MANKATO, Minn. — I was driving past a gas station in the St. Anthony area one night last week when something caught my attention.

There on the marquee — usually reserved for such advertisements as “2 FOR 1 COKE PRODUCTS” — was a sentiment that many Minnesota Vikings fans seem to share these days.
“WE DON’T WANT BRETT FAVRE.”

Whether it’s gas station marquees, Internet message boards, blog posts or talk radio banter, the majority of Vikings fans seem to be against their team acquiring a quarterback orchestrating a messy split from the Green Bay Packers.

It seems that too many purple faithful are letting their hatred for the Packers blind them. They’re loyalty to the Vikings is admirable, but taken a little too far in this case.

“Favre in purple?” one fan commented on the Star Tribune’s AccessVikings blog. “I can’t ... I can’t ... I’m not there yet.”

The question is, why WOULDN’T you want Favre on this team?

Wipe out all the heartache he’s caused Minnesota over the years. Take away all that green and gold he has bathed in for 16 years, all those exhuberant celebrations he’s had at the Vikings’ expense.

None of that is relevant.

When you strip all of that away, what you have left is a 38-year-old quarterback coming off one of the better seasons of his career, when he threw for more yards (4,155) than he had in 10 years, had his best quarterback rating (95.7) since 1996 and had 28 touchdowns and 15 interceptions.

The days of one player staying with one team in holy matrimony are gone. That is not a news flash. Loyalty between team owners and players, and vice versa, went out the window 20 years ago.

So forget all that romance and pageantry, and look at the cold, hard facts.

Considering quarterback appears to be one of the only question marks on a Vikings team that otherwise appears to be loaded, adding a veteran player with three MVP trophies, two Super Bowl appearances and one heck of a right arm to the mix can only help things.

Tarvaris Jackson is still young, plain and simple. He’s been up and down so far in training camp and bringing Favre in wouldn’t change plans for Jackson to be the team’s long-term answer at the position. It would just delay it for a season or two, which might not hurt a player three years removed from Division I-AA Alabama State.

Adding Favre, that Vikings scourge who is 4-0 against coach Brad Childress and broke Dan Marino’s career record for touchdown passes in the Dome last season, would make Minnesota more than just a contender in the NFC. Favre would make them the favorites to win the conference.

The juicier side benefit to Favre coming to the Twin Cities is the torment it would cause to those hated neighbors to the east.

Imagine the hearts that would break all across Cheese Land on Monday, Sept. 8, when Brett Favre runs through the tunnel at Lambeau Field with a purple No. 4 — sorry, John David Booty, you would definitely be giving that number up — on his back as a member of the archrival Minnesota Vikings.

Despite saying they worry about Aaron Rodgers’ psyche and call Favre a flip-flopper, it would be a gut-wrenching experience for cheeseheads.

It’s hard to conjure a similar scenario.

The only thing comparable from a Minnesota standpoint would have been seeing Kirby Puckett in a Chicago White Sox uniform, but even that doesn’t really fit the bill.

Twins-White Sox is a nice little head-butter. Ozzie Guillen LOVES the Twins and never misses a chance to heap praise on Ron Gardenhire.

It would be more like Mrs. Hatfield divorcing Mr. Hatfield and shacking up with Mr. McCoy.

Packers-Vikings is the same kind of backyard brawl. So much so that the bulk of Vikings fans actually would rather go into this season with an unproven quarterback instead of taking the most celebrated player in franchise history away from Green Bay.

But the thing about a true, nasty, knock-down, drag-out rivalry is that celebrating a win isn’t as fun rubbing a loss in the enemy’s face.

Brett Favre to the Vikings, no matter how much Packer fans align behind Rodgers and loathe Favre for the way he’s handled things this summer, fills both categories.

So if you’re a Vikings fan, what could be better?

Jon Krawczynski can be reached at jkrawczynski@ap.org.

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