subscribe4 the Love of Pete
by dusty on Oct.05, 2009 , under Uncategorized
I’ve been dreading this day for some time.
I’ve taken all the proper steps to prepare. The brats are defrosting in the fridge. My lucky “Super Bowl XXXI Champions” shirt has been adequately laundered. Following an aggressive, targeted regimen, the new Packers hat I bought a mere two months ago is fully broken in and ready for a Monday night in the trenches.
While those steps would ease any malaise I can imagine suffering prior to any other Packers game, tonight’s showdown with the Vikings at the Metrodome is different. Don’t get me wrong, I expect a good football game, and I have high hopes that the team will hit the stride they seem to have been missing so far this season. As far as I can see, it’s anybody’s game, and I have no reason to doubt I will be heartily entertained.
But the reason I’m so uneasy is that tonight, for the first time, I really and truly have to admit to myself that he’s gone and done it.
Brett. Favre. Good ol’ number four. The Gunslinger. The Iron Man. The Mississippi Touchdown Machine. Old Man Football. The Great Gray Guru of the Gridiron. Call him what you will, but I finally have to admit to myself that I can’t call him a Packer any more.
I started watching Packers football when I was little enough to sit on my old man’s knee. Unlike my little sister, who doesn’t recall the Packers under any other quarterbacks but Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers, I vaguely remember watching Don “the Majik Man” Majkowski run the team in the late eighties and early nineties.
Then, when I was seven years old, Majkowski went down in a game against the Bengals, and a legend was born as Favre lead the team in the first of what would become many come-from-behind victories. The Cardiac Pack began its ascent. I came of age as Favre did the same as a leader on the team. I spent countless afternoons rooted in front of the TV, pulling for Favre and the team with all my might. I trekked north to Lambeau Field with my Dad and my Grandfather, three generations of Weis, to enthusiastically freeze our asses off at the 1996 NFC Championship game and the 1997 Showdown in Titletown grudge match, to name a couple.
We lauded Favre when he admitted his addictions and worked to get clean. We celebrated with Favre when he married his high school sweetheart and the mother of his daughter. We wept with Favre when his father and mentor Irv passed away, and Favre went on to play the greatest game of his storied career as a final tribute.
My Grandpa, my Dad and I — indeed, the entire Packer Nation — admired the hell out of the man. He wore his heart and his passion where it was plain to everyone, and it made him fun to watch on the field. But more than that, it was inspirational to see someone happily use his natural talents to their fullest extent, while always (it seemed) keeping his feet on the ground.
We were watching the rise of a legend in real time. And he was our legend — we thought.
The day Favre retired (the first time) it was tough not to tear up a little in the midst of the speech he gave. Those of us who had weathered the ups and downs of that storied career were just as torn as Favre himself. On one hand, we knew we would miss his talent and his passion for the game, but on the other, we could breathe a sigh of relief knowing the story had a relatively happy ending.
We thought.
But before Dad could reserve our hotel room in Canton five years out for Favre’s hall-of-fame induction, the drama began. Like so many Packers fans, I suffered through it, feeling ill at any mention of the situation. Certainly, I remained a Favre fan, but I was a Packers fan first. And when Favre signed with the Jets, my stomach settled a little, and I told myself he would tool around in the AFC for a while, never directly confronting the team I loved, and then we could forget the whole thing ever happened and get back to the countdown to Canton.
I could have contentedly lived out the rest of my days pretending 2008 never happened, until 2009 happened.
Call me a nutjob or a sentimentalist. Tell me I’m overreacting. Show me it’s a different game than it was, and that loyalty to a team is a thing of the past. Try and explain that divisional rivalries are an invention of bored fans.
Rationally speaking, I’m well aware of how ridiculous this sounds. But when Brett Favre takes the field tonight in a Vikings uniform against his former teammates, and indeed against the legions of Packer Backers who supported him in his darkest hours over a decade-and-a-half, I will feel personally betrayed.
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October 5th, 2009 on 8:55 am
Having grown up just close enough to the “cheddar curtain” to have called the Packers “my team” for, well, let’s just say “wayyy the heck more than thirty years”, I share your pain.
Against all odds (my dad and granddad were Bears fans), I somehow managed to “see the light” at an early age. I’ve loved watching the Pack win division titles as well as the ‘67 and ‘96 Superbowls. I remember “Maj” and while I’d deny it if anyone asked me, I’m even old enough that I vaguely remember Bart Starr.
I’ve got fond memories of years where Sundays and Mondays were spent watching my team humiliate the Bears. Games replete with “friendly” wagers with my pop that paid for more than a few beers and pizzas during college and the years beyond (including the five bucks that I’ve got sitting here on my desk from their first meeting this season).
All of that aside, Favre was my idol. He was the guy who cemented my love of the sport, my love of the team. He was a guy who I viewed as a contemporary, one who had heart. A guy who regularly showed that he was human and wasn’t afraid to admit it and yet, even when things didn’t go our way, he was my hero every time he stepped onto the field.
I always knew that the day would come that he’d retire and that the day would likely be in my lifetime. I, too, overlooked the 2008 season. I decided that it was Favre’s “transition to retirement”.
This year, this decision, is different and has been since the day that it was announced. I’m still reeling, still seething, and still considering spending a portion of my kids’ college tuition to be in Lambeau on November 1. I’ve been in denial since August, reading, watching, and cursing the television (even though I did LOVE the finish to the SF game).
That said, as you so succinctly pointed out, Dusty; tonight the “new” reality sets in and I’m hopeful that Favre’s former teammates remind him, repeatedly, that he’s no longer “one of us.”
For today, my new “favorite Packer season” is 1988. After humiliating the Minnesota “Viqueens” 34-14 and 18-6, the Packers went on to finish 4-12, but hey, we beat the Vike’s twice that year.
October 7th, 2009 on 9:56 am
I, unlike you, was never a huge football fan. But I did get really into it in the 2007 season and Jared and I never missed a Packers game. When Favre decided to retire at the end of the season, we were heartbroken but happy that his career had lasted so long and was so fruitful for all Wisconsinites. Every Packers fan was a part of that team and Favre had led us all into victory time and time again. We knew the Packers wouldn’t be the same for a long time, but we also, were Packers fans first and foremost. So when he signed with the Jets I felt immediately betrayed. I don’t care if it was the AFC, it was football and it wasn’t retirement and it was another team. His former Packers teammates showed strength and congratulated him. But I didn’t believe it for one minute that they weren’t seething underneath the smiles.
So 2008 was different for us. We dabbled a little in Monday night football, but didn’t give it the fervor we had shown the 2007 season.
Then came this summer. Living in Necedah, you find yourself cut off from the rest of the world. But there was still enough attachment to know what was happening with Favre. When I heard he was considering the Vikings, I shook my head with disbelief and disappointment. I know Vikings fans who were in disbelief! A man who was (we thought) through and through part of the Pack joining the Vikings? Disgusting.
On the day that he signed, I was sitting in a salon in Baraboo with my friend Erin, from Maryland. Erin wasn’t really a football fan and surely wasn’t a Packers fan and so when her hairstylist opened her phone to check a text message her friend had sent her and started swearing vehemently, Erin was shocked. Once I found out what all the commotion was about, I went into a state of anger that left me speechless and shaking my head. “I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it. That asshole!,” were the words the salonist was speaking. But all I heard was “just another broken heart from a man we all cared so much about.”
And so, when I started seeing the t-shirts with the number 4 on the back and the saying “We’ll never forget you Brent,” on the front, I smiled inwardly that I wasn’t the only one wanting revenge.