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Aaron Rodgers, despite having many millions in the bank, will pass the hat to fund online sports venture

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From Aaron Rodgers and Garrett Wilson in New York to Lamar Jackson and Odell Beckham Jr. in Baltimore, Mike Florio and Chris Simms name the top new QB-WR duos for next season.

There’s a sucker born every minute. And Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers is searching for more than a few of them.

Via Chris Smith of Sports Business Journal, the online sports information platform founded by Rodgers will launch a crowdfunding campaign aimed at raising $1.235 million.

The other founder of Online Sports Database explained that the effort to pass the hat for free money was inspired by the Packers’ habit of generating revenue via the sale of stock that isn’t really stock.

“One thing that struck us . . . was the loyalty the fans had in the community, the passion they had for the team, because a lot of them were owners,” co-founder and CEO Ryan Rottman told Smith. “We were all so taken aback by how much that actually built the community around the team, and doing this bridge [round] was something we wanted to use to create within OSDB a community of likeminded sports fans.”

But these people apparently wouldn’t be owners; they’d be donors. They’d be just giving their money to a still-new platform that not many know anything about. What is there to be loyal about? Unless the hope is that Aaron Rodgers fans will blindly give their money to him and then, once they have, they’ll feel compelled to use the service in order to justify the money that they paid.

Meanwhile, Rodgers has the ability to pump $1.235 million into the effort he co-founded with roughly the effort of mustering a snot rocket. (He’s due to make more than $100 million from the Jets over the next two seasons.)

Frankly, crowdfunding shouldn’t be something that people with funds utilize. The GoFundMe approach is for people who would otherwise go without funds.

Rodgers has the money to pay for his own damn business venture. And anyone who considers giving money for nothing to OSDB should consider politely telling Rodgers and Rottman to GTFO.