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Fan who won Ryan Braun bet with Aaron Rodgers: 'I'd take a game check'

Benny Sieu/USA TODAY Sports

Aaron Rodgers (Benny Sieu/USA TODAY Sports)

NFL fan Todd Sutton isn’t going to pester Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers to make good on the $4.5 million bet Rodgers lost after defending his friend Ryan Braun. After all, a full year’s salary for one of the NFL’s premier quarterbacks is a little excessive, right?

“I’d just take a game check,” Sutton told USA TODAY Sports on Tuesday, laughing.

That would only cost Rodgers $281,250. After receiving a new $66 million contract in April, Rodgers certainly has the cash to pay up.

“I’m not really expecting to hear from him. It’d be cool, but I doubt it’s going to happen,” Sutton said.

It all started in February 2012, when Sutton, a 37-year-old flight nurse from Denver, sent Rodgers a tweet in which Sutton called the quarterback “delusional” for the way he defended Braun against allegations of performance enhancing drugs. The tweet garnered a little attention at the time, but nothing like what happened since Braun accepted a suspension from Major League Baseball on Monday afternoon.

“Apparently Twitter doesn’t forget,” Sutton said.

Sutton went from “about 15” Twitter followers on Monday to more than 550 by lunchtime on Tuesday and saw his exchange with Rodgers cited in major media outlets and splashed across the screen on ESPN.

A review of Sutton’s Twitter account reveals he’s hardly a troll. He would send messages to Denver-area sports journalists from time to time but rarely tries to interact with athletes. His 2012 message to Rodgers was the first he ever sent to the Packers’ quarterback, and he wasn’t expecting a response.

Sutton still likes Rodgers, even though he thought Rodgers’ response to him was “arrogant.” In it, Rodgers taunted Sutton to “pony up” and predicted that Braun would be “exonerated.”

“He was probably trying to embarrass me on Twitter, but it has kind of reversed now,” Sutton said.

So far, Rodgers has been silent, about both Braun and his bet with Sutton. Rodgers’ last tweet was on July 19.

 

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