Brett Favre Retirement tribute

On March 6th Brett Favre retired. Those of you who know me well know I grew up in the Milwaukee, WI area and that I have been a lifelong Green Bay Packer fan. March 6th, 2008 was a sad day in the Guendert household. Sunday football will never be the same in our house. For every single Green Pay Packer game since 1992, there was only one quarterback. Brett Favre. My 15 year old son has never seen a Green Bay Packer game where #4 was not the QB. Nor has any other Green Bay Packer fan his age.

Brett Favre was a throwback to a different era, and he brought the Packers out of the NFL wasteland and helped lead our team back to the top of the NFL. Fans my age who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s never got to experience what our parents did when the Packers dominated the NFL in the 1960s. Brett Favre let us experience that, and he let our parents and grandparents relive their past experiences as fans. I’ve worn the same old #4 Brett Favre jersey when watching Packer games since 1992. When we moved to Ohio after I left the Navy, we got Direc TV so we could watch every Packer game.

Brett Favre epitomized the unselfish team player. He was the type of athlete that seemed like an “everyman”. He was one of us normal people. He did not think of hismelf as better than his fans. It was not about money or fame or records. He loved what he did. He put everything he could into it. When it got to the point that he could no longer do that, he decided to hang up the cleats.

I knew this day would come at some point. I think all Packer fans hoped he’d come back again. Maybe Troy Aikman is right and maybe Brett will decide to change his mind. I hope so.

I know that if not, I will be in Canton, Ohio to see his induction ceremony in 2013.

There are three famous people I have always wanted to meet, and two of them I never will get to: Ronald Reagan, and William F. Buckley Jr.

Brett Favre is the third. Maybe someday.

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This entry was posted on 17. March 2008 at 19:17 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.