"Brett-Favre tough"

I hate not having Internet access….

In case you are from another planet, or have been visiting one recently, you probably missed the news about Brett Favre’s retirement from football on Tuesday. It was a sad day for me and for the NFL.

Next to Bernie Kosar – my childhood hero – Favre is probably my favorite football player of all time. I’m not even a Packers fan by any stretch. But when they were on TV, I made sure to watch. I always admired Favre’s toughness, his passion for the game, his down-to-Earth attitude, and his humanness.

If you don’t follow the NFL, you probably don’t appreciate the significance of Favre’s record of 253 consecutive starts at quarterback. To put it in perspective, he has started in every single Packers game since Sept. 20, 1992, when George Bush (H.W., the 41st) was president. At quarterback. A position where special rules are written to protect the player because he is especially vulnerable. He has played in games with broken limbs, sprained ligaments, battered brains, and just about every other injury. Sportswriters now describe players who play through significant pain as being, “Brett-Favre tough.”

When he played, he played with an unbridled passion for the game. As one ESPN commentator put it Tuesday night, “Football, at its heart, is a kids’ game. And no one embodied that more than Brett Favre.” He played with all his heart and had fun doing it. Let’s face it, you’re not going to show up for work every single day for 16 years if you don’t love what you do.

But Favre was more than just a kid-in-a-candy-store interior with a tough-guy exterior. His devotion to his high-school sweetheart turned wife during her battle with breast cancer was a lesson to all men on true toughness. And the way he played following his father’s unexpected death is the stuff of legend.

Favre will be missed. It will probably be a long time before we see another one like him.

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By the way, I ill be out of town for a few days, so don't expect responses to any of your comments until at least Monday.