The Boston Bachelor

By THEBOSTONBACHELOR.COM / March 7, 2008

I feel weird writing this.

I am not, nor have I ever been, a supporter of the Green Bay Packers.  Especially since Desmond Howard beat the Patriots years ago in Super Bowl XXXI.  Yet I still feel compelled to write this tribute to Number 4 upon the news of his retirement this week.

To many Brett Favre was a modern day folk hero, someone who seemingly walked out of the Mississippi backwoods one day with a football tucked under his arm, ready to lead one of the league’s smallest-market teams into prominence.  Favre was one hardnosed bastard, but an extraordinarily charismatic hardnosed bastard; the reverence he obtained in Green Bay rivaled only that of Steve Yzerman’s in Detroit.

Rationally, he should have been an easy target for criticism.  He forced passes at the worst of times.  He was stubborn with coaches and other players.  He had an addiction to painkillers.  But instead of diminishing his reputation, these things only increased his legend.  We just passed it off as Brett’s humanness (yes, that’s a real word), the same way we just sheepishly chuckled when our former President was caught getting blowjobs at his Oval Office desk.

More than anything else, that passion and unfettered spirit—flaws and all—will define Favre’s legacy.  Not the ring, the records, the trophies, or the way Favre went Rambo on the Raiders defense the day after his father’s death—but the way he coalesced sports with the human existence.  The joy Brett Favre gave me was not in seeing him play, but in seeing the joy he brought others when he played.  He was the conduit between the game of football and the forgotten childhood dreams we had growing up in backyards and driveways across this country.

That joy will be sorely missed.

-The Boston Bachelor