Brett Favre has been an iconic figure, not just in the NFL, but American sports over the last 15 years. Personally, I have always been a big Brett Favre fan (not Peter King big, I don't want to actually date Brett) for how he's played the game and the fearlessness he's shown doing so. This is why it brings me great sadness to see what is possibly the beginning of Favre losing his mind a la Britney Spears. Britney too was an iconic pop figure who went from being America's darling to another crazy celebutard.
Much of this is media created of course. If anyone was listening to every word we said and broadcasted it to the world, we would sound crazy as well. Britney went, and is going through a similar hybrid media creation/accentuating the existing personality, over the past few years. That being said, crazy is crazy and Brett Favre has definitely given us some crazy over the past few years. The alarming thing is the rate at which it's increasing.
I'm not suggesting that Favre is going to start doing a ton of drugs and getting out of cars in short shorts with his junk hanging out, or shave his head and check into a Malibu rehab center, but some of the blurbs we are hearing on a weekly basis makes you scratch your head a little. First we heard that Brett was addicted to and abusing pain killers. I think most of us gave him a pass on that as we can all imagine the physical toll it must take on one's body to play QB in the NFL. The recent retirement saga that we have endured from Favre over the past 5 years was first seen as a guy legitimately trying to figure out if he still wanted to play, now is seen as an attention-grabber with the need to be in the spotlight at all times. I think this marked that change in perception, and reality, when it comes to Favre, we all saw him as an old gunslinger who lived to compete and win. Now he is seen as an attention whore. We used to see him as a guy that wanted to win above anything else. Now we see him as a guy who wants to beat the Packers above anything else. We used to see a guy that would never miss a game. Now Brett is talking about not being sure if he's up for playing all 16 this season. We used to see Favre as the ultimate tough guy who would play through pain and protect his locker room at all costs. Now Favre is tattle-taling on the Jets for their listing of his status on the injury report for each game.
To me it is sad to see the perception of Favre change in the public eye. He is still the winningest QB in the history of the NFL. Favre still leads in career TD's, yards, attempts, INT's(you have to play a long time to do that) and consecutive games started. Favre has had one losing season in his career and is one of the greatest QB's to ever play the game. I hope that Brett can stay out of the limelight, keep his mouth shut and continue to win games. He is 1-0 this season and a Super Bowl is well within the Vikings ability this year. Britney has been able to reinvent herself to some degree, I hope Brett can do the same.
Javier Gorriti, UMaine Black Bear from 1994-1998, is a frequent contributor to the CMSB and the PM JAB with Chris Sedenka. He is the president of Mermaid Seafoods in Portland ME. and has been working and living in Maine over the past 5 years. He can be reached at javier_gorriti at hotmail.com
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