Brett Favre as Viking QB? Mixed feelings

It's summer, when the National Football League doesn't get a lot of media attention. But sometimes a story comes along that keeps the NFL at the top of "Sports Center" even during the height of the NBA and NHL playoffs.

For the second straight summer, the story is whether Brett Favre will come out of retirement. Last summer, Brett decided to come back and play for the New York Jets. For the first half of the season, he did pretty well. The Jets were talked about as a playoff contender. The Jets swooned in the latter part of the season, in part because Favre didn't play as well. His shoulder was banged up, it turned out, but it wasn't just that. He also was 39 years old and a 16-game season was getting the best of him.

So Favre retired again. But now the sports news is aflutter with talk that Favre is talking with the Minnesota Vikings about playing quarterback in a purple uniform. This, in fact, is what Favre wanted to do last summer, but he couldn't make it work with the Vikings and ended up with the Jets.

Just like last summer, I have mixed feelings about all this. It's no secret that Favre has been my favorite player in my favorite sport to watch for a very long time. He's a great player and a great Packer. But while many Packer fans were royally ticked off when Favre came back in a Jets uniform, I took it in stride. I bought a T-shirt with "Brett the Jet" emblazoned across the front. I watched a bunch of Jets games last season and enjoyed watching No. 4, as usual.

This summer is a little different, because we're talking about the Vikings, not the Jets. The Vikings are in the same division as the Packers. This is not cool. The very last thing any Packer fan wants to see if Favre suited up in purple and warming up on the sidelines at Lambeau Field. This is just wrong and bad.

Still — just being honest — I'd love to see Favre play one more year . . . if he's healthy enough to do so. He needs shoulder surgery. It's fairly minor, apparently, and I don't know why he didn't get it done in February or something like that, just in case, of course.

An interesting development last week: Fran Tarkenton, the great Vikings QB, blasted Favre, saying he screwed the Packers and wouldn't help the Vikings if he comes back. Tarkenton said a lot more stuff in several radio interviews and on his blog, including that Favre is not a team player and thinks only about himself.

In the Twin Cities, Tarkenton's comments didn't appear to fare too well. It turns out Tarkenton wasn't much of a team player himself, and some wondered why he had suddenly taken such an interest in the Vikings after all but ignoring the team for years. Apparently he never comes to Vikings games and doesn't spend much time in Minnesota.

But more interestingly, the Twin Cities sportswriters seem to be in love with the idea of Favre coming to play there. Mainly, they say he'd be a lot better than the quarterbacks the team has now. But there's no question they also are quite familiar with Favre, who came to town at least once a year for 15 years or so. He's a nice guy, a good quote, and he would generate tremendous copy throughout the season.

Emotions aside, can you imagine the attention the Vikings-Packers games will generate this coming season if Favre suits up? Who wouldn't watch those games? It doesn't hurt that both teams are good and likely playoff contenders.

Bottom line: I'm tentatively okay with Favre playing for the Vikings, as long as he Packers at least split with the Vikes this season, which is the usual thing anyway. Also: I will not buy or wear anything related to the hated Vikings.

Part of me wants Favre to retire and move on, but I also can tell that he isn't a guy who has a lot to do in retirement. He's a quarterback — born and raised. It's his DNA, what he does well, and retiring at age 39 with nothing to do is a recipe for a sad couple of decades. Look at Mike Tyson and other boxers. They got nothing going on in retirement.

Favre will have to come to terms with retirement at some point, but maybe he's got one or two more years in him. As a big football fan, I hate to think of him poking around his property in rural Mississippi with nothing much to do.

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