My Official Green Bay Packers blog

So you’re sitting there, watching your movie, and it’s getting to the really good part.  Heavy breathing, you know the deal.  And suddenly, the video cuts to a commercial about corn flakes.  No explanation, no apology.  Just a bunch of uh, momentum, wasted.

That’s what this $20 million over 10 years offer to Brett Favre to not play football sounds like to me, and now I’m pissed.  I want the money shot.  Or maybe more accurately, I want the car wreck.  This thing has been building and building since March (c’mon, deep down we all knew Favre was jerking our monkeys even then); a hose carrying brake fluid to the right front is loose, another car has a small puncture in the fuel tank.  Speeds are higher than is safe for this track, and tires are melting on the asphalt like popsicles in summer.  There’s gonna be a wreck, baby, and I want to see it.  We’ve come this far, we’ve gasped in fear at the prospect of something horrible happening to our franchise, to our fandom.  And with the reports of today, that the Packers are in fact shopping Favre’s services to NFC North teams, I’m now all. in.  I have a morbid fascination now, like the 328 cars that slow down to 3 miles per hour on the highway when they see an accident; not to help, not to drive safely through, but to crane their necks in the hope of seeing someone’s intestines sprayed on their windshield, the grey matter of their brain gumming up the spinning of their alternator.

I too want to see guts.  I want to see Favre in purple.  Or black (Navy, whatever).  I want there to be 15 round slugfests at Lambeau and the Metrodome (or Soldier Field) this year, with cracked knuckles and bloody knees, team emblems gouged from helmets and missing teeth.  I want the hallucination of Ray Nitschke clotheslining a guy running up the middle.  I don’t even care who wins.  I just want it to be mean and ugly.  Give it to me, Brett.  Scramble to daylight like you haven’t done in six years and take that bladder-releasing hit from an old teammate you used to embarrass in practice.  Let one more Hail Mary fly into the arms of (uh, Robert Ferguson?) a receiver, releasing the ball at the very last second, just before KGB or Kampman rounds the corner and plants your dick in the dirt.

I’m done worrying about how ugly this is going to get.  This is ugliest.  Brett’s managed to make this the ugliest fan scenario a single football player has ever created.  So now I want to see it.  Show me, Brett.  You wanna get nuts?  Let’s get nuts.

Technorati Tags: Brett Favre, Green Bay Packers, Money Shot, Monkey Jerking, Vikings, Bears, Rubber-necker, Nitschke’s Knuckles

Hey Favre lovers…  You just know that if this team wasn’t owned by the city, and instead had it’s deed placed in the personal safe of an insanely greedy wealthy business man, this whole Favre thing wouldn’t be going on.  He’d be in camp, throwing heaters to Driver, Jennings, Jones, Robinson and Martin.

How’s that possible?  Lemme explain.  If you’ve ever worked for and seen the upper levels of management work in a corporation, you know how this Favre thing probably played out.  I know Ted Thompson is the GM, but this is such an important, high profile thing that you know upper level Packer management has been in on it. Mark Murphy flew down to Mississippi to present the most recent offer to Favre, so you can be sure that anyone with a VP in their title has been involved.

But think about your time spent in Corporate America.  In mine, if there was a meeting to decide on something, once one pig-headed exec had it in his head that something should happen, he’d usually steamroll a couple colleagues.  The small group now held enough power to push through a decision.  And in Corporate America, once the decision is made, the bay doors have been closed and locked.  That bomb is delivering it’s payload. You can’t reverse gravity, pry open the belly of that B-52 and re-nestle that missile of destruction. There’s no recalling of executives to another meeting to hear an emotional appeal for reconsideration; executives have all sorts of mechanisms to prevent a meeting like that from ever occuring.  Insurmountable scheduling conflicts that pit that meeting against an upcoming “team building” session, for example.  Or the reprioritization of other issues over this one.  Straight up intimidation.  That meeting will never, ever happen.  Bomb’s away!

But if this team was owned by someone like Jerry Jones?  Dan Snyder?  Al Davis?  *shudder*  They could take the pulse of the community and decide by themselves that the happiness of the market might be worth the upheaval of the franchise.  They’d place a couple calls, and poof!  Favre’s in uniform, in camp, doing up-downs, giving fellow team members chicken bites.  As mega-successful owners, they’re pretty sure that every inclination they have is a correct one, even if a truckload of PhD’s disagree.  After all, do they own a football team?

So for all those that would still take Favre back, know that it’s our quaint little arrangement of a municipally-owned team that may be contributing to this thing being dragged out like a possum’s guts on the highway.

Technorati Tags: Brett Favre, Green Bay Packers, Jerry Jones, Geronilarry, Geronicurly, Geronimo!

In Fight Club, Tyler Durden (Ed Norton’s character before he realized HE was Tyler Durden), facing the prospect of losing his job because of a failing work ethic, inattentiveness and general bloodiness, proposes company blackmail to his boss: the company will pay Durden 52 weeks of severance, plus computer hardware, plus flight coupons, and in exchange he won’t go to the media with what he knows about a Big 3 automaker. When the boss rejects the offer and picks up the phone to call security, Durden kicks his own ass in his boss’s office, making it look like the boss did it. It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen, with two security guards as witnesses, unless his boss caves to his demands. Fade to next scene.

Tyler Durden whistling through bloodied lips, pushing a shopping cart full of hardware and flight coupons. We have sponsorship.

As ridiculous as that would be in the real world, this scenario’s skanky cousin is playing out in real life in Green Bay, with the Packers reportedly offering Brett Favre $20 million over 10 years to refrain from paying football. That’s right. All Brett has to do is not play professional football and he collects over $5,000 a day, every day, for the next ten years.

Are Fight Club franchises in Brett’s future? He’s already created his own Project Mayhem right here in Green Bay, so his plate may be full.

I’ve never heard of anything like this in professional sports. Paying a guy NOT to play. This of course makes the Packers look ridiculous, but before I criticize the Packers, I need to say a few things. The reason this is as ugly as it is is completely on Brett’s shoulders. Messing with the fortunes of an entire sports franchise with his coin-toss indecision has shown that Brett has put his personal needs far above the team. Wait until training camp to decide whether he wants to play? Sure, Brett. And we’ll just have Superman stop the Earth’s rotation so you can have some extra time to mull things over.

And I am still critical of Favre for not just showing up at training camp and forcing the Packers to deal with it. If he had half the stones he thinks he has, he’d do just that, instead of all this passive-aggressive, behind your back undermining of the organization. Time to man up.

But the Packers are looking batshit crazy in their stubbornness, preferring to pay Favre millions to sit out than to hold a clipboard, or trade him somewhere else. Ok fine, the Packers have zero leverage in trade talks because they know the Packers don’t want Favre and Favre doesn’t appear to want the Packers, either. But their comes a time when you have to cut your losses. Don’t cut him loose, mind you. Trade him. And don’t let him go so cheaply that another team can afford to hold onto him just long enough to field offers from Minnesota and Chicago, giving the Packers the Worst Outcome Possible. But don’t insist on a first round pick for compensation; take a second rounder, maybe a couple third round picks. But whatever you do, get him out. Otherwise, the Hillbilly Brigade led by Favre and Jeff Vanvonderen look-alike Bus Cook will be marching all over Green Bay for the next 4 months. And we don’t want that kind of feet stank all over our streets now, do we?

Technorati Tags: Brett Favre, Bus Cook, Jeff Vanvonderen, Green Bay Packers, Fight Club, We Have Sponsorship