Sports Roundup by Various Sports Writers

By Tim Sullivan

When Brett Favre throws in the towel, it invariably comes back to him like a boomerang.

His retirements are a tease, a recurring drama evidently designed to evade the tedium of training camp. But though his pattern has become all too predictable, Favre never fails to leave some fans feeling blindsided, and never more than now.

Seventeen months since his tearful departure from the Green Bay Packers, Favre has resurfaced with a divisional rival, and from the sound of things, you'd think Benedict Arnold had signed on to quarterback the Minnesota Vikings.

"He's the enemy, he's the traitor," Kevin Graap of La Crosse, Wis., told the Winona (Minn.) Daily News. "If they try to retire his uniform at Lambeau Field, I'll be firing tomatoes at it."

Geographically, all that separates La Crosse from the state of Minnesota is the St. Croix River. Yet in terms of football loyalties, the waterway acts almost as a wall. Favre's decision to cross over to the competition, even after a one-season layover with the New York Jets, is being treated as treachery by many on the Wisconsin side.

"It's kind of like a stab in the heart to those people who have supported him through the years," said 22-year-old Brandon Blake, who grew up in Green Bay with a "man-crush" on Favre. "For what Favre did, to go to the enemy, it's just not right. ._._. It would be like John Elway going to the Raiders or Joe Montana going to the Cowboys."

Blake's perspective is widely shared. A Google search of the words "Favre" and "traitor" turned up an estimated 22,500 entries yesterday afternoon. And though much of the reaction to Favre's move has been overheated, the sense of abandonment is real.

"The conclusion to this saga is the discovery that our hero is not actually ours, indeed never was," Aaron Nagler wrote on CheeseheadTV.com. "It is only natural that we, as Packer fans, feel personally slighted, feel directly aggrieved, that our hero has turned."

It is only natural, perhaps, but it is also wildly irrational. As Jerry Seinfeld has observed, long-term loyalty to a particular team amounts to "cheering for laundry."

Obviously, Brett Favre is no better an individual, and no worse, when he's dressed in purple than when he's dressed in green. It should go without saying that his ultimate loyalty is to himself and to his family and, on the short term, to his employer. Still, the notion that an athlete is somehow beholden to a franchise that is no longer paying him persists in many places, though it is about as illogical as expecting fidelity from an ex-spouse.

It imagines a bond that is already broken and an unrealistic level of loyalty.

Professional sports teams trade on the enduring devotion of dedicated consumers, but their core product is inherently impermanent, exceedingly transient and liable to be abruptly terminated at the loss of a single step.

To think of Brett Favre as a "traitor," then, is to think of a professional contract as a lifetime pledge rather than a fleeting opportunity.

Nothing is forever in football, not even immortality.

When Ron Mix retired from the Chargers at the end of the 1969 season, management thought enough of the Hall of Fame tackle to retire his jersey. But when Mix resurfaced with the Oakland Raiders in 1971, the Chargers saw fit to put No. 74 back in circulation. Though then-Commissioner Pete Rozelle backed Mix in the matter, the Chargers continue to assign No. 74, currently to defensive end Jacques Cesaire.

"Still, to this day, when someone is aware that I played 10 years with the Chargers and two years with the Raiders, one of the most common responses is 'The Raiders? How could you do that?'_" Mix said yesterday. "I just don't agree with those people who say that a player should leave in his prime. Why leave? If we're enjoying what we're doing and making a good living at it, stretch it out as long as you can."

Brett Favre might be manipulative, disingenuous, selfish and thirsting for payback against the Packers, as has been alleged, and he is plainly past his prime. Still, who among us could turn down a two-year deal with a potential worth of $25 million?

"I'm 100 percent behind Brett Favre, and I hope that he leads his team to the Super Bowl and loses by only two points to our San Diego Chargers," Mix said. "And I would venture that 100 percent of the people who are acting offended that Brett is going to play for a team other than the Packers have themselves changed jobs more than once."

Mix is careful to acknowledge that the same irrational impulses Favre triggers are critical to the success of professional sports. Without the strong kinship fans feel for their favorite teams, pro football would not be a business worth billions.

Jean Twenge, an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State, says the Favre fallout is a manifestation of "group bias," which "basically means if you're in my group, I'm for you. If you're not, I'm against you." Twenge's studies of our egocentric culture, published in "Generation Me" and "The Narcissus Epidemic," lead her to theorize that self-centered individuals tend to be team-centered fans.

"I grew up in Dallas, Texas, and I got an overdose of football in high school," she said. "I can pretty much guarantee you that if a kid ended up with a crosstown rival, everyone would hate him, even if they loved him 10 seconds earlier."

That much is irrational. This much is not: Those Packers fans who hate Brett Favre probably fear him, too.

Tim Sullivan writes about sports for The San Diego Union-Tribune.

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