I want to hear the boos. Almost as much as I believe Brett Favre wants to hear them.
When #4 leads the Minnesota Vikings onto Lambeau Field this Sunday afternoon, I think – hell, I expect – that the Green Bay Packer fans will unleash a torrent of Bronx cheers that collectively will set off seismographs in California. Interest should not be just in this game, The Most Anticipated NFL Game In Recent History, but in that pregame moment. How are Cheeseheads going to react when the man who personifies the modern age of the most historic club in the National Football League exits the tunnel wearing enemy purple? They say that there are a lot of fans who will always love him, and others who take his side in the unspoken-but-very-real (though possibly one-sided) blood feud with Packers General Manager Ted Thompson. I doubt it, but what’s so striking about this game is that this transcends not just the stakes of the game (specifically whether the Packers can make the NFC North a real race), not just the bad blood of a rivalry, not even the prospect of seeing a longtime fan favorite become Benedict Arnold. It’s that it had to be Brett Favre, this guy, sleeping with the enemy – and doing well, too. I mean, Ryan Longwell was the longtime kicker for the Packers, but they don’t boo kickers. Emotions are hardly this complex when it comes to a game, which makes it unlike any we’ve seen before, if at all.
If you had to name one player to serve as spokesman for the NFL, who would it be? It could be handsome Tom Brady of the New England Patriots. But many people would probably say it’s still the 40-year-old Favre. There is something about his mystique – his beard is graying, but he’s still productive, can heave the ball a ton, is fearless dancing in the pocket and throwing into double coverage, and can carry a team on his back to victory, like he did versus San Francisco earlier this year. He’s grizzled, reckless, fun-loving, Southern, and yet seemingly accessible – traits that contrast him to Brady, the engine of the Belichick Machine, future father and current baby daddy, a man perfect because he’s remote. Brady’s the Maybach you want to touch but won’t because you’re afraid the owner will have his bodyguards kill you for soiling the exterior with your oily fingertips. Favre’s the Mustang with the dented quarter panels and the scratched-up bumpers that can still dust every whip in the county.
Despite being 979 miles away from Favre’s hometown of Kiln, Miss., the small town with the family values found its perfect small-town, family-values guy. Brett and his wife Deanna have made countless friendships in the Green Bay area. He was active in philanthropy, going to schools and hosting charity events all around the state. In turn, the fans were with him when his father died and, the next day, when he turned in quite possibly the Greatest Performance In Monday Night Footballhistory. They stuck by him when his brother-in-law was killed in an accident at Favre’s home, and when Deanna Favre was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was the complete melding of man and community. Screw the accent, Cheeseheads said – Brett’s one of us. So how can he leave? People like him never leave.
Well, he didn’t do himself, the Packers, or any NFL any favors by openly flirting with retirement. And Thompson, the GM, had to go on with the business of making the Packers a Super Bowl-winning team. Time marches on, and he finally decided he couldn’t let Aaron Rodgers rot on the bench any longer. The fans whom Favre convinced that this relationship could go on forever probably will never forgive Thompson. Then there are those who were a bit more, shall we say, pragmatic about Favre’s production and finally was done with the Warrior becoming the dark-night-of-the-soul Philosopher with all his Shakespearean soliloquies about hanging the cleats up for good. Those are the ones who are selling the anti-Favre jerseys – and hell, since even we Vikings fans understand how they’re feeling, I’ll link to themhere, here and here. (And if you don’t mind, I’ll also link to a cute viral video made by a company owned by my ex-co-worker’s sister and brother-in-law that details its Vikings-Packers divide.) And those Favre haters will be showing up this weekend to bury him in effigy. There is nothing more awesome in sports than unadulterated hate stemming from the ultimate act of betrayal: Not only not playing for the Packers, but playing, willingly, happily, for the hated Vikings.
And my God, think about how this game could end! Picture it: Overtime. Pack get the ball first. Rodgers throws three straight incompletions, scrambling every time because his line can’t protect him. Favre could’ve made a completion, Favre could’ve done something on the fly, Packers fans will think. Then the Vikes get the ball. Number 4 methodically West Coasts the team down to midfield where, on play-action, he fires a thunderstrike to Percy Harvin or Sidney Rice. Touchdown, game over. And it’s Favre, the adopted son, napalming his childhood home. And it’s Favre, the adopted son, spitting in the face of his former fans, then stabbing them in the heart, then pissing on their writhing bodies as he chuckles, Helga horns affixed atop his head. Then he’ll run off Lambeau, avoiding the batteries and beer bottles filled with Packer urine, throwing up not the index finger he usually raises but the one right next to it, hoping that Thompson sees every ridge of it. And then, at his postgame press conference, he will lie yet again when he says, “I’m just happy we got the win.”
Even I’m starting to get a little sick over the anticipation. But that would be awesome.
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