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My favorite football player, Brett Favre, failed to start a football game tonight for the first time in 18 years. On September 20, 1992, Favre entered for the Green Bay Packers at quarterback for an injured Don Majkowski, and started every NFL game since until tonight. A record 297-game streak for non-kickers. Favre is not only in the conversation for the greatest quarterbacks ever, the streak is comparable, and in many ways superior, to Cal Ripken's consecutive starts streak in baseball, which, if memory serves, stands at 2632 games. I would barely care about football if not for Brett Favre. He's one of a very few that I have to watch, just to see what will happen. Even when he fails, it's ridiculously exciting. When he was in his prime as the 3-time consecutive MVP in the mid-to-late '90s, I hated him, in a manner of speaking. The Packers walked around with a swagger, led by General Favre. And then Green Bay faced my favorite team, the St. Louis Rams, in the 2001 playoffs. Favre threw 6 interceptions that day, badly losing. I knew my feelings had begun to change when I wasn't happy at all. No true fan of sports wants the greats to play poorly. Perhaps it was the year after, when Favre made his 200th career start at Lambeau Field, also against the Rams, that I changed my opinion entirely. He crushed the Rams on Monday Night Football--and I was happy. After Mrs. Favre lost a family member in an ATV accident, and was diagnosed with breast cancer, these people had become more than sports personalities; they were real. And then, Brett's father Irv died of a heart attack 2 days before Christmas, and the very next night, Favre led the Packers in a rout of the Raiders on Monday Night Football. What was that score, 41-3? 4 TDs, no picks, 399 passing yards. I decided then I was a fan. He's not a perfect man; surely Mrs. Favre's biography could tell us that. And the old man's indecision about retirement the past 5 years annoys many. And this generation of football reporters and announcers has laid the veneration on a little thick. But we forgot him in the Era of the Quarterback. And now that he is about to leave us for the last time--the man of 41 has said this is truly it--those who nearly missed him are a bit nostalgic. You can count me among them. Manning is great, Brady wins, and Drew Brees is the unheralded champ. But Brett Lorenzo Favre is the prototype. To paraphrase one writer who stopped following another sport when a legend retired, when Favre retires, I don't care about football. Don't even show me a box score.

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