If you think you know cheese you’d better think again. Green Bay, Wisconsin, is the beginning, the middle, and the end, when it comes to our favourite dairy product. Put it this way – if you’re from this town and you don’t like cheese, people will look at you funny, point and nudge when you walk past them. Bit like when you tell people that you live in Milton Keynes. Or if someone finds out that you own an Backstreet Boys – Live! album. Only worse.
And if you’re a Wisconsian (I appreciate this may not be an actual word) and you don’t like the Packers – Green Bay’s other famous offering – then you’re just plain weird. Lots of teams try to blag it, but the Pack is a genuinely legendary NFL franchise.
For starters, the championship trophy that all 32 teams aim to get their grubby little mitts on every year is named after one of their own – Vince Lombardi, their former head coach, and winner of five championships during the 50’s and 60’s. You know you’ve made it when people with fancy titles decide to name things after you and in Lombardi’s case, they didn’t stop there, and also went for a street, a square, a school, an award for college players, hell even a steakhouse. It’s possible the town’s dignitaries got hammered and went crazy with Google Map to end up with that list, but whichever way you (cheese) cut it, it’s a legacy with a capital L.
Speaking of legacy, another favourite Green Bay son is the NFL’s leader in almost every passing record going, the great, and recently much maligned Brett Favre.
Here’s a man so confident in his all round awesomeness that he decided to retire and come back to the game 419 times. The “will he, won’t he” merry go round in every off season for the past 7 years became so collapsing-in-on-itself post modernist, that if it was a plotline David Lynch would have dismissed it as “too confusing. And a bit weird.”
In 2008, after playing his entire career for the Packers, Favre quit in the glare of the national media again, then decided he wanted back in. No change there then. He figured that the same shtick he’d pulled for the previous few years – quit at a tearful press conference, then right before the season was due to start have a change of heart – would work again. Except this time: it didn’t. The Packers moved on, closed the door on Favre, backed a young unproven guy with a promising mullet (Aaron Rodgers) and rode of into the sunset. At this stage, a shell-shocked Favre carried most of the public’s sympathy – crucially in Green Bay too.
Head bowed, he moved to the New York Jets, did reasonably well for a while, then was quite pants, retired again, and then came back again. Phew. Except this time, Brett didn’t go back the Pack. Or the Jets for that matter. He joined the Vikings of Minnesota. Remember that public sympathy and Green Bay lurrve I mentioned a moment ago? Yea, about that.
The Premier League equation is something like this:
Gary Neville (+ 44% more talent) joining Liverpool (x) Steven Gerrard lifting FA Cup for Man Utd = Brett Favre joining the Minnesota Vikings.
And what’s more, rubbing salt in the wounds of the Pack fans who had revered him for years, then mourned his passing, he played well. Really well. The Vikes almost made the Super Bowl. It was as close to a Hollywood blockbuster as a Peter Jackson directed Tom Hanks vehicle co-starring Colin Firth, George Clooney & the dog from K-9 in a comeback role.
Predictably, Favre (almost) retired again but came back for one last dance. Guess it was a little like those moments in life when you know the Jagerbombs are a bad idea but you just roll with it anyway. Favre coming back this year was a disaster with severe physical consequences and was more beaten up than a $40 a show jobbing no holds barred wrestler gigging out of Flower Mound, TX. It was sad to watch. The occasional bullet notwithstanding, it was a little bit like watching the outcome of your Dad standing up drunk at Christmas lunch and shouting “I’m gonna go play some NFL” and heading down, suited up, to Heinz Field.
And here’s the thing: because of this dramatic, almost pathetic fall, no one in Green Bay knows what to make of him anymore. Do they love him, loathe him, or feel sorry for him, much like how many of us English feel our team trot out wearing the 3 Lions. Sure, the rather odd and unclear sexual harassment allegations have added a less than salubrious tint to the whole perspective, but rational thinking tells us that this can’t have clouded too many fans minds given how quickly Michael Vick has returned to favour, among many of Favre’s peers proven guilty of far worse than the accusations levied against him.
And try as they might, the Packers – as a collective organisation, and particularly the hitherto formidable Rodgers – can’t quite seem break the shadow of Brett’s faded Wranglers. Rodgers has had a terrific season, yet inevitable comparisons with Favre hound him wherever he goes. It’s the way of the media in the modern world. Even by markedly not trying to draw a parallel between the two, hacks will hamfistedly do so. A self perpetuating prophecy if ever I saw one.
No surprise, because Favre was damn good – probably one of the all time greats, though to be honest, he broke most records going because he played about 47 times more than any other QB. He famously took the Cheese Heads back to the promised land, winning the Vince Lombardi Trophy in 1996. He even pulled Cameron Diaz in There’s Something About Mary for Christ sake.
And maybe the only way that the post Brett Pack will achieve closure is by going onto beat the Steelers in Super Bowl XLV. In an appealing twist of symmetry – despite not having worn the green & yellow for almost 4 years – Favre needs this win as much, maybe even more, than the Packers do. Lose and the purgatory remains. A Steelers victory will ensure a prolonged bout of apathy and emotional neutrality from Cheesheads to their long lost brother. Win and all is forgiven. The prodigal son can return. Beers are on Brett. About that Number 4 jersey? Retire it, pal. I’ll see you at the Hall of Fame dinner.
And as much as I’d love to see the latter, honestly, can we stomach the gush that will ensue? Mind you, we’ll have all sat through the Black Eyed Peas at halftime, so after that, if we’re still breathing, anything’s a plus, I guess.
