Please let it be the Favre visit went something like this
Please let it be that Jared Allen, Steve Hutchinson and Ryan Longwell went to Hattiesburg, Miss., grabbed their reluctantly prodigal teammate Brett Favre off his tractor while it was still running, threw him in the trunk of their rental car and hauled him to the airport.
Please let it be that Allen, himself an avid hunter, threatened to put a couple of pounds of buckshot into Favre's recalcitrant behind if he didn't make up his mind. Or that Longwell offered to kick him into submission. Or that Hutchinson just grabbed him and fireman-carried him, kicking and screaming, to the car.
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| Drama queen Brett Favre needs a large dose of humiliation. (AP) |
And we'll have none of your objections, or waving Favre's résumé, or "stars get their perks" arguments. You don't get to win this argument, no matter how many times they are overcome by the river of media drool that has always accompanied Favre's Indecision-paloozas.
Well, maybe "indecision" isn't the right palooza to use here. Maybe "manipulation-palooza" is better, because that ultimately is what this was, just like all the others. He doesn't like training camp. Or he wants a raise. Or he wants a trade. Or he wants to be the general manager. Whatever the reason, he used his absenteeism like nunchucks, and media folks like me (though not actually me, because I was never assigned to the Hattiesburg duck-blind detail) offered up our skulls for periodic chucking.
Indeed, if anything good came of the Favre Watches, it was that America learned how to become sick to death of the sight of him doing anything but wearing a helmet. By contriving these summer vacations with the Packers and Vikings either as willing participants or helpless foils, he taught us that for all the things the general public will tolerate from our celebrities, being donkeyed along in an annual "should I stay or should I go?" loiter-a-thon isn't one of them.
In short, on their way to being sick of us following the story, the public got sick of him generating it. In fact, a case could be made that the public went to DefCon 2 with LeBron James' exit strategy because of its objections to Favre's not-quite-an-exit strategy. Favre took the old Dan Hicks question, "How can I miss you when you won't go away?" beyond its logical extreme and to a place that frankly diminished us all.
And yet, every year Favre managed, or initiated, a different reaction each time he played Football Hamlet. The Packers indulged, then wearied of him. The Vikings prostituted, then cajoled, and then finally shamed him into a comeback he always planned to make anyway.
Shamed, that is, if the story about Hutchinson, Longwell and Allen is true and that they really did go to Mississippi to say "Enough is enough, cowboy. We've got plans to make." With Favre, the words "According to reports" filled us all with a dread that was increasingly difficult to shake, because a lot of the reports were wrong, and those that were correct just made us grind the enamel off our teeth.
We'd just like the truth to be that either Hutchinson or Allen shook him until he made up his mind while Longwell watched approvingly. After all, Longwell is a kicker, and therefore better built to be a witness to coercion than an instrument thereof.
We are sure that nobody would admit to it if it were true, but we prefer to construct our own vision. Favre, hooded and duct-taped in the back of a convertible, wedged between Allen and Hutchinson, who are giving him charlie horses and wedgies while saying, "Make it easy on yourself and get on the plane, or we'll drive to New Orleans, strip you naked and leave you on the roof of the Superdome."
That is, after all, how it should have ended, and you know what they say -- if you don't like the story, go out and make up one of your own.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for Comcast SportsNet Bay Area.
