5. Brett Favre

You’d think Brett Favre himself would be higher on this list, but you’d be wrong. I don’t begrudge the man for having a tough time retiring. He obviously loves the game and I’m sure I’ll do the same thing when I’m 60 and can’t hang up the slow-pitch softball spikes.

This whole saga has been beaten to death and this article really isn’t about Favre anyways, so I’ll just say this: I’ve never liked Brett Favre. I never really hated him either. I “hated” him because he was an overrated quarterback who somehow made a Hall of Fame career out of being a luckier Rex Grossman. I “hated” him because he was a Green Bay Packer and I was and am a Vikings fan. I “hated” him most of all for being successful when the Vikings floundered in Wild Card mediocrity and Denny Green’s clock mismanagement. (Although I wish I could go back and tell my 1997 self about Brad Childress. I would have savored the Green Era while I had the chance.)

However, I have come to hate Favre’s panache for cameras. Favre has an awareness for TV cameras that is rivaled only by his lack of awareness of defensive backs. The guy is an attention whore. At his first retirement conference, it seemed like a genuine guy was calling it quits, but as time went on, every fluctuation in Brett Favre’s life was somehow on ESPN. At some point, coincidences stop being coincidences.

4. The National Sports Media

Still, I can’t hate attention whores for being attention whores. They can’t help it. It’s like hating Hayden Christensen for being a shitty actor or Michael Bay for being a hack. They are just being who they are. The hatred should go to George Lucas for raping a beloved (Wait, I forgot about monkey and fridge-nuking – two, I mean two) franchise or the studio executives that shell out millions for Bay to direct money-making shit-storms like Transformers 2. Hate the enablers.

ESPN has been so insufferable the last two years that it has become cliché to talk about Brett Favre. Their decade-long fellating of Favre has made it impossible to talk about Brett without drowning in one’s own apathy. I can dork out about a lot of things, but nothing like football. A couple friends and I killed a long road trip by spending 2-3 hours predicting the finishes of every division in the NFL. I love football that much. But their non-stop coddling of Favre has made it so that I can’t watch SportsCenter anymore and for two years I dreaded Monday Night Football while Kornheiser was on the announcing team. No one would applaud me for giving cash to a hobo sitting in front of a liquor store, but that’s what ESPN has become.

Then SI released this cover.

Seriously, Sports Illustrated? Fuck You. You’re gonna joke about how you’ve made my last two summers a Mad Maxian wasteland, scrounging for non-Favre sports news scraps like it’s the last three gallons of gas in Australia? Fuck. You.

3. Pink Jerseys

Still, I’m a Vikings fan and Favre is a Viking. I’ll cheer for him. I thought it was as simple as that until I went to a Target store in Minneapolis the other week. The first thing I noticed when I walked into the store was a mother doing some back-to-school (shudder) shopping for her elementary school daughter. Before my cuteness reflexes could react, mom reached for the rack of pink Brett Favre Vikings jerseys.

I don’t care how good you look in pink. If you are going to wear an article of sports clothing it should be in team colors. Hell, I don’t even care if you picked your sports teams on the basis of their jersey colors, you wear those damn colors. Team colors are like national flags. And like other countries, I don’t care which colors you support, as long as you are supporting something. Unless it’s those damn, hairy Greeks. I can make fun of Greeks and not be racist, right? Also, Alyssa Milano agrees with me, and she is basically to female sports fans as Gandhi was to the non-violence movement. That is to say, of course, that Gandhi was an excuse for bloggers to put a picture of hotties in their sports articles.

Not Pictured Above: Gandhi in a Thong

2. Over-Eager Vikings Fans

As I was leaving the store, I saw a guy in a Vikings Favre t-shirt. A friend who works at Target Headquarters has told me that Favre jerseys and shirts are flying off the shelves. You saw hundreds of them in the crowd during Favre’s pre-season debut. I have no problem with owning a Favre Vikings jersey. I’ll certainly never own one, but it’s commendable that you are willing to put your love for your team above your dislikes of people on your team.

However, it seems that some Vikings fans are being way too quick to buy these jerseys. How can you hate a guy for fifteen years and then buy his jerseys as soon as you find out that he’s on your team? If you can stop hating him that easily, I think your hatred of him and your perspective on sports in general were never irrational enough in the first place. The enemy of your enemy is indeed your friend, but you shouldn’t share social security numbers and set up a joint checking account, if you get what I’m saying. Buying a Favre Vikings jersey should be a gut-wrenching experience. You should take longer making that decision than deciding which of your children to save from drowning – I mean, seriously, they’re fucking drowning so you shouldn’t be taking your time.

And don’t even get me started on all the Vikings fans who proudly wore Favre Packer jerseys to the game.

1. Brett Favre Fans

A "Packer Fan"

Of course, many of those jerseys where probably not Vikings fans at all, they were something much worse. They were Packer fans who think they can be fans of the Packers and their favorite player, who incidentally is leading their rivals against them, requiring them to cheer against their own team. I can think of nothing so vile as a sports fan. I have favorite players on every NFL team. Hell, I even think that you can support numerous teams as long as you have a clear ranking. As a high schooler, I had a #29 Jason Belser Indianapolis Colts Jersey. That jersey has become a part of my life. I wore it to school once a week. People at school started calling me Belser. People call me Belser to this day because of that jersey. In 2001, he was released and signed with the Kansas City Chiefs. There is no way in hell I would have cheered for the Chiefs over the Colts. I like Chad Pennington. I think if I were a Jets fan, I would still appreciate him and wish he was still my quarterback. That said, I would rather die in this hypothetical situation than buy his Dolphins jersey. This is still tough to think about since I’m still getting over the fact that I can like the Jets and Dolphins more now that they are no longer Indy’s divisional rivals.

Seriously, your new Favre jersey sports the colors of your most hated rival. You are betraying everything you stand for as a sports fan and I hate you most of all. Christ, maybe next week I’ll wear my bedsheets to a NAACP meeting. I’m not big on stupid crap like “It’s a Man Law! You have to hate queers!” or “It’s like an unwritten rule, man. You never put fruit in your beer!” or “This is a public high school. We expect employees to wear pants at all times,” but even I need to draw the line somewhere.