Favre-nfreude

Mark of New Jersey

Mark is a Founding Editor of The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, the predecessor of Ordinary Times.

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3 Responses

  1. Favre was in all likelihood going to retire at the end of the season anyway. Sadly, he did not spend nearly as much time training a younger quarterback to step up and take his place. He did not mentor Aaron Rodgers very much in Green Bay, and only in Sunday’s game even bothered to give any tips or advice to Tarvaris Jackson — a good athlete who could have very much profited from Favre’s tutelage.Report

  2. James Hanley says:

    World’s most egotistical athlete? I’ll give him fourth place at best, behind Lance (I know I was hired as a domestique, but I think I’ll try to steal the tour away from my team leader) Armstrong, Allen (How will me practicing make my team better) Iverson, and Michael (Now that I’m being inducted into the hall of fame I’ll settle old scores) Jordan. And all of them probably sit behind several world class soccer starts–at least none of those Americans tries to get by with one name.

    For my part, as much as Favre’s “no, I won’t, yes, I will” decision-making about playing is worthy of all criticism, no matter how scurrilous, I still admire him as one of the greatest players in NFL history. All of us who criticized him for coming back last year had to eat crow when he had an outstanding season. Of course he’s held on too long–that’s what all great competitors do. But if the final blow was coming, I guess I can’t begrudge a fans of a now-obscure team like the Bills for enjoying the fact that their team did at least one good thing in recent memory.Report

  3. BSK says:

    JH-

    Part of my struggles with all the backlash to the Favre backlash was that I couldn’t help but feel that Favre got a lot of passes, largely because of his, for lack of a better word, “persona”. He was white. He had the whole “rustic” thing. The twang. The t-shirt-and-jeans blue collar thing.

    But this was a guy who:
    – had his first child out of wedlock (who subsequently went and had her first child at 21)
    – cheated on his wife (and not just recently with the “sexting”)
    – was addicted to painkilling drugs and alcohol
    – proved to be a 1st rate shitbag teammate
    – put his teams over a barrel over money and not wanting to practice
    etc, etc, etc.

    Now, I’ve obviously framed some of these in the worst light possible and deliberately so. Do I really care when he got his now-wife pregnant? No. But if Favre had a different public narrative around him, don’t you think these would make up a larger part of his narrative? How many folks even know all these sordid facts?

    Favre gets the Golden Boy treatment up until the last few years, and still gets it in some circles. Other guys who are, in total, guilty of far less, get raked over the coals because they can’t grow salt-and-pepper stubble or don’t ride a tractor or have the wrong pigmentation. I know that’s not HIS fault (though he certainly did his part to cultivate that image), but it just leaves a sour taste in my mouth, as his saga represents all that is wrong with the way we construct such unnuanced, contrived narratives around athletes.Report