My Official Green Bay Packers blog

It’s been four months almost to the day since Brett said ‘no mas’ to football. There have been a few OTA’s and mini-camp in Green Bay, but for the most part there’s been nothing football going on that might make the waffling #4 decide he wants to come out of his four month retirement and play football again. But here he is, using his network of family media leakers, claiming he wants back in.

If you thought this was orchestrated, raise your right hand. Hmm. Looks like almost everyone. (For those of you who didn’t raise your hand, please turn in your anatomically correct, life-size Favre doll. Freak.)

Do you remember the things Favre said he wasn’t going to miss about playing football? Training camps and working out all the time. Now that he was retired, he was gonna love him some saturated fat and a deep ass groove on his favorite La-Z-Boy. Or his lawnmower. But when Cletus Favre, Brett’s Next-of-Kin styled PR agent, told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that Favre had been working out, that thing he hated to do, and put his comeback at 50-50, I knew the fix was in.

Cue Deliverance (that’s Cletus dancing at the 3:27 mark).

According to ESPN, Bus Cook, Favre’s agent and wash tub bassist for Favre’s hillbilly orchestra, contacted the Packers a few weeks ago about the potential for Favre’s return. At the conclusion of those discussions, Cook was reported as asking for Favre’s outright release.

I was born in Texas, which is less than 200 miles from Mississippi, so I believe I’m qualified to translate what’s going on here. Allow me a minute to fiddle with the facts: (Get it? Fiddle? Hillbilly Orchestra? Whatever. Whadda you know from funny?)

• Favre really didn’t/doesn’t get along with Ted Thompson and the regime that’s in place. Maybe because Thompson studied astronomy in college and realized that the sun does not in fact rise and set on Brett Favre’s shoulders. So Favre still wanted to play, but he wanted out of Green Bay. But how is he possibly going to get out of his lifetime contract (ok, 2 years left, whatev) with the Pack? How could he leave these fans that love him so dearly? He had to hatch a plan. A plan that would allow him to get out of Green Bay but make him look like the good guy.
• Favre announces his retirement. He claims over and over that it has nothing to do with the change in the climate at 1265 Lombardi Avenue, that’s he thought long and hard about it, and that he just doesn’t have anything to give to football anymore and “that’s it.” To quote Adrienne in Rocky III, “That’s not it!”
• Favre waits until the team is moving along with their plans for life after Brett. Aaron Rodgers starts getting all the reps in mini camp (and starts making boneheaded, rookie PR moves - more on that later). Local sports talk radio is newly entrenched in what the Packers can and should do with the offense under the leadership of the new QB. Favre believes the team has reached the point of no return - they’re all in with Rodgers and they’ve even drafted two quarterbacks, so if Favre asks to come back, he figures the team will probably just say “no thanks” and cut him loose, giving him the freedom to play wherever he wants.
• Hillbilly logic will burn you every time.
• Bus Cook plays the only cards he has with Packers management - pay Favre BIG dollars and do things his way or cut him loose. They are banking on the Packers not being willing to budge with contract terms or the direction of the team, and they’re right. But the Packers are still holding every other card. They counter with “Shut the eff up. We own the rights to you, so if you wanna play for us, it’s on our terms. If you don’t wanna play for us, we’ll trade you somewhere else. Like Oakland. Or Detroit. If you don’t like that, sit yer ass on your Simplicity lawnmower and cut. And sign your retirement papers you charlatan.”
• So they play the only other card left in the deck. Cletus Favre springs into action, contacting Milwaukee media and dishing about Favre’s itch and his workout regimen. Some fans go berserk, tears of misplaced joy streaming down their faces, taking their beer-stained #4 jerseys out of their frames to prepare for one more glorious run. The rest of us are all “Wait a minute. In the time it took for you to mow your lawn 4 times you decided you might want to come back, but you’re not man enough to own it, opting instead (like you usually do) to use your family as a backwater Pierre Salinger, leaking out your true feelings? And then deny it via text messages? Are you a twelve year old girl or a football quarterback?” Check this box for yes, this box for no.
• The Packers are predictably tight-lipped, not wanting to spoil the progress made with Rodgers sans Favre, and not wanting to alienate the fan base by looking like big meanies, trying to make Favre look bad. Here’s the thing, Ted. When Favre is doing anything business related, he pretty much looks like the barefoot hobo I saw on the Wisconsin Central Railway a couple weeks ago. Even acquitted child rapists think Favre is screwing this thing up.  So no worries, Ted. Favre has a remarkable football sense, but he’s got dingleberries where his reason and logic are supposed to be.
• The only thing that remains to be seen is whether Favre will knuckle under and take the terms offered by the Packers, or accept a trade to wherever the Packers can send him. Or maybe sit his ass down on his Simplicity and mow.

And now you have the answer to the future Trivial Pursuit question: How did Brett Favre end up finishing his career with the same team he started with, the Atlanta Falcons?

Technorati Tags: Green Bay Packers, Brett Favre, Itchy, You Got a Purty Mouth

Here’s what you already know about Tony Mandarich

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(you can skip the rehash and go straight to the babes in bikinis. Not. Kidding. Warning: May not be safe for work.)

Mandarich played his college football in the Big Ten, as an Offensive Lineman with the Michigan State Spartans. Because there was no category for the dominating blocks Tony would get on Defensive Lineman in college, his coaches coined the phrase “pancake” to describe how by the end of a play Mandarich would often end up having knocked down and flattened the opposing rusher. It was not uncommon for the defensive lineman Mandarich was locked up with to be removed from the game film frame, having been pushed 15 or more yards away from the play.

It was this type of college domination that led to him being featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated (The Incredible Bulk), with inside fluff pieces that included things like his diet of something like 2 dozen eggs a day, 2 steaks and other insane amounts of food. Essentially Mandarich was eating a small farm’s output every day. His on field punishment and off-field notoriety saw him as a top prospect for the 1989 NFL draft. At the time you could hardly disagree: Mandarich was named a first-team All-American, an Outland Award finalist and was twice a Big Ten Lineman of the Year, not to mention a Heisman trophy finalist.

Even with the scent of spectacular failure of another high-draft “non-skill” player Brian Bosworth fresh in the noses of football heads everywhere (who was, like Mandarich, rumored to have taken steroids. Well, with Bosworth, it wasn’t really a rumor), Mandarich was chosen second in the 1989 draft, ahead of Deion Sanders and Derrick Thomas, as well as Heisman winner and Hall of Famer Barry Sanders.

Within just a few years, Mandarich again appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, the SI jinx having taken hold of Tony’s career and dismembered it (Incredible Bust). After only 3 years of a 4 year contract with the Green Bay Packers, the Packers cut Mandarich, citing a failure to live up to expectations.

Mandarich owned it (which it seems all good Canadians do, and is one of several reasons why I like Canadians), telling the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in a 2003 article: “I wanted to create as much hype as I could for many different reasons — exposure, negotiation leverage, you name it. And it all worked, except the performance wasn’t there when it was time to play football.”

Four years later he found a role to fill with the Indianapolis Colts, where he played for a few years until he retired in 1998.

Where is Tony Mandarich Now?

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He got married in 2004 to a former model named Char. Total MILF.

Through parts of 2004 and 2005 Mandarich worked as an NFL analyst for a Canadian sports network, but lost that job.

He co-owns a golf course and has recently opened photography studios in both Arizona and Toronto. And this my friends is where things get interesting.

It appears Mandarich learned quite a bit in his time before and during his NFL career about manipulating the media to achieve a specific goal. I mean that in a good way (don’t get pissed, Tony). He seems to have applied that knowledge to his newest endeavor, his photography studios in the US and Canada. An article recently appeared in the Post-Crescent, as well as on the sports blog Deadspin and a bunch of other places, all in the last week or so, using a lot of identical copy - Mandarich appears to have been sending out pressers to anyone who’ll read them. There are also links to and from his business sites (and MySpace accounts and blogs and videos), showing he’s updated his media-savvy skillset to include pimping his wares on the web.

And what a life the guy has led. Sure, I wouldn’t be too happy about having to spend a life where every newspaper or magazine article with my name in it would forever include the word “bust” (unless people were carving my likeness into stone or if I had a nice big rack), but the guy got a free college education. I had to deliver effing pizzas to pay my tuition. After college he got paid millions for playing a game. He’s got a MILF for a wife, and it appears that he now is earning a living playing on his own golf course and taking pictures of 20-something nearly naked bikini models. WHILE. HIS. WIFE. TOTES. THE. CAMERA. BAG.

If I spent a week thinking about how I would have preferred my life to come out, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t top play pro football for millions then retire to spend my days playing golf and photographing nearly nude models.

Freakin’ Larry Flint didn’t have it that good.

But in all honesty, Tony, about the photography gig; If you gave me some Playboy-quality models, a polaroid camera and just enough material to cover their nipples and shaved meat wallets, I’m pretty sure I could open a successful photography studio, too.

Because the Mandarich bikini model images are plastered all over the web, I am making the bold presumption that he’d like the additional exposure these photos (with links, of course) would generate. If this is not the case, please have an authorized rep contact me and I’ll remove these pictures and replace them with other lovelies from some other photographer and give them the credit.

Technorati Tags: Tony Mandarich, NFL, Green Bay Packers, Indianapolis Colts, Where Are They Now, What’s In Your Wallet?

Now that I found out “Where Andre Rison is Now“, I can’t seem to get away from him. ‘Dre was on Pros versus Joes again the other night, catching balls over the tops of the likes of accountants and Starbucks employees.

I’ll admit that compared to coffee barristas, Rison is unbelievably fast. But ‘Dre, if you want back into the pro game, I think you’re going to have to lose that muffin top.

Technorati Tags: Andre Rison, NFL, CFL, Wide Receiver, Muffin Top