Brett Favre shares a birthday with me. I’m 7 years older but on Monday night he made me feel again like a kid. Favre will be 40 Saturday. Me? Do the math. More than 30 years have passed since I played organized football and all I really miss is the camaraderie of the team bus. That is until I watch Favre play like he did on Monday night. He looks like he’s having more fun than anyone else on the field. It also helps that he’s standing behind a line reminiscent of the early years of the Great Wall of China.

Favre never played for my favorite team. He defeated my favorite team as he’s now defeated every team in the league. When I was very young and my football allegiance to Buffalo was still doubtful I lived as well vicariously through Favre’s current club, the Minnesota Vikings. The names were different then. Tarkenton, Tinglehoff and Hilgenberg. They were grown men playing a game I loved as a boy. Now I watch younger men play the same game and while I still can get wrapped up in football I rarely watch it with the same enthusiasm as I did Monday.

Favre wasn’t just good and I saw him overthrow two receivers on pass plays which could’ve resulted in touchdowns. On one the receiver may have run the wrong route, turning in instead of turning for the sideline. On another Favre’s amazing arm strength overshot his man. Across the field his Green Bay replacement, Aaron Rodgers, threw for nearly 400 yards and did so under a much more ferocious pass rush, however. Rodgers looked like an accountant going over a few of his client’s bank balances. Favre looked like the guys I first tossed a football with in a backyard.

Through much of the summer Favre was vilified by a sport media because the man didn’t state unequivocally that he was playing or wasn’t playing. Funny how a 39 year old man in a rough game may have the temerity to put some thought to a decision. Then when the great one decided he would play he was vilified for skipping most of training camp, which may explain a missed pass or two. Yet his team is undefeated through one quarter of the regular season. The Vikings play in a very tough division. The Packers and Bears are playoff caliber teams. In the east the New Jersey Giants look even tougher than they did two years ago, when they were Super Bowl Champions. The man playing quarterback for the Giants is Eli Manning and he’s very good as his family genes would suggest. There are some folks who say a Super Bowl between the Giants and Indianapolis Colts would be the stuff of legend. Eli’s brother quarterbacks the Colts and won the title three years ago.

I agree. It would be a nice match-up but I want to see Brett Favre playing in the last game of the NFL season and I want to see him throw touchdown passes and dance with his teammates like a gang of 12 year olds celebrating in a field off Grove Street some 35 years ago.

Each October I grow a year older and every day I pick up newspapers telling me the end of the planet is near. Not only am I on the other side of the mountain and racing downhill but the merchants of fear are telling me the rest of you will join me and sooner than nature would once have insisted upon.

Then there is a man born in Mississippi and residing this fall in Minnesota and for the moment Brett Favre defies the fear mongers and nature.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 7:55 am 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.