Brett Favre! Brett Favre! Brett Favre!
I know everyone has been absolutely irritated beyond belief infatuated with all the round-the-clock Brett Favre coverage. It’s mesmerizing, isn’t it? Favre may or may not have texted Ted Thompson. Favre may or may not want to play for the Panthers. Favre may or may not have an itch. Doesn’t get any better than that… unless, of course, we’re talking about A-Rod’s riveting extramarital affairs.
Anyways, today marked a big day in the Favre saga. The levees have broken, people, and there’s no stopping the flood of Favre coverage that’s about to pour through your TV screens. Because today, Favre has asked for his release from the Packers. That’s right, he really does have an itch, and he’s gonna scratch it.
Of course, we will be treated to plenty of speculation as to his next destination in the coming days, but we will also hear plenty of the anti-Favre diatribe that has been recently spilling from the mouths of fans and talking heads alike. Favre is another Michael Jordan: he’s on the fast track to ruining his legacy by showing up on the field wearing a helmet that’s not emblazoned with the letter “G” and giving us a forgettable year or two of mediocrity. We will all be subjected to the lasting image of a washed-up player, way past his prime, further tarnishing his image with every incompletion, and we won’t know why he ever chose to come back in the first place. Why not walk away on top, like Jerome Bettis after the Super Bowl? That’s how you formulate a legacy, right?
Well, it’s also how an athlete formulates regrets.
It’s often neglected that sports is a form of entertainment, and its allure is that it’s all real. 
There are no writers, and nobody knows how a game, or a season, is going to end until it actually happens. (Well, maybe not in the NBA.) But fans still see the careers of athletes in the same way that they see movie scripts.
They love a good backstory, which is why athletes such as Josh Hamilton are beloved by the masses. They crave riveting action, such as Favre’s Super Bowl victory, and his infamous performance on MNF after his father died. And naturally, the fans also want a good ending. If Favre’s career were a movie, do you think it would get the green light if it ended with Favre being sacked and throwing picks on the Metrodome turf?
No, fans would rather see Favre go out on top, and even if the Packers were stopped short of the Super Bowl, Favre accomplished this. That teary press conference back in March, when Favre claimed to be “tired”? That was vintage Favre. For a football player, whose face is usually behind a helmet, Favre has developed a reputation for being emotional, and fans who watched that press conference saw that he was truly sad to be leaving the game. Simply put, it struck a nerve. Not all movies need a happy ending; a powerfully emotional one will do the trick, and that’s what Favre gave us. But ending his career with another team? If anything, that would be painful for the majority of NFL fans.
However, for Favre, it would have been more painful to walk into his house after mowing his lawn and seeing an NFL game on TV, while knowing deep down inside that he can still play. Favre has sacrificed his entire life to the game of football up to this point. After three months of mulling it over, don’t you think he misses tens of thousands of cheering fans? The personal connections forged in a NFL locker room? The free Vicodin? (Sorry, cheap shot) If Favre doesn’t scratch that itch, it will most likely remain for the rest of his life, but as he gets older, it will morph into a regret. As much as training camp and practices probably suck, NFL players have a hard time living without it. When you walk away when you know there’s still something left inside you, that’s got to hurt the most.
However, there’s that nagging issue of Favre’s legacy. If Favre comes back with a team besides the Packers, especially a division rival, it will ruin the powerful ending of his illustrious career. Suiting up for the Vikings, playing subpar football for a season or two, and then fading away when no one will pay him would be Favre’s Caddyshack 2, a forgettable sequel that most fans would rather erase from their minds. So fans wonder, “Why would Favre come back and ruin his legacy like this”? It’s rather simple: Favre likely doesn’t care. An athlete’s legacy is, after all, only the perception of the fans. To Favre, it doesn’t matter too much; he still has all his memories with the Packers, and later on in life, he’ll have the luxury of living free of regret.
It’s hard for a fan to be completely in tune with the feelings of a man they have never met, so they stay in tune with their own perceptions of this man, and shudder when he makes a move that blemishes this perception. But Favre has the option of tuning out the naysayers if he so chooses; he can ignore those who claim that he has ruined his image as a Packer and a Packer only, in the same way that everyone ignores the fact that Favre was drafted by the Falcons. However, he can’t tune out his own conscience without making himself miserable.
So Brett, while I’m not a big fan of this constant media coverage myself, if you want to come back… welcome back.
FYI I wanted to wrap the text around the images but I couldn’t figure it out…