Huck Finn's Last Ride (Brett Favre feature), SI, Dec. 4

Who's won more payoff games in the last 10 years, Favre or Michael Vick?

 

Favre's playoff record since Super Bowl XXXI (six appearances in eight seasons): 4-6

Michael Vick's career playoff record (two appearances in five seasons): 2-2
2002 -- beat Green Bay, lost to Philadelphia
2004 -- beat St. Louis, lost to Philadelphia

Peyton Manning's career playoff record (four appearances in seven seasons): 3-4
2002 -- lost to the Jets
2003 -- beat Denver, beat Kansas City, lost to New England
2004 -- beat Denver, lost to New England
2005 -- lost to Pittsburgh

 

Didn't Manning lose a playoff game in 2000 against the Dolphins when Vanderjagt missed a FG?

 

fixed

 

You're right. I got the info from this site, which doesn't have that game listed for some reason.

Dolt.

 

All right, read it.

The piece is stuffed with stunts. It's essayish with a sudden shift into, literally, a Q&A session, a couple with Favre, one with his wife. The opening Dylan Thomas quote. A TS Eliot line of poetry that about seven people will recognize. The literary allusions. Relentless quivers of similes, a hallmark of the long-form sportswriter. The creation of a drinking game set to all the cliches broadcasters use to describe him. You want a creative device? Jeff MacGregor just done did it.

It's interesting to dissect all the choices. Once you really fall in love with words, and begin to understand how sentences are constructed, their purpose, syntax, punctuation, reading stories like this - even if you don't buy into the central conceit (and I don't) - is still purposeful. I wish more of that took place on the board, but it doesn't.

Anyway, for those who have read it, I'm interested in how you judge the last column of text, which I'd identify as MacGregor's thesis. I'm happy he gets around to just why this piece is important, but I'm curious as to whether you think it's moving or accurate or overdone or sublime or showing off or pulling out all the stops or what. It's a pretty fierce, inspired piece of writing. The final movement, if you will. Thoughts on it?

 

When it comes to the best writing on Favre, it begins and ends with Chuck Klosterman's take last year:

"You see, Brett Favre would not have been on that sex boat. I know this. I know this because BRETT FAVRE JUST LIKES TO PLAY THE GAME. BRETT FAVRE JUST WANTS TO GO OUT THERE AND THROW THE OLD PIGSKIN AROUND THE OLD BACKYARD. AND YOU KNOW, SOMETIMES BRETT FAVRE HURTS YOU, BECAUSE BRETT FAVRE TAKES A LOT OF RISKS. HE'S A RIVERBOAT GAMBLER! BUT YOU CAN NEVER FAULT BRETT FAVRE, BECAUSE BRETT FAVRE LOVES TO PLAY THE GAME. BRETT FAVRE WOULD PLAY FOR FREE. IN FACT, IF THERE WERE NO OTHER OPTION, BRETT FAVRE WOULD TAKE OUT A SMALL BUSINESS LOAN FROM A LOCALLY OWNED BANKING INSTITUTION AND PAY THE NFL FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO THROW THE FOOTBALL TO THE LIKES OF DONALD DRIVER, BECAUSE BRETT FAVRE EMBODIES A DYING MYTHOLOGY WHICH SUGGESTS THAT THE ICONS OF A SOCIETY CAN REPRESENT (AND AT TIMES TRANSCEND) THE HIGHEST VALUES OF THAT SOCIETY IN A WHOLLY ALTRUISTIC CONTEXT. DO YOU NOT REALIZE THAT BRETT FAVRE LOVES TO PLAY THE GAME? WELL, HE VERY MUCH DOES."

 

alma, it's both nice writing and overdone, that conclusion. athletics can serve as a metaphor for many things, but i don't buy the premise about favre reminding us of our own mortality. mortality is more personal than an athlete's career coming to an end.

i liked the final two graphs, i liked the graph about young/old poets and time. but i don't believe brett favre's end is about us.

 

But that's exactly it: People take it oh-so-personally that Brett Favre is (one of these years, at least) about to retire.

Yes, it's "just" an athlete's career coming to an end -- but it can also very well be a metaphor for how we do everything we can to stave off any signs of our own mortality.

Just like many football fans have done everything they can to hold onto Brett Favre's career until they (and he) can't possibly hold on any longer.

It's not just Favre, of course. This happens all the time. But Favre is the current target and, thus, the right metaphor for the story.

It IS personal, to many people. That's the whole point.

 

Alma, any time you want to talk about this kind of thing, there are people here willing to do it. You may have to wade through the nonsense and the lunatic rantings of an obnoxious minority, but there are people who want more of it.

Before I comment, here is the last section. For others out there, you need to read the whole artile, I think, for the last section to work, so don't just read it here, then tell us how much it doesn't work, please.

BYH, your post comparing Favre to KISS is a perfect example of the sentiment MacGregor is driving at here. Why does it offend you so that Favre isn't the Favre of old? Why all the rage and anger and unease at seeing him struggle to do what he once did so effortlessly? You want him to get off the stage, like Gene Simmons, because it makes YOU feel uncomfortable and sad to see him perform Rock and Roll, All Night. A cynic can say that Favre is exploiting fans and their desire to relive the good 'ol days, but Brett Favre isn't Gene Simmons. He doesn't need the money. He's a guy who likes to play football. Now, his desire to play football for the "love of the game" has been insanely overstated beyond any reasonable level by everyone with a microphone or a keyboard, but it has also been mocked accordingly by Klosterman and others mercilessly. Almost to a point where the pendelum needs to swing back the other way a bit.

Alma, you made the point on the Whitlock thread that Whitlock was a nihilist, and that he was the the perfect columnist for those who were faithless, cynical, with BS detectors and an eye for weakness. All of that is probably true, and though I like Whitlock very much, I am at heart, full of hope. I like heroes, especially when their frailties and their failures make them feel more human. MacGregor's last paragraphs, to me, speak to that emotion. On this web site, and occasionally too often in this business, the most popular currency is snark. Cyncism. We mock because its fun, because the oversaturation media and hyping of sports demands it, and because it's easier to mock than it is to feel joy. I like the idea of Favre struggling against father time, flinging change ups because he no longer has a fastball, believing in his heart that he is still forever young, and perhaps knowing in his head, and in his soul, that he is not, and that he will fail, but trying his damndest anyway.

Maybe Favre, once great, has gone 84 days with catching a fish, and he is being mocked by all of us, but he takes his skiff out into the gulf anyway, and flings his line into the deep blue sea hoping to catch a marlin. Even if he fails, I like the image, and the idea, of the struggle to be great once more.

 

Just for the record, I was parodying Michael Silver there. I don't really think Favre is the NFL's version of Kiss.

I like watching the guy play. Yeah, he's been overhyped to the point of parody, but I don't think his passion for the game is something you can fake. I don't think a 37-year-old man can fake racing down the field and picking a fellow grown man off the ground and carrying him to the sideline after a TD. I'll take him over Eli Manning playing quarterback as if it's an arranged marriage any day.

And I don't think anyone can ever underestimate how tremendous he played the day after his dad died. He really was playing at a supernatural level that day, flinging a 60-yard bomb off his back foot with a guy falling into him and having it land in Javon Walker's hands for a TD.

He's not what he used to be and the Packers are too flawed to really contend for a Super Bowl in the next few years. I don't see him having a Pete Sampras finale. Still, I hope he plays five more years, because he seems to be one of the few QBs in the league not beholden to some coach who thinks he's a genius and needs to have his gameplan executed to the T by a dutiful QB too worried about losing his job to dare consider deviating from the script.

He's human and he's pretty darn good.

 

that's fine buckweaver. i was only giving my thoughts. to me, my mortality has nothing to do with the end of brett favre's career. it's not personal to me. if other people see it differently, that's cool. no one's wrong.