I will be sorely disappointed if this thing ends up with Favre taking the blood money. I am honestly not a huge Favre fan but I have always respected his grit. Taking money to not play would put a bigger dent in his reputation than playing and even sucking with the Vikes.

Until then – I’m hoping he’ll make the right choice and stick to his convictions. Money shouldn’t be an issue to him, as I’m sure he will have a variety of employment options available to him should he play and retire in a year or two.

I agree with one thing you say (and not just because Sonny Jurgeson said it first), that he shouldn’t have retired if he wanted to play. That is true. Perhaps he was under pressure for a decision. Doesn’t matter. He has to accept responsibility for the three-ring circus that grew out of his choosing to retire and then to un-retire, which I’m not sure he’s done yet.

But you key in on something that I didn’t have the time to get into in my post, and that is the phenomenon of revulsion against Favre by fans and media that we are witnessing right now. Just three months ago, those same fans and media were eulogizing his retirement with wall-to-wall television retrospectives and nearly passing around a collection jar to come up with airfare to Canton to witness his enshrinment as the official Football Emeritus in Perpetuity.

Amazing how quickly we wish to label a guy a whiner and washed up and pine for the debut of his untested understudy!

And sorry – those bar matrons criticizing Brett’s judgement and mental health are the same people who feverishly dial-in their favorite wannabe on American Idol every week and, to reference a less than stellar Stiller flick, made schlock like “Night at the Museum” a $250 million blockbuster. The masses love to villify those who have accomplished much, makes them feel better about sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stuffing junk food into [their] mouth[s].

What’s odd are the expectations we have for public figures like Favre. We all expect him to be cordial, thoughtful, sensitive to poor Aaron Rodgers, and to display sound judgment in areas completely unrelated to the “simple” task of leading a football team. If Brett Favre were media savvy and polished in the ways of negotiation like a management consultant, he probably wouldn’t be a professional football player; he would be I don’t know, a former press Secretary for the President or something who now runs a Manhattan-based PR company. No wait – that’s Ari Fleischer, former Bush talking head who was inexplicably invited by Packers Coach Mike McCarthy to give a “pep talk” to his team on the finer points of media relations. (Now I really know who to root for in this whole thing).

Brett is a quarterback in the NFL. He’s pretty good at winning, he’s proven himself to be a risk-taker, and he’s never been afraid to lay everything on the line to achieve the goal in sight. Brett is simply acting like Brett and everybody’s expectation for him to handle this whole thing like a diplomat negotiating peace in the Middle East is frankly out of touch with reality.

He means a PR nightmare, an urgent redesign of the game plans they’ve been working on all winter, and the demotion of their young #1 QB who has waited patiently for his shot. And for anyone who doesn’t understand the fragile egos of quarterbacks, please google “Brett Favre.” As Sonny Jurgeson said just last week, “If he wanted to play, he shouldn’t have retired.”

I recently had a three-hour flight lay-over in the Las Vegas airport. I wandered over to a sports bar to kill some time and found about fifty people staring at a TV and listening to Brett whine about how poorly he’s been treated by Green Bay management. Brett went on to get into why they wouldn’t bring Randy Moss to GB some years ago. The bar patrons started questioning Bret’s mental health out loud. They were laughing at him!

He needs to regain some integrity and just shut up about Green Bay, and then quietly work out a deal to play elsewhere. I would like to see him play again, but the public whining from such a great player is tough to watch. Apparently Cameron Diaz’s choice of Ben Stiller over Brett in the film was the right move. Who could put up with all this nonsense?