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There are so many great headlines in the NFL this year. The return of Tom Brady, the Colts' adjustment to Tony Dungy's departure, Jay Cutler in Chicago... the list goes on and on. Yet you can be certain that NFL schedule makers are already frantically looking at their options to slot the Minnesota Vikings into as many prime time games as possible. If you enjoy the NFL for what it is- a near-perfect showdown league that can make you salivate for Sunday during a mundane work week for six months of the year- you are probably dreading the hype already.
We've seen this story so many times before. Brett Favre's most recent comeback is like the Friday the 13th series... just after you thought Jason Voorhees was dead- this time by mutilation, decapitation, and an all-out exorcism with potions and prayers- he returns, and after his death this time, one so dramatic and ultimately final, you can be sure that next the producers of the movie will again think of another way for a cash grab. The Favre saga is like a bad horror series, one that has played itself out so many times, with all the fanfare and farewell tours and two-hour specials on NFL network to celebrate the career of one of the NFL greats. Just as Jason Voorhees has always appealed to the mass audience, the Brett Favre resurrections will always appeal to massive NFL audience.
For those of us who are sick of the headline, a nauseating feeling comes over us. One of the greatest quarterbacks of all-time returning for another shot at a Super Bowl? Check. But that quarterback is Tom Brady. Brady, not Favre, is the guy who makes his teammates better (see Cassel, Matt.) Brady is the guy who elevates his play in the big games, who puts his team first, and lives up to the hype week after week with his precision on the field. But this will be yet another season about Favre, barring another record setting voyage from Tom. Even as a fan of Peyton Manning's adversaries, I would much rather watch a great football player like him shred defenses on prime time football. Unfortunately we will be inundated by every mediot over the next nine months who smiles after every Brett Favre interception and tells us how he loves watching Brett play the game, for the love of the game. ESPN will be talking about the Packers-Vikings for months on end, crown it a national holiday, and ignore all of the great football stories that we purists would love to see. For all of Favre's grandeur in the mid-90s, it's still surprising that mass audiences have yet to see the egomaniac that we see, the "gunslinger" whose style we despise, who's constant mistakes resemble rookes and not 15 year veterans, and of course, the media's unflinching obsession that will never die. Isn't this the same player who refused to tutor a young quarterback for a franchise that had given him everything? Isn't this the guy who last year had to play, at the detriment of the team's playoff hopes, in order to keep his streak alive? (Lou Gerhig benched himself when he knew he was hurting his team.) The same drama queen who, in every season since 1997, has held his fanbase hostage by talking about retirement?
The Vikings will be Favre's next victim. Brett couldn't forgive the Packer management for not getting Randy Moss, even though Moss really wanted to play for one quarterback, and his name wasn't Brett. It wasn't fair that the Packers only gave him Donald Driver and Greg Jennings, two outstanding young receivers, and that they wouldn't regress three months of preparation and hand him back his franchise role because he decided he was ready. Brett couldn't be honest with Jets, a franchise that reinvented themselves for him. Instead, he had to retire again, to gain his release, before going to where he really wanted to go- the rival of his former franchise, for revenge. As I type this, I laugh at the "revenge" the Packers will receive when Brett tosses a two yard shovel pass into A.J. Hawk's hands in the fourth quarter at Lambeau.
Favre, it's time to go. It's been time to go. I'm a fan of football and I've sat through season after season of watching you stink by any standard, while the media plays up your career. You're a joke of a quarterback that no good coach would want. I can no longer want to be polite by saying you've had a great career and you'll be respected. You're not any more... not by me. No one can ever doubt your toughness, but I hope your accountability for all of your failures eventually trump your undeserved hype. I hope history remembers you as the selfish, big-armed prima donna you have always been, a guy who has played with some great teams and is personally responsible for way more losses than wins, and always puts his ego first and foremost. I hope you and Brad Childress sink together, two peas from the same pod, both who are legends in their own mind and liabilities on the football field. And I hope, I really truly, sincerely hope, that I won't have to hear about you for every living second on the news, on football networks, on the radio, and everywhere I go in my love of NFL football.
A man can hope, can't he?
We've seen this story so many times before. Brett Favre's most recent comeback is like the Friday the 13th series... just after you thought Jason Voorhees was dead- this time by mutilation, decapitation, and an all-out exorcism with potions and prayers- he returns, and after his death this time, one so dramatic and ultimately final, you can be sure that next the producers of the movie will again think of another way for a cash grab. The Favre saga is like a bad horror series, one that has played itself out so many times, with all the fanfare and farewell tours and two-hour specials on NFL network to celebrate the career of one of the NFL greats. Just as Jason Voorhees has always appealed to the mass audience, the Brett Favre resurrections will always appeal to massive NFL audience.
For those of us who are sick of the headline, a nauseating feeling comes over us. One of the greatest quarterbacks of all-time returning for another shot at a Super Bowl? Check. But that quarterback is Tom Brady. Brady, not Favre, is the guy who makes his teammates better (see Cassel, Matt.) Brady is the guy who elevates his play in the big games, who puts his team first, and lives up to the hype week after week with his precision on the field. But this will be yet another season about Favre, barring another record setting voyage from Tom. Even as a fan of Peyton Manning's adversaries, I would much rather watch a great football player like him shred defenses on prime time football. Unfortunately we will be inundated by every mediot over the next nine months who smiles after every Brett Favre interception and tells us how he loves watching Brett play the game, for the love of the game. ESPN will be talking about the Packers-Vikings for months on end, crown it a national holiday, and ignore all of the great football stories that we purists would love to see. For all of Favre's grandeur in the mid-90s, it's still surprising that mass audiences have yet to see the egomaniac that we see, the "gunslinger" whose style we despise, who's constant mistakes resemble rookes and not 15 year veterans, and of course, the media's unflinching obsession that will never die. Isn't this the same player who refused to tutor a young quarterback for a franchise that had given him everything? Isn't this the guy who last year had to play, at the detriment of the team's playoff hopes, in order to keep his streak alive? (Lou Gerhig benched himself when he knew he was hurting his team.) The same drama queen who, in every season since 1997, has held his fanbase hostage by talking about retirement?
The Vikings will be Favre's next victim. Brett couldn't forgive the Packer management for not getting Randy Moss, even though Moss really wanted to play for one quarterback, and his name wasn't Brett. It wasn't fair that the Packers only gave him Donald Driver and Greg Jennings, two outstanding young receivers, and that they wouldn't regress three months of preparation and hand him back his franchise role because he decided he was ready. Brett couldn't be honest with Jets, a franchise that reinvented themselves for him. Instead, he had to retire again, to gain his release, before going to where he really wanted to go- the rival of his former franchise, for revenge. As I type this, I laugh at the "revenge" the Packers will receive when Brett tosses a two yard shovel pass into A.J. Hawk's hands in the fourth quarter at Lambeau.
Favre, it's time to go. It's been time to go. I'm a fan of football and I've sat through season after season of watching you stink by any standard, while the media plays up your career. You're a joke of a quarterback that no good coach would want. I can no longer want to be polite by saying you've had a great career and you'll be respected. You're not any more... not by me. No one can ever doubt your toughness, but I hope your accountability for all of your failures eventually trump your undeserved hype. I hope history remembers you as the selfish, big-armed prima donna you have always been, a guy who has played with some great teams and is personally responsible for way more losses than wins, and always puts his ego first and foremost. I hope you and Brad Childress sink together, two peas from the same pod, both who are legends in their own mind and liabilities on the football field. And I hope, I really truly, sincerely hope, that I won't have to hear about you for every living second on the news, on football networks, on the radio, and everywhere I go in my love of NFL football.
A man can hope, can't he?
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