Favre stars as NFL's biggest diva
is going to talk with Minnesota Vikings coach Brad Childress about coming out of his latest abbreviated "retirement" and suiting up for the team, according to ESPN.
This means if the Vikings want him (and why wouldn't they?) Favre will be their starter in September. There's no real decision here by Favre. If he's talking to the Vikes, he wants to go another season.
He'll pretend it's a wrenching choice, but if you're meeting with the archrival of the team for which you won a Super Bowl, three MVPs and became an icon, the decision is made.
Favre has his sights set on Nov. 1 in Wisconsin, a game that will feature the story line that Brett Favre covets – Brett Favre, past, present and possibly future.
The entire week leading into that game will be about his supposedly conflicted emotions and his regrets that his passion for football has created this uncomfortable situation – all told through his fan club in the media. John Madden might come out of retirement himself to preside over it all.
Favre wants to go back to Green Bay and beat quarterback Aaron Rodgers and general manager Ted Thompson, and get the Lambeau faithful to cheer him while he leaves the field victorious in purple and white.
It'd be the ultimate sign of his power, his popularity, his sheer Brett Favreability.
None of this is reason to criticize Favre. The fact he isn't over his breakup with Green Bay is what it is, a little pathetic but in line with his needy personality. Besides, it's the American Dream to shove it in the face of an unappreciative former boss.
There's also nothing wrong with Favre's interest in a 19th season in the NFL. If he wants to play and a team wants him, who is anyone to say he shouldn't? It's his life. It's his career.
All Favre is doing is what almost every athlete does – play until no one will let you. If being a starting NFL quarterback is the greatest job in the world – and for a guy like Favre, it most certainly is – then why give it up?
Only he did, twice and counting. That doesn't count the three seasons prior he floated the idea of retirement, then rode the adulation of Green Bay fans as reason to return.
Favre has made these decisions into unseemly, shallow soap operas. He's turned his image from a likable guy into the biggest diva in the league. Brett Favre is what
dreams of becoming.
This is Favre's fifth potential curtain call. He doesn't realize the number of people asking for one more song keeps dwindling.
It's understandable that a guy would get to the end of a season and be so battered physically and emotionally that he calls it quits only to find rejuvenation in the offseason. It just doesn't happen this many times.
Favre is a hopeless egomaniac. He's gotten great mileage from giving terrific interviews and making the older white men who populate the elite of the NFL media feel comfortable. The breathless reports of him being a humble good ol' boy who plays solely for the love of the game never cease.
He's his own worst enemy though, annually undermining that carefully crafted persona.
The problem with Favre is he craves positive feedback from the establishment so much that he keeps doing what it wants. He never should apologize for wanting to compete until he's dragged off the field. Yet he acts how his supporters think he should act – which is to emotionally wrestle with the decision and then tearfully declare that he can't play at anything less than 110 percent.
But he can. And he will.
He wants to return to the Vikings because he isn't past his breakup with the Packers, who dared to be ready to move on, even after he dumped them first. To go to hated Minnesota and assure two games with the Pack, including one on Lambeau Field, is to try to show up his old franchise and drive a wedge between the fans and Thompson/Rogers.
With some fans, he'll do just that.
The marriage, in football terms, has potential. Favre is better than what the Vikings have. The Vikings are good enough to give Favre another shot at the playoffs.
It's a marriage that appears destined, and Brett Favre shouldn't have to apologize for that. He also should spare us the act that his hunger for another season of glory is some revelation, that coming out of retirement will be the result of another core-churning contemplation.
That's the part that goes against everything he always has pretended to be.
