The Ballad of Benedict Favre

It's a business. That's the cliche athletes love to use, whether it be after getting traded or leaving a team to sign elsewhere for more money or whatever the case may be. It's never personal, it's just business. It's also bullshit.

Brett Favre has spent the every spare moment since agreeing to come out of retirement once again and join the Vikings that his second "comeback" is just business. He's full of shit. People say I've been hard on Favre since he first pulled his unretirement stunt last year and ended up a. causing a circus at Packers training camp and b. sulking his way onto the Jets and nearly leading a storybook ending before his arm gave out.

I tried looking at things from Favre's perspective. He had an emotional loss in the NFC Championship, the team forced him to make a decision that he would've rather waited on and, in the end, he retired because that's what he thought he wanted at the time. Then, when it set in that he no longer had a place in football and that his days would now be spent being, I don't know, being a father and a husband, he realized he made a mistake and tried his damnedest to make a return. He was hurt that the Packers didn't jump out of their seats when news broke that Ol' Number Four was ready to lace 'em up. He was upset that they had moved on. So he requested a trade.......within the division. That's his story and he's sticking to it. It was nothing personal, just business.

It wasn't personal when he told Peter King that year he was looking to stick it to Ted Thompson(a claim he now denies). It was nothing personal when he waited all of three months after the season ended to request a release from the Jets(a move that seemed odd, since he once again retired), and then it was nothing personal when he made the googly eyes at the Minnesota Vikings for the duration of this past summer. He knew the consequences that signing with Minnesota, Green Bay's rival and perhaps its biggest in-division competition, would have in the hearts of Packer Nation. He didn't care. He wanted to stick it to Ted. That's why, as a Packers fan, I want nothing more than for the green and gold to stick it to Brett. When he told Jon Gruden this past week that Packer fans need to "let it go and move on" in their TV interview(a quote that was edited out by ESPN when it aired), my anger rose and the irony sky-rocketed.

Let it go? This from the guy who couldn't stay retired not once, but twice? This from the guy who spent all of last summer trying to angle his way onto a team on Green Bay's schedule so he can "stick it" to us and then spent all of this summer back-peddling from those statements after he finally was able to get on the team he was looking to join last summer....when, you know, he wanted to stick it us? How dare you, motherfucker! Last season, most Packer fans had sympathy for Favre and weren't ready to let go of Brett even as he was writing another chapter in another city. I was not one of those people. You see, my problem with the Favre comebacks isn't that he came back. Lord knows this is a man who could never make up his mind, so the fact that he struggled with giving up the game and the fame that came from it came as no surprise to me.

My problem was the timing of it. You see, Favre's game-killing interception against the Giants came in late January of 2008. It was the best shot the Packers had at a title in a decade, even if it inevitably would have ended with the Patriots stomping Green Bay out and going 19-0. That would have been a better ending than coming thisclose to a Super Bowl before blowing it at home against a team they should have beaten behind another misguided Favre throw into coverage. 2007 was a rebirth of everything we loved about Brett Favre. That play in 2008 was why we cursed him. So with that wound still fresh, Favre retired, which hurt some fans because they(even myself) felt that the Packers had a hell of a shot the next season if Favre agreed to give it one more try and never put on the acting tears in some bullshit press conference in what was a bullshit retirement speech. So three months from The Interception came The Retirement. Three months after that came The Itch, which led to The Unretirement. So in the span of half a year, Brett Favre went from hero to goat to retired to itchy and unretired. Then came The Circus. He made a spectacle of himself all through camp and forced teammates and fans to pick a side. It was a selfish, ignorant side we had never seen from Brett Favre. For me, it was the final straw. We always pictured Favre as a Packers legend and that when he rode off in the sunset after the Giants game, albeit an unsavory ending, at least it was a fine punctuation to a 16 year stint giving Packers fans and football fans across the country a great show. Now, we saw Favre 2.0. A self-serving egomaniac who was willing to piss on everything he built in Green Bay if it meant one last taste of fame. It was like watching Halle Berry toss away her child for crack in "Losing Isaiah".

Packers fans watched with bated breath as the Packers D struggled to hold leads and inevitably fell to 6-10. Meanwhile, Favre had just thrown 6 TDs against Arizona(the team that eventually went to the Super Bowl) and unseated a Titans team that was undefeated. We all gasped at the idea of Favre making the miracle run, that he was supposed to make with us, amidst the bright lights of the Big Apple. Fate intervened and Favre's arm fell apart and the Jets went 9-7 and missed the playoffs after an epic collapse that cost Eric Mangini his job. Then, citing health issues, he retired again. He sat in his ESPN interviews afterwards and said he was finally done, that he couldn't do to the Jets and Woody Johnson and Mike Tannenbaum, what he had done to the Packers. Then, to the surprise of no one, he did to the Jets what he did to us. Like any addict, he tried his hardest to make people believe in his words and then betrayed them at the drop of a hat. A year and a half after The Interception, he was a Minnesota Viking and would have been there three months sooner if his arm had healed in time.

Now he stands before us all and tells us that what will transpire tonight when he faces his old team for the first time ever is not personal. That everything he did over the last 20 months was just business and that he didn't mean to hurt anyone. Whether you believe that or not is up to you, the fact remains that tonight, like any other Packers' opponent, Favre is the enemy.....and I hope they smash him into the ground.

Nothing personal. It's just business.