The Remarkable, Improbable, Iconic Life of Brett Favre

Boy, was I looking forward to the 2023 football season! The Green Bay Packers finally let go of Aaron Rodgers and all his drama, and the warm breeze Wisconsin felt this Fall was the state’s collective sigh of relief. We’ve now got Jordan Love under center, and as far as first-year starters go, we’ve got no complaints.

Green Bay’s first major quarterback shift in 15 years made me sentimental for the supposed “good ol’ days” of my youth. My interest in football began when Don Majkowski was our starter, but I really started paying attention when Brett Favre took over and games (wins and losses both) got interesting. I can’t deny that Brett Favre was a hero of mine growing up, not just because he made the games entertaining, but because he never gave up. Like never, playing with broken bones and all sorts of problems. He just kept playing the game.

And then he kept playing. And kept playing. And kept playing, even after retiring 2-3 times.

It came to a point (no joke) that when he returned from retirement to play for the Jets and then the hated Vikings, people in Wisconsin couldn’t give away a Brett Favre jersey. It was the hottest free-box item at garage sales, and no one wanted them. Those green-and-gold #4 jerseys were piles of garbage to us after 2008, like a grimy old mousepad or a cracked CD case.

Fifteen years have passed though since Favre left the Good Guys, and enough water’s gone under the bridge for me to get excited about reading this biography. It’s thick and it’s filthy and it’s way more than I expected, but it’s a fantastically researched book and will likely stand as the epitome of Brett Favre biographies—unless the impossible happens, and Grandpa Favre himself pens a tell-all autobiography before he dies. Ain’t gonna happen.

What surprised me most about this book was to find out how well the Packers hid “the real Brett Favre” from the public’s eye. Or maybe everyone but I knew what an obnoxious, arrogant, adulterous, mean, alcoholic, drug-addict he was, and my parents just did an incredible job of sheltering only me from reality! Whatever it was, I was shocked to learn what a horrible person Brett Favre (the “devout Catholic”) was—I can’t say “is” because this is all seven-year-old information, and God can do amazing things in people’s lives, if they let Him. I pray that’s the case for Favre.

This book was a jolt of reality to me, though, for three reasons. First, we fans can only know so much about the athletes we root for, and we tend to put them on a pedestal (as we do with all celebrities), forgetting that they’re humans just like us who struggle with real-life issues, despite their wealth and time in the spotlight. What we see on TV or hear in interviews isn’t even the tip of the iceberg, but a picture of the tip of the iceberg. No one but their families and teammates know these people, and that’s where things should stay. But they don’t.

Second, we fans have a real problem with wanting to know even more about these athletes, more than we really should know about their private lives, foibles, struggles, and sins. There’s no reason for us to care how often Brett Favre, Frankie Winters, and Mark Chmura went clubbing, how drunk they got, how often they got in trouble, or how many women they slept with along the way. It’s soap-opera material. Tabloid fodder. Garbage we don’t need to care about…except when you realize that your kids look up to an idolize people like this and want to be just like them! Argh! It’s infuriating!

And that brings me to the third reason: we fans who care too much about these athletes, their teams, and their sports really need to get our priorities straight. I was drawn to read this hefty book because I had invested so many hours during my youth caring about the Green Bay Packers, watching their games, collecting their cards, wearing their gear, reading their articles, surmising about their future, etc. I cared a lot about the team and players, so naturally, I’ve got years of interest invested in their stories and thus a lot of unanswered questions and a thirst for trivia. That’s totally normal, and yeah, a book like this absolutely delivers in those areas. But it also highlights a gaping hole in my life: what a waste of time! No doubt, professional sports is an enormous industry that provides hundreds of thousands of jobs, and it entertains hundreds of millions more. But sports don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, and if a fan truly “needs” this amusement in his life, then something’s bad wrong. Priorities need to change.

I’ve enjoyed reading Packer biographies in the past, books about such great players as Reggie White, LeRoy Butler, and Donald Driver. I’ve got a few more on my shelf, and I’ll probably enjoy them in the coming seasons as well, but Gunslinger has honestly left a bad taste in my mouth. It makes me question whether I’d really want to read a biography about Aaron Rodgers in the future, and it also makes me doubt right now what kind of person Jordan Love really is, whether he’s as nice as he seems and as the PR machine says he is, or if he’s another trash bag of drugs and drama like the guys who went before him. I don’t like that feeling.

This book was well written, though filled with wanton vulgarity—oh, sorry, “color”—so beware of that. Most of the juicy details in this book were hidden from me over the years, but even at 40, I still don’t need to know it all! I hope my kids never get famous, and I also hope they choose their heroes better than I’d done.

©2023 E.T.

Read More Football Books:

• In the Trenches: The Autobiography by Reggie White (1997)
• The LeRoy Butler Story by LeRoy Butler and James J. Keller (2003)
• Playing for Pizza by John Grisham (2007)
• The Two-Minute Drill to Manhood by John Croyle (2013)
• Driven by Donald Driver (2013)
• Gunslinger by Jeff Pearlman (2016)