I don’t follow football and I realize that this is a question that has been covered many times by football fans. Why do some Green Bay fans resent or even hate Brett Favre? I realize some of it is just theater – a bar might organize an anti-Favre event just to get some press and sell some drinks, but there also seem to be fans that are genuinely upset with him.
From casually following the news at the time, it seemed that GB wanted to rebuild around a new quarterback and sort of pushed Favre into retirement. I just read the wiki entry and it seems to imply this as well. It seemed that Favre would have liked to finish his career with GB, but his timing and GB’s timing didn’t work out.
Is this not the consensus? Do these resentful GB fans feel that Favre waffled on retirement and forced GB to rebuild before they were ready? Or is there some other counter-consensus?
As I said, I don’t follow football much and as a result, I don’t have a dog in the fight. I read the articles about protesting GB fans, but they didn’t explain the logic behind the resentful fans.
The organization did push him to retire before he was ready. But that came after a couple of seasons where Favre would take several months to decide if he was going to retire or not, which was annoying everyone in the sporting world and holding up the team’s ability to plan for the following season. Two years ago, they nudged him to make a decision after he’d been waffling for a while, and he said he’d retire. Almost immediately, he changed his mind. The Packers said they didn’t want him and essentially tried to bribe him to stay retired - I think they offered a $25 million “personal services” contract - but he didn’t take it. He started showing up to training camp when he wasn’t wanted, which made the situation much more awkward and burned some bridges. It came out that he wanted to be traded to the Vikings, a team the Packers play twice a year and one of their biggest rivals. Fans were stung by that.
Ultimately he was traded to New York, and played there last season. Then he got the Jets to let him out of his contract and started an even more public flirtation with the Vikings. Then he decided to retire again when they wouldn’t give him what he wanted, which was basically to be allowed to skip training camp. Then they settled things and he un-retired again, and is now playing with a rival to the Packers.
If Favre would have stated to management in 2006 that he wanted to play in Green Bay indefinitely and intended to practice and play full time through 2010 so long as he was able the Packers would have signed him and been happy to keep him. They’d have traded Rodgers or to found a way of keeping him satisfied on the bench. I don’t think anyone disputes this.
The issue was with Favre jerking everyone around. His uncertainty is understandable, what with age and injury and everything, but he had an obligation to make a choice and do his best to stick with it on a reasonable timetable. Holding everyone hostage and milking the media attention was selfish in the extreme.
If your boss offered you a raise and a promotion at work and you decided to go back and forth on accepting if for 2 solid years and prevented them from hiring and training a replacement for you don’t you think the company would be justifiably pissed?
Also, not only did Favre decide to come back (this 3rd time), but he decided to come back with the Packers’ greatest rival. It’s like Jack Chick converting to Catholicism, or Glenn Beck emigrating to Cuba.
OK, so fans are mad because he waffled on retirement for a few years until the management decided to move on without him. Then he ended up playing for a rival. Oh, and during this time he was a prima donna and complained a lot to the press.
I can see the logic behind it, but it still seems a bit weak. The waffling and prima donna stuff is a pain, especially for management, but it seems like you could overlook it for more than a few years considering how successful he had been with GB. Obviously in hindsight he wasn’t ready to retire and can still QB well. It is probably not fair to consider hindsight, but by the same token it probably isn’t fair to complain that he ended up on the Vikings after he had been released.
If only the Bears could have these kinds of problems…
The pain to management was that they had trouble building the team during the offseason because they could never know for sure what their roster needs were. And they did overlook it for more than a few years; Favre’s offseason waffling started in the early 2000s.
Favre’s desire to sign with the vikings was an “FU” to the franchise that supported him for all the years. Yeah, he was targetting management more than the fans I’d imagine - but given the circumstances I’m not even sure that anger is justified. So if I was a GB fan and he was crapping all over his legacy while beating my team and winning my division, I’m not sure I’d feel so great about him either.
I’m a Packer fan above all else in sports, and I don’t resent Favre. I think the team absolutely made the right move at QB, but I do wish they had handled it slightly differently. But if Favre wants to keep playing and Minnesota wants to pay him $12MM to do it, well, yay capitalism.
Did it suck to get swept by the Vikings this year? Yes. Would it have sucked less if Sage Rosenfels had been QB? Not even a little tiny bit.
I think some fans feel that Favre took it personally that the team let him go, and signed with the Vikings out of spite. So that may be it. But honestly, most of the Packer fans I’ve talked to IRL are a lot more sanguine than the media has made us out to be. Having a shiny new QB who is just as good (to a rough order of magnitude) and 15 years younger takes a lot of the sting out of it.
In the years leading up to his depature, he hadn’t been that good. His last season in Green Bay went well, and in fact I was surprised he thought about retiring after that season, but the couple of years before it were erratic and not very successful. (2005: Favre throws 20 TDs and 29 INTs, team goes 4-12; 2006: Favre throws 18 TDs and 18 INTs, team goes 8-8.) That’s part of why the team was ready to start getting younger.
Fair enough I think. To be honest I assumed that the media was only reporting on the fans that could provide a story – the ones that were ranting. I figured these fans did not represent most GB fans.
As a lifelong Packer fan (and season ticket holder, and stockholder), I got tired of the annual “will he or won’t he retire” festival. When he finally retired (well, the first time), and the team committed itself to moving on without him, he seemed, to me, to become rather petulant.
I don’t resent him, but I do feel that he decided to make a business decision into a personal decision, and, as others have said, essentially flipped a big bird to Packerdom with his long flirtation with, and finally playing for, the team which is arguably the Packers’ biggest rival.