Brett Favre is an example of NFL hero worship gone wrong
For the better part of his 20 years in the NFL, the story of Brett Favre was tailor-made for a middle America that swoons over blue-collar football heroes.
We learned about his formative years in tiny Kiln, Mississippi, a town defined by the boom of the timber industry, decimated by the Great Depression, then sustained by decades of illegal moonshining ingenuity. We heard tales about Favre being raised by a pair of schoolteachers, then his serendipitous discovery as a high school football player while being coached by his dad, Irvin Favre. And of course, we heard about the football hurdles, with Favre lucking into a single scholarship offer from Southern Mississippi despite running an ill-fitting wishbone offense that rarely showcased the massive arm that would eventually deliver him to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
All of this would be part of Favre's tapestry as he carved out his illustrious two-decade NFL career, which included a Super Bowl win, three straight league MVPs, countless passing records at his retirement, an iron man streak for consecutive starts that is unlikely to ever be broken, and a ceaseless high tide of “gunslinger” compliments from John Madden and seemingly every other football analyst who ever laid eyes on him.
He was an exciting talent at the center of an iconic Green Bay franchise, the kind of player who basked in the national media attention and made fast friends with some important journalists. All while fitting into the mold of the league’s favorite historic commodity: an easily sellable white quarterback during a cable television era that would drive NFL popularity into space.
For most of his career, this was a defining part of the Brett Favre story. Since then, a lot has changed in the world. And with it, perhaps a small part of our perspective on the type of hero worship that often conceals something unsavory behind it.
The disappointing reality for many is simple: As we’ve moved on from Favre’s career, it has been challenging to keep up with the character questions surrounding him. And never more so than this week, when expansive reporting on a welfare fraud scheme in Mississippi is making Favre look either incomprehensib ly incompetent or nefariously dishonest.