Hub Arkush has spent nearly four decades covering football. But if you aren’t in Chicago or don’t frequently listen to NFL games on the radio, you might not be aware of him.
This week though, Arkush is likely to be a little more famous after he admitted on Tuesday that he won’t vote for Aaron Rodgers as NFL MVP. Arkush’s reason, because the Packers QB has behaved poorly off the field, especially before the season started.
In an interview with Parkins & Spiegel on 670 The Score, the Westwood One sideline reporter was asked directly if he would consider voting for Rodgers. Arkush said he has been “pretty consistent” all season in saying that he would not.
“I don’t think you can be the biggest jerk in the league and punish your team and your organization and your fanbase the way he did and be the MVP,” Arkush said. “Has he been the most valuable on the field? Yeah, you could make that argument, but I don’t think he is that much more valuable than Jonathan Taylor or Cooper Kupp or Tom Brady.”
Arkush added that he doesn’t know if his abstaining from voting for Rodgers will have an effect on the outcome, but he does know he isn’t the only voter that feels the way he does.
Danny Parkins asked Arkush if there were any guidelines regarding what could and couldn’t be considered in the vote. Specifically, he wanted to know if voters were told how or when they could factor vaccination status into their decision making.
“There’s no guidelines. We’re told to pick the guy we think is the most valuable to his team,” Arkush answered. “I don’t think it says anywhere ‘strictly on the field’.”
Parkins seemed a little surprised at the realization that Rodgers had lost Arkush’s vote before the season even began.
The longtime voter responded by saying that lying about his vaccination status was just another piece of evidence that he was making the right call on Rodgers. Though it was not the deciding factor, Arkush said it further supported his characterization of Rodgers being “a bad guy”.
This is almost certainly not the first time a deserving player will be denied an MVP vote by a voter that didn’t like him. Arkush may be the first voter to ever publicly admit that was the case though.