Motherfuck Brett Favre

No one goes away anymore. No one. “Has-been” is a longtime epithet, but its connotation ignores how NECESSARY has-beens are: how it’s good for the world when a person who has had more than their fair share of the spotlight is, at last, compelled to cede that shine to other people, even when those other people look and sound far too much like those they’ve replaced. Unfortunately, there are so many avenues for has-beens to stay visible that the spotlight can shine hotter and wider and longer than the sun itself. You see someone once, you see them forever.

Throughout his NFL playing career, Brett Favre refused to go away. It was his defining skill. He never conceded a game, which was the most admirable facet of his character (and the only one that announcers cared to note). He never refused a tape recorder, especially Peter King’s, when he was off the field. He never shied away from TV cameras. He never took "no" as an answer from women. Even when Favre wasn’t legally eligible to make a play, he still felt compelled to be a part of it. I know this because I once stood by as Cris Collinsworth lasciviously praised Favre’s tenacity after he threw a pass from well past the line of scrimmage when his Packers were in the red zone. I also watched late-career Favre, so eager to be the hero he once was, throw up every ball like he had just fucking autographed it. That Favre needed to go away long before he retired, and then un-retired, and then retired again, and then un-retired again, and then … well, you see the pattern. The fucker lived off of attention and, thanks to the vagaries of access journalism and to the fact that he was one of the few accomplished quarterbacks to have something resembling a personality, he got it.

As a result, you and I know way more about Brett Favre than we could possibly need or want. I know, thanks to King, that Favre was a simple country boy who enjoyed working the land in his spare time. I know he struggled mightily with a painkiller addiction. I know his dad died right before he had to play the Raiders, because the Monday Night Football crew all but forced me to wear a commemorative jersey patch in honor of the old man. I know that Mike Holmgren desperately wanted Favre to stop freelancing on random downs but couldn’t because, well, there’s just no corralin’ a true gunslinger. I also know what his cock looks like. It’s nothing extraordinary. Knowing all this made me, and the rest of the free world, resentful of Favre. He was a bag of shit. He was a needy asshole. He was a letdown artist. If the NFL's access merchants were unwilling to note that this was true of Favre both on AND off the field, they can't hide it anymore. No one can.

If you’re unfamiliar with the current tumult surrounding the finally-retired Favre, you have no shortage of reading material to get you properly situated. Favre is the shadow quarterback of a welfare embezzlement ring in Mississippi that is, by my reckoning, the most Mississippi thing to happen since the last most Mississippi thing to happen happened. He personally received $1.1 million in state funds intended for welfare recipients and had to pay back less than half of it. He got another $5 million diverted to the construction of a new volleyball arena at his alma mater, Southern Miss, because his kid was on the team there. At one point, he suggested to then-governor Phil Bryant that the state use prison labor to build that arena, presumably so that the bulk of that $5 million didn’t have to go to the people actually building the thing. There are receipts for all of this, with Favre texting Bryant his requests, asking that they all be kept quiet (oh the irony), and adding an uncharacteristically thin layer of the good ol’ boy charm that he used to seduce the greater NFL mediasphere for two full decades.

I fully suspect that Favre will amp up the Dukes of Hazzard-ese the closer this scandal moves toward becoming an actual criminal proceeding. Given the current dearth of consequences for even worse criminals in the upper reaches of the American socioeconomic echelon, perhaps ol’ Favre’ll wriggle out of this jam the way he once wriggled free of oncoming pass rushers. But regardless of the fallout, one thing is certain, if it wasn’t before: this man is a true piece of shit. There’s proof of it, and there are no games this time around where Favre can cutesy his way back into everyone’s good graces. He doesn’t deserve the convenient redemption that football offers to so many of its worst souls, and he won’t get it.

This is a lesson we learn time and again. Take the games away from any athlete and they have only their character to go by. Most athletes pass this test. Favre does not. He is, as he has always been, a tired, dumb, awful man. I hate that I have to look at his raggedy asshole face yet again, but I’m glad that face no longer represents some bullshit, NFL-ized notion of sticktuitiveness. Instead, it represents an all-too-pedestrian brand of evil that has cursed Mississippi since its inception. I can’t make Brett Favre go away because, as I said, no one goes away anymore. But seeing him thoroughly disgraced is the next best thing, and it gives me a chance to say what I’ll never tire of saying: Motherfuck Brett Favre. Motherfuck him, and motherfuck every Peter King and Cris Collinsworth that championed him until he fancied himself invulnerable. Favre has his precious time in the spotlight again. I hope it burns.