THE FAVRE SIDE


what would brett do?

For a while now, I'd been contemplating an essay about Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre, his ever-growing status as some sort of homespun football folk legend, and the seeming inability of anyone in the mainstream sports media to criticize his play, no matter how poor, or his decision-making, no matter how cocksure or bonehead or sure-to-be-intercepted his throws. But an excellent essay by Robert Weintraub, who will almost certainly be branded a blasphemer, or perhaps burned at a goalpost for Favrean heresy and anti-hagiography, has beaten me to it.

So let me simply add...

I like Favre. I respect him. (Though I should point out that it's becoming increasingly hard to do either.) He was a great football player for many years and is, by all accounts, a hell of a nice guy, as normal and grounded a millionaire athlete as you'll find. But the whole doctrine of infallibility that the NFL punditocracy has imagined around him has begun to wear painfully thin. Listen to it too long, and you'd begin to think the "G" on his helmet really stood for "God."

It's one thing to walk on water; it's quite another to heave a prayer into double coverage and hope that no safety will answer it.

Posted: Sat - January 8, 2005 at 01:45 PM          

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