RateItAll: The Opinion Network

Favre is becoming a nightmare of masculine vanity, having a public meltdown normally reserved for declining movie stars and D-listers on The Surreal Life who never quite accepted that the people do not love them. He is so in love with his own public image that he thinks that the Packers should be pleading with him to return for another season, with guarantees of a starting job and everything else. Well, actually, Brett, the team did invite you to stay when you retired in March, and they still had their arms open a few weeks later, when you said you were going to stay in retirement ... and this was already being generous, because they had welcomed you back season after season, when you publicly aired your waffling just so that the people could want you more. Even now they're willing to let you return, so long as it's understood that you have to compete for the job. Granted, they may simply want to trade you, but that's what you signed up for when you, um, became a pro athlete. Sorry, Brett, you can't "come out of retirement" when it's been only a few months. You're a narcissist who is turning your job into a romantic relationship. You're dangling the possibility of leaving us in order to get yourself more love. But you can't have it both ways: when we decide we no longer want you, don't cry about it. Those bad manners are scary enough in a lover, but can you imagine any other person doing this to their employer?

Hold on now, apparently this story may not quite be over just yet.....

Aaron Rodgers must be wondering just what the hell he signed up for.

He held out for a better season to retire after so he didn't leave people with a bad taste in their mouth, but I still think he played too long.

UPDATE: I saw the press conference. *sniff*

Its great that Favre is getting honored now for his great career, and I'm sure football fans will hear a lot more praise once the season rolls around. However, a retirement is never as big a deal as what goes on when the game is actually played.

I wasn't all that surprised that Farve decided to retire. For the past 5 years, he's debated whether to retire or not. He would have gone out on a stronger note had he made it to the Super Bowl one last time, just like John Elway did before he retired. Instead he left the team on a somewhat negative note, with that narrow loss to the Giants in this years playoffs, which was credited to Farve's last minute turnover. Information that has come out collaberates essentially what Genghis claimed in his post: Farve backed out of playing for another season because he didn't want to put himself through another beating of a season. Yet his agent claims that he wanted to play for another season, but the Packers weren't that interested in bringing him back. Apparently management at Green Bay thought that he was "done", and that it was time to let Aaron Rodgers take over the team, but Favre himself thinks he has one more year left. I tend to think that Farve could play another year or two, but given that the Packers are in a youth movement now, perhaps it would be a good time to let a young QB take over, someone who is hungrier. Either way, Favre leaves a Packers team which is a rising power in the NFC North, and that might have made this decision a tough one.

I hate to see him go. He is a very talented player.

I'm going to be the devil's advocate here- but really, the incredible Super Bowl upset and the start of March Madness are the bookend major sports stories from the Feb. to April. months and this is a big NFL story, but it will fade fast before training camp begins in the summer. It is a story, but the timinig means it will fade sooner rather than later. Plus, the 'favre is retiring' isn't even a new story to begin with. This in no way diminishes this guy's career. . .

This is big but not surprising. I saw Brett play the Bears at Soldier Field in late 2007. The weather was brutal. The wind was about thirty knots, coming off the lake, with the temperature about 10 degrees amounting to a windchill of about a minus 20 degrees or so. Brett played like he was 138 years old in that cold.

In fact, I made a prediction, to the gang at Murphy's Strip Bar and Armenian Grill, that if the Giants and Packers game was cold, that Brett would blow it and the Pack would lose. Let me tell you, I had a run of payoff free drinks for a couple weeks after that!

This must have been a really tough decision for Brett. He had a very good year last year, and was still capable of playing at a high level (though he had a dreadful playoff game). I'm pretty surprised he's hanging them up, to be honest.