Brett is Back: All is Well Again with NFL Football

Brett Favre cracks me up. In fact, he's so funny that I have come to be one of his major fans, wherever he decides (or has trouble deciding) where he wants to play (or if he really wants to play). During Favre's Super Bowl heydays in the mid-nineties with the Packers (while I was miserably following --and still do-- the Miami Dolphins), I was barely aware of the man. Now, in his early forties (such an old guy, not at all like me--wait, I'm 53), Favre is kicking ass all over the league as a Minnesota Viking quarterback and enjoying the accolades he so richly deserves. But there's one thing, the thing that really makes him funny (and so wise).

Brett Favre hates training camp and exhibition games. To him, they are complete B.S., and I don't mean Bachelor of Science. He knows what he has to do when he gets out on the field, so why waste time and possible career-ending injury with all of that high-contact activity? So for the past two seasons, he has either announced his retirement from the game or hinted at it, essentially with the view of avoiding that tedious and unnecessary part of the pre-season. And each time, he has come back. Hopefully, his coach won't put him out there on the field very much in the Packers' remaining exhibition schedule.

Football is an injury-intense sport. It becomes ridiculous when teams' starting rosters begin to become depleted because of injuries, even before the season starts. Take the University of Florida Gators. The website for AM 850/WRUF lists some of their players' injuries, which includes a concussion to star running back Jeff Demps. And they haven't even played any games yet! So I think that if you are a player and can get away with it, better to avoid that hazardous period. Which is what Brett Favre was able to pull off.

Once I was watching a sports channel and they were poking fun at how Favre would warm up before going out on the field: he would bend his legs and stretch each of them a couple of times and then trot off, doing nothing more. Which is exactly how I warm up before running! A kindred spirit, I would say!