly, releasing Ruggs, a former first-round pick out of Alabama. But the bigger story was that a young life was lost.

I happened to see ESPN's Sarah Spain pop up a few times on my Twitter feed on Wednesday afternoon. She unloaded multiple tweets (and retweets) admonishing Rodgers for his transgression. Which is certainly her choice.

She tweeted: "Rodgers had said he was immunized. Lying about being vaccinated (and not being vaccinated for that matter) is garbage. Irresponsible. Selfish. What protocols has he been following all season? Did the whole team, staff etc know he wasn't vaccinated or did he lie to them too?"

Then in response to another tweet asserting that people were misinterpreting his statement that he was immunized, Spain responded: "No. One statement in a presser isn't the official declaration of status - either he lied to the NFL, team doctors, staff etc or he was honest and they've allowed him to skip required measures for unvaccinated."

She later tweeted: "He is not vaccinated. That is not up for debate. That has now been confirmed by the team & the league. The fact that breakthrough cases can happen for vaccinated people is also not — and has never been up — up for debate. Holy shit how do you people make it through the day alive."

But what did she have to say via Twitter to her 256,000 followers about Ruggs?

Well, her lone tweet was a quoted retweet reply to Mick Akers of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, who put up an excerpt of his reporting. She replied "Oh no. Just awful."

And that's it.

So yeah, killing someone is "awful."

But to some, what Rodgers did is the ultimate mortal sin.

Yet it has to be asked, does the outrage really fit the crime here in either situation?

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