Brett Favre was made out to be the All-American, good ol’ boy; our rugged hero. He didn’t ask for it, no one really does. It’s called greatness, and it can’t be taught. It’s sort of cast on you, and you live with it the best way you can. Derek Jeter’s handling it well; Tiger Woods, not so well.
So that’s why when the allegations came out that Favre was chasing a younger woman, badgering her really, with his sexual advances, we all were a little suspect.
Sure the man has messed up before, the pills…the throws…but more often than not he has been that rock that comes to save the day. And let’s be honest, that’s why we love him. If you could play quarterback in the NFL, that’s how 95% of you would play. You’d just go up there and say to yourself, ‘F*$k yeah I can’t make that pass’ and toss it all over the place.
The man has nearly every offensive category in the league: most career touchdown passes, most career passing yards, most career pass completions, most career pass attempts, most consecutive starts, most consecutive starts by a QB, most career victories as a starting quarterback, most fumbles and most career interceptions thrown.
And for all those reasons and more is why we love him; subsquently excusing all the drama that’s been surrounding him the past few years.
But for some reason, this latest incident, just feels different.
Maybe it’s the fact that Jenn Sterger, fourteen years younger than the greying Favre, basically spurned his advances, or maybe it’s the fact that he’s a grandparent (the only in the NFL, ever), or maybe it’s the fact that he’s a married man, who helped his wife fight a very public battle with breast cancer. (I'll let you figure out the irony).
Yes, I know, lots of men cheat, unexcusable, but still it happens. And far be it for me to think that Brett Favre is perfect, an addiction to painkillers kind of excuses you from the category of sainthood, but it does put you in the category of human.
We like him because he’s human, I get that, I do too. I like him because I know that every week he’s going to be out on that field, throwing a ball around and taking hits, he’s tough, he’s a competitor, and I like that in a man.
What I don’t like, is when that man, hits on a woman, when he’s married. The audio on Deadspin makes Favre sound desperate, and that’s not how I imagined my Brett Favre to be.
And a sidenote: I didn’t imagine my Brett Favre to be so unendowed, but then again, our heroes have a habit of disappointing us.
I’m aware it seems as if I’m condeming him before all the evidence comes out, and Roger Goodell finshes his fact-finding mission, but frankly, Favre already implemented himself.
The day he was asked that question he chose to ignore it, and nearly a week later, he still refuses to deny the allegations. If we have learned nothing from our previous fallen heros, it’s deny, deny, deny, until you can’t deny anymore and then apologize until someone else screws up.
Regardless if this happened or not, it may have tainted him forever. We can forgive for a lot of things but it’s hard to keep forgiving and forgetting.
Whether or not you held this man to a higher standard, which we all know you shouldn’t do, we certainly don’t want him to fall. We just got done watching one great one fall; we don’t want to know what demons are in another’s closet.
We like our Brett Favre on his tractor, in his Wranglers, tossin’ the football; not pleading for women to come and hang out in his hotel room.
There may be no more options left for the Mississippi boy; he may have gambled one too many times.
