In this week’s Sports People Weighing In On Social and Political Issues Countdown, the leaderboard is as follows:1. Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers lighting up Dr. Anthony Fauci after the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment during a Senate hearing last week.2. Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham making it clear she’s against transgender athletes competing in women’s sports. “I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans,” Cunningham said during an ESPN interview. “And I’m like, ‘never once said that.’ I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”3. Caitlin Clark, Cunningham’s teammate, being asked on Sunday — this after the Fever’s 108-100 loss to the Minnesota Lynx — to comment on Cunningham’s stand on trans athletes. “I think, for us, it’s not really a discussion we really have in our locker room,” Clark said. “I think it’s for leagues and the governing bodies to work with their athletes to find solutions, but our focus is on basketball. That’s what we talk about and how we can get wins, and, obviously, we didn’t do that tonight.”Now you’re probably saying to yourself, hey, wait a minute, how can Clark land on the Sports People Weighing In On Social and Political Issues Countdown when she essentially did no talking? She offered a tricked-out “no comment” is what she did. There’s no point to what she said.But we live in times when every sentence — every word, every comma — gets instantly dissected, instantly analyzed, instantly judged. And so it was when Rodgers went off on Fauci, and when Cunningham shared her concerns about “young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men,” and when Clark had no comment about Cunningham’s comments. It all gets tossed into the daily stew of social media commentary.Portland Fire crowd react to Sophie Cunningham checking into the gameSabreena MerchantBut excuse me for not getting too worked up over words not spoken. Excuse me for failing to join the crowd that’s terribly, terribly upset at Clark for not being who or what it wants her to be. Excuse me for not expecting Clark to play a role that has been assigned to her by people she doesn’t even know.This is probably a good place to roll out the after-dinner speech about how there’s a long, glorious history in the United States of athletes taking a stand on social and political issues, the gold standard being Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fists in a Black Power salute at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Or when Boston Red Sox legend Ted Williams devoted a portion of his Hall of Fame induction speech in 1966 to expressing the hope that the time comes when “the names of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson in some way can be added as a symbol of the great Negro (Leagues) players that are not here only because they were not given a chance.”