…or maybe not. Anyway, it’s got to be said, so here I go:
I take back what I said about Brett Favre being the NFL’s answer to John McCain. Say what you like about McCain, but he’s never gone on the sort of delusional Norma Desmond tear that the Almighty Gunslinger of Kiln, Mississippi has embarked on. After two bloody seasons of teasing the whole will-he-won’t-he retirement angle, and finally retiring in April, now he’s sent the papers in to UN-retire, and looks to be in the verge of actual re-instatement.
There’s no nice way to say this, and it’s a goddamn shame that it’s come to this, but here it is: Brett Favre is not bigger than the Green Bay Packers. No matter how much man-love is slobbered on him by the Maddens and Sports Illustrateds of the world, the fact of the matter is this: the Packers are an NFL institution, older than the league itself. They are the team of Curly Lambeau and Don Hutson and Bart Starr and Paul Hornung and Vince Lombardi. They existed for over seventy years before Favre came along, and they will be there when everyone who remembers that Favre was actually an Atlanta Falcon at the outset is dead and gone.
For Brett Favre to carry on with this charade says much, much more about him than it does about the Packers. They took his retirement in good faith, they drafted yet another quarterback (if I were Aaron Rodgers, I’d have put the first pet cat in orbit by now), they prepared to move on. And yet, despite the fact that he put together one competitive season in the last three, despite the fact that his signature pass from the 2008 season was an interception that gave the Giants a berth in the Super Bowl (what is it with the Giants backing into Super Bowls since 1990? Honestly), despite the fact that he’s already played SEVENTEEN BLOODY YEARS IN THE LEAGUE, Old Number Four sure seems to think that the crown jewel of NFL tradition should slam on the brakes, stop time, and put the entire course of franchise history on hold until he’s managed to milk every last second in the spotlight for all it’s worth. Even if it means another non-winning season, even if it means a first-round draft pick holds a clipboard for a fourth year (Rodgers has thrown a whopping 59 career passes, and last season was the first year he broke 20 pass attempts in the pros), no matter what – Favre has to come back, and the sports media cannot resist another round of the Hallelujah Chorus.
Look, he had a hell of a run. He’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer, no questions asked. But eventually everybody has to go. Joe Montana wound up a Chief, Joe Namath a Ram, Johnny F-ing Unitas a Charger. And in every case, it didn’t take 17 years – because the sad, cruel fact of sports is that sooner or later, everybody has to hang it up. And the only reason it hasn’t happened for Brett Lorenzo Favre is because Peter King and ESPN and the entire hellish host of the Sabbath Gasbags won’t get off his jock long enough to deal with reality.