It's the dead horse that's been beaten non-stop over the past decade, but in case you didn't know: The San Francisco 49ers decided to take Alex Smith instead of Aaron Rodgers with the first pick of the 2005 NFL Draft.

No, we're not out to ask, "What could have been?" or "What were the 49ers thinking?" That's been done time and time again.

With the 49ers playing the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship Game — the highest-stakes 49ers-Packers game of Rodgers' career — we thought it would be a much more productive (albeit not any less painful) exercise to determine just how long Rodgers has been holding this grudge.

It started on draft night, obviously

In the draft green room, Rodgers, who grew up in Northern California and played college football at Cal, was asked by a reporter how disappointed he was to not be a 49er when his hometown team took Smith with the No. 1 overall pick.

"Not as disappointed as the 49ers will be they didn't draft me," Rodgers replied.

Well, that proved to be accurate. In the time since that draft, the Packers' primary starting quarterbacks have been Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers.

In that same time span, Smith, Tim Rattay, J.T. O'Sullivan, Shaun Hill, Troy Smith, Colin Kaepernick, Blaine Gabbert, Brian Hoyer and C.J. Beathard have all been considered to be "the starter," and not just starting due to an injury to someone else, for the 49ers before the arrival of Jimmy Garoppolo in October 2017.

Rodgers has also arguably been the NFL's best quarterback in that time sp-, err, sorry to beat the dead horse again. Moving on.

In 2010, Rodgers talked a bit about what could have been

Since Rodgers did not become a full-time starter until 2008, he did not have many opportunities to remind the 49ers what they missed out on until several years after the 2005 draft.

During a 2010 interview with Graham Bensinger, Rodgers reminisced for a brief moment about the 49ers' 2005 off-season, when the team transitioned from Dennis Erickson to Mike Nolan at head coach.

"There was an article that was done when [the 49ers] were still looking for a coach that said: 'Hire this guy' with a picture of Coach [Jeff] Tedford, and 'Draft this guy' with a picture of me," Rodgers said of himself and his former coach at Cal. "I just thought it was the perfect situation. California kid who had been a lifelong Niner fan. I thought at the time I was the most NFL-ready quarterback coming out of college because I played in a pro-style system... I just thought it was meant to be."

Rodgers went on to win the Super Bowl that season (the only one of his career), and won the NFL MVP award the following season.

Six years later, Rodgers told a story that may or may not be true about Mike Nolan

The Packers quarterback mostly let his play do the talking, but he directly spoke on the 49ers' decision to take Smith at No. 1 during an interview in 2016.

During an appearance on the HBO Show "Any Given Wednesday," Rodgers said the following:

"The story that I heard, and I don't know if it's true or not, was that Mike Nolan said that when he saw Alex open the car door for his mom, he knew that was the quarterback he wanted... I was at lunch with [the 49ers]. My mom wasn't there. My dad wasn't there. I just laugh at stories like that because it has nothing to do with being a quarterback."

A few months before Rodgers told this story, Nolan said the team ultimately chose Smith because he was "safe" and "always trying to please," while instead Rodgers was "cocky" and "arrogant." Nolan has not spoken on whether the story Rodgers told is true.

Nolan wasn't the only person involved in the decision to take Smith

The 49ers' offensive coordinator that season was Mike McCarthy, who went on to be the head coach of the Packers for the bulk of Rodgers' career. When McCarthy was fired by Green Bay last year, Bleacher Report's Tyler Dunne wrote a long profile on what went wrong.

Dunne had conversations with several former Packers who said that Rodgers "held a grudge" against McCarthy over what happened to him on draft night.

”Aaron’s always had a chip on his shoulder with Mike,” said Ryan Grant, the Packers’ starting running back from 2007 to 2012. “The guy who ended up becoming your coach passed on you when he had a chance. Aaron was upset that Mike passed on him — that Mike actually verbally said that Alex Smith was a better quarterback.”

Another anonymous former teammate said, “That was a large cancer in the locker room. It wasn’t a secret.”

For the most part, Rodgers has taken the high ground when it comes to the 49ers

He's talked several times about what it was like to stay in the green room for as long as he did, but has generally spoken broadly about all of the teams that passed on him that night.

Rodgers has even defended and praised Smith over the years, stating in 2012 that Smith is a "great quarterback" and "under-appreciated."

Fifteen years after that fateful draft, Rodgers will get to play the 49ers with a trip to the Super Bowl directly on the line for the first time in his career. Even if he doesn't say it publicly, you know damn well he's probably still holding that grudge.

Eric Ting is an SFGATE digital reporter. Email: eric.ting@sfgate.com | Twitter:@_ericting