GREEN BAY – Aaron Rodgers has one Super Bowl ring, two NFL Most Valuable Player trophies, a celebrity girlfriend and an average annual salary of $22 million.
But even a man with everything wants more, and thus the Packers’ superstar, like so many others, is playing the Powerball lottery.
At his locker on Wednesday, Rodgers said he had gotten his tickets and would be tuning in to watch that night’s drawing, for which the jackpot was up to a record $1.5 billion.
"I do play," Rodgers said. "Why not?"
And naturally, the acute quarterback with the steel-trap memory knew off the top of his head the odds of winning. "I mean, come on, everybody’s got the same opportunity, one in 292 billion – or million, sorry, 292 million."
So what would Rodgers, who in 2013 signed a five-year, $110 million contract extension, do if he won the grand-prize money?
"Buy an NHL team," he said with a grin.
The Powerball drawing is Wednesday night at 10 p.m. CT. Rodgers and the Packers, coming off a Wild-Card Playoff win last week against Washington, are preparing to face Arizona in the Divisional Round on Saturday night. Hopefully for Green Bay and its fans, the quarterback won’t have retired and moved to his own island by then.
Born in Milwaukee but a product of Shorewood High School (go ‘Hounds!) and Northwestern University (go ‘Cats!), Jimmy never knew the schoolboy bliss of cheering for a winning football, basketball or baseball team. So he ditched being a fan in order to cover sports professionally - occasionally objectively, always passionately. He's lived in Chicago, New York and Dallas, but now resides again in his beloved Brew City and is an ardent attacker of the notorious Milwaukee Inferiority Complex.
After interning at print publications like Birds and Blooms (official motto: "America's #1 backyard birding and gardening magazine!"), Sports Illustrated (unofficial motto: "Subscribe and save up to 90% off the cover price!") and The Dallas Morning News (a newspaper!), Jimmy worked for web outlets like CBSSports.com, where he was a Packers beat reporter, and FOX Sports Wisconsin, where he managed digital content. He's a proponent and frequent user of em dashes, parenthetical asides, descriptive appositives and, really, anything that makes his sentences longer and more needlessly complex.
Jimmy appreciates references to late '90s Brewers and Bucks players and is the curator of the unofficial John Jaha Hall of Fame. He also enjoys running, biking and soccer, but isn't too annoying about them. He writes about sports - both mainstream and unconventional - and non-sports, including history, music, food, art and even golf (just kidding!), and welcomes reader suggestions for off-the-beaten-path story ideas.
