Tony Kornheiser on Being Ripped by Aaron:"I tried to establish a rapport; I guess that didn't exist"

Aaron Rodgers, the QB of the Green Bay Packers, blasted ESPN’s Tony Kornheiser in a radio interview yesterday, saying the former Monday Night Football announcer “knew nothing about sports.” The comments seemed extremely random, seeing as how Kornheiser wasn’t on MNF last season, and his last time in the booth was December of 2008 (Green Bay had three Monday Night games that season). The topic wasn’t discussed on PTI, but we spoke with Kornheiser a few moments ago.

“My guess is that his comments had to do with the fact that during his first season, I was publicly critical of the Packers, which had a 13-3 team, and got rid of [Brett] Favre for an untested player,” Kornheiser said. “Jaws and I went back and forth on this 1,000 times on TV and with Wilbon 1,000 times on TV. But if he thinks I’m no good, he wouldn’t be the first. Or the last.”

Kornheiser, a month shy of his 62nd birthday, isn’t sure why he didn’t click with the quarterback in the meetings leading up to the game.

“I don’t remember anything particular from the meetings, but I do remember that Jaws went in purely looking for football stuff, Mike [Tirico] was looking for stuff from the announcing angle, and I went looking more for feature-y things or stories,” he said. “In that case, the theme was taking over for Brett Favre, which was the toughest thing to do in Green Bay. My guess is that I asked a lot of questions relative to that, and tried to establish some rapport with that. I guess that rapport didn’t exist.”

Kornheiser was fairly effusive in his praise of Rodgers – he must have said the QB was smart and good half a dozen times – throughout our brief chat. And then he had tickets and had to go … but not to see Stephen Strasburg or even game three of the NBA Finals in Boston. The tickets were to a play concert. [Photo: Getty]