Think back to your elementary school days if you can.

What is one of the first things you learned? The alphabet? How to add 2+2? How to read? 

How about the importance of doing your homework?

Maybe it wasn't one of the first things on the list, but it's certainly one of the most important things that remains all the way through schooling from kindergarten and first grade to undergraduate or even graduate work. 

Did Mike Florio just miss all of that time in school?

Logic leads me to believe that is certainly not the case. So how then, did he just decide to skip everything he's learned and publicly bash one of the class acts in the NFL? 

Your guess is as good as mine.

Partly due to the fault of WBAY, a local television station in Green Bay, Wisconsin, they ran a story about Jan Cavanaugh. Cavanaugh is a notable Packer fan who happens to be a cancer survivor and frequently appears at the airport to try and get autographs from the Packers as they prepare to leave for their weekend game. 

In the video clip shown, Rodgers is shown bypassing Cavanaugh as she holds out her hat for him to sign. The clip lasts for all of about 2 seconds and follows the emotional statement of Cavanaugh talking about her cancer and wanting Aaron Rodgers to sign her pink Packers hat. 

Rodgers can be seen with headphones in and doesn't make any eye contact with the woman. 

What resulted, angered Packer Nation, and I believe will greatly affect my stance on Sunday Night Football and NBC as a television network if NBC chooses to keep Mike Florio around for analysis for their games.

Florio is the host of profootballtalk.com, one of the most popular football blogs on the Internet. Florio joined SI.com's Peter King on Sunday Night Football this year to offer analysis on the happenings of the NFL and his blog is posted on the NBC Sports website.

Even in this growing age of technology, Florio chose to neglect one of the most wondrous tools known to humans. 

A Google search. 

The following are just a few tidbits from Florio's original article on Rodgers:

Hey, it’s a free country.  Rodgers has an inalienable right to choose to behave like an ass.  And the rest of us have an inalienable right to tell anyone who’ll listen that he’s behaving like an ass.

We also hope that Rodgers and/or the Packers track down Jan Cavanaugh and make it up to her.  The fact that Rodgers would crap on a rare moment of happiness for someone whose entire life in consumed by fighting the disease and contending with the physical, mental, and emotional effects of it should make the stomach churn of anyone who has cancer, or who has seen a loved one stricken by it.

You can read the rest of his article here.

As I said, all it would have took was a simple Google search for Aaron Rodgers and cancer. 

What ensued was thousands of posts along the lines of "Aaron Rodgers snubs cancer patient" or "Aaron Rodgers ignores cancer patient." 

Thankfully, Gregg Doyel of CBS Sports responded with an amazing column about who Aaron Rodgers really is and what he means to not only the NFL but the Green Bay Packer organization.

This followed a Doyel Tweet wondering if it was a cancer patient snub? Thankfully, Doyel followed up his Tweet with a little bit of research.

Take note Florio. 

What Doyel found were multiple stories about Aaron Rodgers and cancer. Believe it or not the top results found by Google were positive. 

GASP. 

Doyel easily located a story about a charity function and he writes: 

About a charity function for Midwest Athletes Against Childhood Cancer (MACC), where Rodgers is on the board of directors. This is the story of Aaron Rodgers and another cancer patient, a little girl named Cheri. She's dead. Rodgers was at the MACC event, trying to raise money to save someone else's daughter, when Cheri's father asked him to autograph a football.

The father asked him to make it out to Cheri.

Rodgers thought about it, then wrote a sentence that left people there in tears:

To Cheri the angel. Save me a spot -- Aaron Rodgers.

Hm. Cancer patient snub? 

And the stories keep on coming. Doyel writes: 

But who is Aaron Rodgers, really? That's what I researched after seeing that video from the airport, and I even stacked the deck against him. I Googled the phrases "Aaron Rodgers" and "cancer" and came up with more stories -- but not stories like the two-second clip from the airport. These were stories with context, like the one from the MACC event with the signed football, or the one from two Christmases ago when the Packers invited 75 kids from the Boys & Girls Club to a local bowling alley for soda, pizza and bowling with players. All of it free, of course. Before the event, the Packers called back and said they could accommodate more kids, so make it 100. At the event the kids were surprised with $100 each to shop for presents, accompanied by various Packers.

Do you want to know just who happened to be there and funded the whole thing by himself? If you are thinking of the same quarterback I am, then you couldn't be more correct.

Even more shocking, the story is from 2009 but didn't circulate until a year later because Rodgers never told the media.

Don't believe me? Here's the proof:

If you want to read the remainder of Doyel's rebuttal to the lack of professionalism from Florio (which I highly recommend) you can find it here.

But wait. The story continues.

Just a day after Florio had the audacity to publish his scathing view on Mr. Rodgers, he posted another blog to clear up some issues as I'm sure his inbox became overwhelming with responses defending the Packers quarterback.

First of all, not only does Florio compare Packer fans defending Rodgers to the Falcons fans in 2007 after the Michael Vick dog fighting fiasco and Steeler fans this year after their star quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was accused for the second time of sexual assault but also provides a half-apology that further reinforces his condescending, ignorant attitude.

Ironically, Florio writes that it was against "our" interests to post the story because his show, PFT Live submitted a request for a Packers player to appear, most likely Rodgers. 

In his wildest dreams. You crack me up, Florio. Florio goes on to write:

It doesn’t matter whether it was Rodgers or any other player.  Whoever walked by Jan Cavanaugh like she wasn’t even there was going to get reamed on the pages of PFT, because I believe that cancer patients deserve the highest level of respect and deference that can be provided.

Florio went on to systematically refute every defense of Rodgers he had received:

1) Rodgers walking past her without a smile or nod 

2) Rodgers signed a jersey for her the previous week

3) WBAY apologizing and offering a follow up story with Jan stating she was very unhappy with the reports that followed and cast Rodgers in a negative manner.

4) All of the charitable things Rodgers has done in his time with the Packers

5) Rodgers was wearing ear buds and didn't notice Cavanaugh

6) Rodgers was focused on the task at hand, a flight to Atlanta before their NFC Divisional round game against the number one seed Falcons

7) The fact that Jan Cavanaugh wasn't bothered by the snub 

As Florio writes, that's her prerogative and she has more things to worry about than "Aaron Rodgers giving her the time of day."

My biggest problem with Mr. Florio's follow up comments rest on number four because of Rodgers overwhelming reputation for charity in the Green Bay area. However, Florio has the gall to write:

Many Packers fans have pointed out all the charitable things that Rodgers has done over the years.  He deserves credit for that.  And so allow us publicly to declare, “Attaboy.”

Once again this comes back to Florio neglecting to do his homework. And his half attempt to apologize further reflects his ignorance and the problem with the media these days. 

Clearly, he was just looking for a story and saw a 2-second video clip to catapult the traffic on his website by using the emotional appeal for a cancer patient. 

To that I say: You're everything that's wrong with the media.

The remainder of Florio's retort to his negative feedback can be found here.

The only, and I mean ONLY, saving grace is Florio finally saw the light and published an apology to Aaron Rodgers, Packers fans, and Jan Cavanaugh late yesterday night. 

However, that neglects the fact that Florio forgot one of his first lessons from elementary school: 

Do your homework.

Florio's apology can be found here.

I hope the rest of the sports media learns a valuable lesson from Florio and this remains one of my main reasons to enter sports journalism in the first place. 

Too many times journalists are just looking for a story and neglect to research any context. The fact that Florio blew this story out of proportion to completely disrespect one of the TRUE class acts in the NFL is just a disgrace. I hope you got what you were looking for Florio: some increased traffic on your beloved website.

I also sincerely hope NBC thinks twice before putting your face on any Sunday Night Football broadcast ever again.