For fans of the game, professional football can be an awfully entertaining spectacle to watch. It certainly was on Sunday.
Football captivates people for many reasons, whether it is the athleticism, the sound and the colour, the elegance, the brutality, or even just the grace of it all. It remains a manly pursuit, at a time when more and more manly pursuits are finding themselves on the endangered species list.
You see it every day, in every play, inside a football game. In Minnesota, just for example, there is a team known as the Vikings, whose mascot is a fat, bearded, fur wearing oaf named Ragnar. The team’s signature tune is The Immigrant Song, the one that says “we come from the land of the ice and snow...”
Just for example, there is a player in Minnesota named Phil Loadholt, who stands about 6’10” and weighs in at about 350 pounds. He was born in Hawaii, which means he can probably eat an entire pig in one sitting, and can’t sit in most airplane seats, or chairs.
And then there is the maniac Jared Allen, who looks like he cuts his own hair with a steak knife, and also looks just like a garbageman on my street when I was a kid that could pick up a fridge or a stove and throw it into the back of the truck.
But the toughest of them all is a limping, silver warrior named Brett Favre. He’s only 40, but on a football field that rounds up to about 65, so he must be pretty tough just to be out there at all.
Favre is undeniably one of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of the game, perhaps the best ever. Rejuvenated by an incredibly skilled team, he just came off his best year ever, and led the Vikings to a conference championship game.
You might think Brett would be smiling today, but it is only a painful grimace. He was brutalized on Sunday by the New Orleans Saints, who pushed, pounded and ground the old man into the turf at every turn.
I’ll wager the Vikings have two water coolers on the sidelines, one for Gatorade and the other for Favre’s painkillers; but it doesn’t matter. He threw an interception that essentially prevented his team from going to the Super Bowl, but even that doesn’t matter.
Because Brett Favre is special. At least now he can finally retire in peace, to a warm, sunny place that is nice and dry and easy on the joints. It will be a place where the toughest decision he will have to face is not to pass or run, but whether to wear blue or brown socks with his polyester slacks.
Brett Favre deserves a rest. He has proven himself worthy time and time again and, at the same time, proven he is entirely human. It actually makes him a bit of an inspiration, and for that, he has earned my respect.