Aaron Rodgers, the superstar quarterback for the Green Bay Packers and reigning Super Bowl MVP, has a lot of ties to California in general and to the Bay Area in specific. Rodgers was born in Chico and was the quarterback of the California Golden Bears for two years before entering the NFL Draft in 2005. Fresh off of his stellar performance in Week 16 as the Packers knocked off the Chicago Bears, Rodgers revealed that he still has glowing memories of a little community college in Redding.
Rodgers attended Butte Community College in Oroville before transferring to Cal, as we all know. Naturally, that meant he played against a great many other community colleges in the Central Valley and Central Coast of California.
In his win over the Bears on Sunday, Rodgers threw five touchdown passes. It looked like he had plenty of time for a sixth, or possibly more, but it was not to be. After the game, Doug Farrar of Yahoo! Sports and the Associated Press reported that Rodgers recalled the only time he ever passed for six touchdowns in a game:
@SC_DougFarrar
SC_DougFarrar Rodgers, on whether he's ever thrown for five TDs at any level: "Junior college -- threw for 6 against Shasta in 2002. Since then, no."
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Yes, good old Shasta College in Redding, CA. We were unable to locate a box score, but it's safe to assume that there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth as Rodgers relentlessly heaved touchdown after touchdown, probably taking some time to stop and French-kiss the girlfriends of the Shasta starters between bombs. The Wikipedia page for Shasta College is quite sparse. We can again only assume that Rodgers spends his off-days deleting content from the page and cackling to himself.
Still, it's good to know that Rodgers hasn't forgotten about the Central Valley after all these years. It really goes to show you that no matter how many Super Bowls you win, no matter how many quarterback records you break, no matter how many State Farm commercials you star in, you'll never forget the little people that you stomped mercilessly on en route to your fame and fortune.