Go Away Brett Favre...

Yes, OK, I KNOW this is a basketball fansite, but I felt this was an interesting situation worthy of CN's world famous collective conversational skills. Seriously, I cannot even fathom why Brett Favre is doing this, and to be completely honest, he's getting annoying.

I honestly believe that Brett Favre is one of a select few transcendent athletes who have become widely known even to those outside the sports field. Like Michael Jordan, and those before him, Favre is liked by very nearly everyone. It's seriously approaching impossible to not like the guy. He is, very simply, bigger than the sport which he has played so well, and for so long. 

Earlier today, Favre asked for an unconditional release from his contract with the Packers, effectively signaling that the quintessential Packers QB's return, under the colors of a different team. Personally, if he does this, I will lose an immense amount of respect for him.

I'll be the first to admit that I was welcoming of Michael Jordan's return return to the Wizards early in the millennium, because I felt, much like in Favre's situation, that his sport was better with him than without. However, as things began to play out, I began to think that maybe it wasn't so much that the sport was better with him, as it was the NBA's inability to create an identity in which MJ WASN'T the face of the league. It was a step that needed to be taken, in much the way that a break-up with a significant other may spur one to develop a life or identity of their own. It is for this reason that I feel that Brett needs to stay gone. As a 25 year old, the entirety of my football fanhood has happened under Brett's career. He IS football, regardless of what team you pull for, and it's time for the sport, and he, to move on.

After discussing this with some of my more rational sports brethren (excluding you guys, whom I love), I have been presented numerous times with the prospect that, maybe it just isn't that easy to call it quits. Being rational myself, I can easily see this. We see this everyday when athletes not even beginning to approach Favre's or MJ's stature struggle with the prospect of life after sports. For us, it's the same feeling as the prospect of life after college. The "real world", if you will. While I can't say that I understand the urge to keep playing a game forever, I can identify with the similar trepidation faced when realizing that I was leaving school for the last time. It's a scary prospect, and I ascertain that the two cannot be too far off. The microcosmic world of professional sports exists in a world where reality isn't quite real, much like how college isn't quite the proverbial "real world", where we can get away with things we mightn't be able to swing in our professional lives. Due to mistakes that I'd made while in college, it took me much longer than my friends to graduate school, but when I spoke to them, their words were all the same: "Stay in for as long as you can." (usually there was a "dude" or "man" thrown in at the end of the cautioner, for panache...)

Still, for as much as I claim to identify with Brett's inner demons, I know this for sure: I don't want to see him in another team's uniform. Both for the good of the game, and for the illusion that there are still some athletes for whom money/fame/themselves aren't bigger than the game itself, I don't want this. For me, it was like seeing Emmitt Smith in a Cardinals uinform. My entire childhood, it felt, had been perverted by some twisted alternate reality in which #22 wasn't a Cowboy. It didn't feel right. For the older readers, I'm sure it felt the same when they saw Joe Montana in a KC Chiefs  jersey. It was the same Joe Montana, but in name only. His legacy, all of his greatness was left in his 49ers gear. 

It has to be hard for any athlete who has played for any meaningful amount of time in a league, to walk away. These days, we tend to see more and more of our great sports heroes prolonging their careers by moving from their teams who simply cannot justify their price with the production evidenced. They switch to a new team, and begin the painful process of trying to cling to the game they refuse to admit has passed them by. Ewing, Kemp, Emmitt, The Dream, and now Shaq, as well as counless others have succumbed to this fate, allowing their fans to last remember their heroes as nothing but a hollow shell of what they once were, bastardized in some alien jersey. 

I realize that Brett can still play, much better than could the aforementioned examples, but that is another reason he should hang it up now. For all intents and purposes, he went out on top. Though he didn't win the Super Bowl one last time, I don't think that there is a person in America that can honestly say they weren't pulling for the guy just a little bit. How many athletes can say that they've had an entire nation pulling for them, in some manner or another. Not many... What better circumstances, besides the obvious Championship, could an athlete ask for in which to go out? I can't think of many. To many, Favre had supposedly gone out on top. 

I remember talking with a good friend after Brett had announced his so-called retirement, about how different football would be, knowing that #4 would be gone. It was a surreal prospect, in that I had never been cognizant of a football season of which Favre wasn't a part. Still, I knew that all things come to an end. It was time for someone else to be "the guy". This whole series of events just kind of bastardizes and cheapens his legacy. I can't stress enough how foreign it would be to see that guy in a different uniform. In some respects (from a lifelong 'Boys fan, no less)  it would be even more strange than having to watch Emmitt on another team. 

No one ever said that "real life" was supposed to be easy, and I doubt that any of us would realistically expect someone as detached from that reality as a professional athlete, to adapt right away. Sometimes though, you have to step back and realize that the game, no matter how much you love it, will always go on without you. As competitive as Favre is, Time is an opponent he will never beat, and to me, I would like to see him go out in the best way possible. Brett, please don't let our last memories of you be something you know they shouldn't. Stay gone. It's time...