The Favre Side of the Moon: The Hardest Part Is Letting Go

Sorry for the slow posting the last few days. It's finals time and as I finish up my degree, it means I unfortunately have to put some things aside. Last one is tomorrow and then it's back to regular posting.

There are at least some certainties in the sports world.

Stadium food will always be overpriced. Opening Day can't come soon enough. Only one team walks away happy in the end. There's always next year.

But the one thing that seems as certain as ever is that the great ones can do everything but walk away.

It's still up in the air whether Favre will come back to the NFL, but I think he and every other lock hall of famer who takes that swan song cup of coffee with another team does nothing but hurt their own legacy.

Eventually, time passes. We move on. We forget. Montana will never be remembered as a Chief. Rice will never be remembered as a Seahawk. Jordan will never be remembered as a Wizard. Nobody remembers Frazier fighting Jumbo Cummings. Hell, Joe Frazier probably doesn't remember fighting Jumbo Cummings.

It's one of the great Catch-22s that all great athletes suffer from: they always want one more. One more touchdown, one more game winner, one more title, one more season, one more game. It's always one more with them. You don't get to be Montana or Rice or Jordan or even Favre without always being desperate to push your limits just that little bit further.

The problem is that, especially for the greats, these legacies don't always have the neat little endings we might like. Some manage it. Barry Sanders walked away at 30, seemingly still healthy, with his pride and his wits and a phenomenal career still intact. Some know when to call it a day, some don't get the chance and go out with their boots on because of a career-ending injury, but the best just don't know when to call it quits.

When you're young, sports are great. It's such an overwhelming feast for the senses that you just find yourself in a wash of color and sound. Your teams may lose, but they played hard and you probably didn't understand much of what happened anyway.

As you get older you begin to see the darker corners, the frayed edges of the sports world that contrast so heavily with everything that made you fall in love with sports. By then, you're stuck, though, and no matter how much something may disgust you in sports, you can't walk away--you can only complain (read: sports talk radio...).

One of those dark corners you are certain to find if you're a fan long enough is that time doesn't work the same in sports as it does elsewhere. By 30 you're middle aged at best and, most often, already washed up.

We put a lot of things into sports--time, money, etc.--but faith is the one thing that we seem to have in endless supply as fans. No matter how many times we're let down, we always seem to find the will to believe again. But as infinite as that faith may seem, our hope as fans is always tied to the most ephemeral things; things like ligaments and contracts and a shoulder that just doesn't work at 39 like it did at 29.

Most other places in life, time passes slowly enough and change happens slowly enough that we have time to adapt, to cope. In sports, that isn't the case. One year a player can look unstoppable, the next he looks washed up and old. One year a player can look like the Next Great Thing, the next he's just another Could've-Would've-Should've story.

So I look at the Favre story and I'm already disappointed, whether he comes back or not. He should've retired a Packer. He could've been remembered as a class act who knew when his song was over (whether that's the truth or not). Instead we have a new Favre: the guy with the fading arm who has had the glossy sheen of his image stripped away, layer by layer, who seems not carefree and laudable, but vindictive and manipulative.

We don't know what twist Favre's story will take next, but we know how it'll end. There are conflicting media reports about X-Rays and private planes and phone calls from Minnesota to Mississippi, but that's all just noise. The real truth is that it doesn't really matter what Favre does next. All that matters is he is going to eventually (and likely in the very near future) walk away from the game forever and, undoubtedly, join that last great group of athletes:

The guys who should've walked away sooner.