Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Friday, July 18, 2008
Dave Myers: Releasing Favre would be right thing to do
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A situation that was merely unpleasant has now moved on to embarrassing and ridiculous.
The seemingly never-ending divorce proceedings of Brett Favre vs. the Green Bay Packers is growing more absurd every day.
The story has now moved from the tale of wishy-washy musings from a prima donna QB, to an NFL management team moving clumsily into PR recovery mode.
Along the way we have discovered that both sides have been less than honest or forthcoming with Packers fans. Favre about having interest in playing again, and the team telling him playing in Green Bay isn’t an option.
Favre, not unlike many superstar athletes before him, thinks he knows more about assembling personnel on his team (See Randy Moss, Marco Rivera, Mike Wahle and former coach Steve Mariucci) than the general manager and becomes very upset when his suggestions aren’t acted upon.
Green Bay general manager Ted Thompson, on the other hand, has shown himself to be stubborn to the point of stupidity, a little less than candid, and the proud owner of an ego every bit the size of Favre’s.
The icing on the cake came out Wednesday when Fox Sports reported that the Packers filed tampering charges against the Minnesota Vikings. Essentially saying it was the Vikings that put these evil comeback ideas in Favre’s head and have been orchestrating this mess all along.
You don’t have to be Barnaby Jones to figure out these allegations are management’s bumbling attempt at shifting attention away from the colossal mess on their doorstep and onto their hated rivals. I doubt many Packers fans are still willing to drink the Kool-Aid that the front office is offering.
While reasonable people can debate who’s more at fault here, there is clearly more than enough blame to go around.
On one hand, Favre is displaying some of the temperamental behavior that one might expect from a spoiled adolescent. On the other hand Favre — just like the rest of us — is entitled to change his mind.
And when he tells the Packers he wants to come back to the team, they have every right to say “No.”
At the same time, the organization needs to take some responsibility for creating the petulant childlike behavior they are now bemoaning in Favre.
For years the Packers fostered an environment that allowed this kind of behavior. The team not only condoned this bigger-than-the-game gunslinger persona, it made it the face of the franchise, aggressively marketed it and sold it to the masses for an enormous amount of money.
To cry foul now when faced with the prospect of having to deal with a player who occasionally acts like a caricature of himself and feels entitled to special treatment seems somewhat disingenuous — if not out-and-out funny.
There is a simple solution available to the Packers that would put this whole horrible ordeal to rest: release him.
The moment the NFL says Favre has officially applied for reinstatement, release him.
Issue a statement thanking him for his years of service, give him a nice watch, pat him on the back and wish him luck in his future endeavors.
Could he wind up in Minnesota or Chicago? Sure. But that is what first-class organizations do.
They do the right thing. Not just when it’s easy or makes them look good. They do the right thing when it hurts, because it’s for the good of the game. This clearly is not good for Favre, the Packers or the game.
Consider the release a severance package for Favre.
He wants to continue playing while he can and the Packers want to move forward with quarterback Aaron Rodgers at the helm and without Favre looking over his shoulder.
The Packers were ready to move forward without Favre before the comeback talk started, and a strong, confident principled organization should be willing to move forward with the knowledge that he’s playing somewhere else. Wherever that three-ring circus may be.
It’s not a perfect solution, but it does allow everybody to walk away and put arguably the ugliest chapter in Packers history behind them.
Dave Myers can be reached at (608) 791-8202, or at dave.myers@lee.net
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