Meet the seventh-string quarterback of Southern Mississippi's 1987 football team. In the warm-ups before the third game of the season, he's hunched over on the sideline, still hung over from the night before, throwing up everywhere. Poor kid probably thinks he'll get to take it easy this game -- watch the game from the sideline, hold a clipboard, run some water out to the starters. You know, normal stuff for the backups' backup.
But then, in the second half of the game, something strange happens. The coach calls his number. Weary, blurry-eyed and perhaps still drunk, he puts his helmet on and enters the game. Two touchdown passes and one come-from-behind win later, he finds himself the new starter.
From that moment on, Brett Favre never looked back.
Throughout the rest of college and 17 NFL seasons, Favre picked apart defenses and stamped his name on a Hall of Fame ballot before he even retired.
He was an iron man: playing in an NFL-record 275 straight games. Even when his father died suddenly of a heart attack, Favre suited up that Monday night and burned the Raiders for 399 yards and four touchdown passes in one of the best -- and most emotional -- performances of his career.
He holds more NFL records than I care to count, a Super Bowl ring and a demeanor James Dean would kill for. I mean, the guy shows up to each press conference with a white T-shirt, faded Wranglers and a five-day old beard.
He played as well in game number 275 as he did in game number one.
And yet, when he announced his retirement, the media sputtered questions at him, asking how he could retire without "going out on top."
What does that mean anyway? They ask those questions as if the only way to "go out on top" is to win a Super Bowl.
How about posting a 95.7 quarterback rating in his final season (1995 and 1996 are the only two years he's done better)?
How about putting the 2007 Green Bay Packers on his 38-year-old back and leading them to within a couple plays of a Super Bowl?
How about juggling stardom and fatherhood while also tending to his wife who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004?
Do you mean to tell me that isn't "going out on top?"
For the weight that it carries, it's a phrase that's thrown around too carelessly. And for the amount it was said around Favre's retirement, I was surprised to not hear a single analyst, player, former player, coach or team president point out the obvious: Favre did go out on top.
Perhaps what surprises me the most is that in an era when the individual is glorified and idolized, it's the insistence on a team accomplishment that determines the success of the final year of a player's career. Forget MVP awards, passing records or consecutive games played, Favre's failure to guide his team to the Super Bowl in 2007 made the media question his decision to retire.
And I don't mean to downplay the importance of Super Bowl wins on a player's resume, but I do mean to make the point that it isn't the only way to "go out on top" in his final year.
It's interesting to think that had Favre not won a Super Bowl back in 1997, his greatness would be questioned. A player without a championship win is like a lawyer wi
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