Sixteen days, that is how far we are away from the launch of the 2009 NFL season. Predictably, we’ve had our mini camps, training camps, pre-season games and the latest saga involving one Brett Favre. And while it took me a few years to get to this point, this time, I’m sick of it.
Favre and the NFL are the equivalent of that couple you knew in high school that would fight and breakup every week, but then at the football game on Friday nights they were getting it on in the parking lot like a plan going off like clockwork. You knew it was going to happen, every week. So eventually, the drama wore off. You stopped caring every time they tried to evoke sympathy from you for every time their heart would “never be the same.” You called bull, and eventually you were right. This is where I am with Favre, I’m sick of him and the NFL playing hanky panky in the car, something needs to be done.
I’ll admit, I smiled a little bit when when news broke last Tuesday that Favre would be signing with the Vikings pending a physical. I like him as a quarterback, I think he fits the Vikings’ system perfectly, it’s great theater for Packers/Vikings game, it eventually sends Tarvaris Jackson to the CFL where he belongs, all this makes sense. But then I thought about it, why? Why would he say he wasn’t coming back just over a month ago? Why have another tearful good-bye? Why jerk everyone around? Why ask why? Try Bud Dry. And it finally dawned on me that the NFL and Vikings have allowed one man to become bigger than the team, bigger than the franchise and almost as big as the league.
He does this because he can. He is a football demigod, and if he can get away with it, so be it. We’re all sucked into it, and I think maybe what disgusts me more is that I actually pay attention when a Favre bottom line update streams across the four-letter.
So what happens now? I don’t know, but we’ll all buy into the hype of a very strong Vikings team. Favre will lead them to the playoffs and probably end up losing to the Packers in the NFC Title game for some sort of skewed symmetry in a story that I want to end, I want to know the end, but in the end, I guess I’m just sick of the storyline.