We don't get too worked up about the NFL around these parts. That's not to say that the occasional "NFL" story doesn't crop up - but really, the NFL is just another league designed to allow us to watch our favorite college players play with oddly colored helmets. The true game is played for a magical 4 years (5,3, depending on who you are) on Saturday afternoons for a magical 4 months out of the year. The NFL, on the contrary, has gotten so over bloated with its own self importance that it's forgotten the truest emotion that has gotten the league on the top of the heap: Joy.
That's why, every now and again, a player who is mostly known for playing in that over-bloated league needs recognizing. Brett Favre never forgot that joy was his greatest weapon. He played for 17 seasons, had a near fatal car wreck in college, battled through a Vicodin addiction, supported his wife as she fought breast cancer, and channeled the memory of his father to the tune of 4 touchdowns on a magical Monday mere hours after he had passed. It would have been easy for football to have turned into a paycheck for Brett, as it has to so many other players. Through the strife, Brett never once forgot what the league as a whole has; that joy is the emotion that drives the game. It's not anger, not violence, but joy that you can't bottle and sell. It's joy that comes from celebrating each and every touchdown as if it were your first. Brett never lost that, and now he's mentally tired. His body can do the work, but the joy is gone. It was time to hang 'em up.
There are very few players who elicit the "you should have seen 'em" comment. You know what I'm talking about, when you're trying to describe what it was like to see Reggie Miller drain 2 three's and 2 free throws in 16 seconds against New York in 1995. You can't describe it, you can't even come up with words for it. All you say is "Man, you should have seen him." Mostly, these are the heroes of our childhood - a time where statistics were foreign, and all we knew was that certain men on the field were much, much more interesting than others. We didn't care about fantasy numbers, passing yards, who barked at who in press conferences - all we knew was..."man that guy could play." Those players are turning into ghosts. Montana, Elway, Rice, Sanders, Jordan, Miller, Magic...and now Favre. I bring this up to make a specific point. When you talk about the aforementioned players, never do statistics or records come into play. Not one bit. These players, and many more I'm too tired to name, not only played their game with joy, but they allowed us in our older years to recapture some of the youth-filled joyfulness that sports used to mean.
And anybody who can give the gift of youth back to us, if only for a second, is worthy of proper remembrance. Brett Favre. You shoulda seen 'em.
Posts
