During the time of the sports shutdown, it seems like Brett Favre’s name is in the media more than ever. Favre found himself in the headlines after Packers drafted Jordan Love. He also found himself there when a scandal rifled through Mississippi. Then Favre made more headlines on Friday telling Jason Wilde and Mark Tauscher that Ted Thompson was right to move on from him. Favre is a genius with the media. He plays them like a fiddle and everyone takes the cheese every single time. He ran a distraction from the Mississipi story by basically admitting he was wrong in 2008. This is straight from the Favre playbook of handling the media.

Favre acts like this down-home folksy guy, and he is some of that. But he also is truly fucking smart. The guy knows when to pivot to a new story, a new headline better than anyone in sports. This is not a criticism of Favre, rather, it is impressive to watch it unfold in real-time. Favre shifted all the talk about the Mississippi and unpaid appearances to ‘Hey, that guy I hated in the Packers front office forever, now I believe he was right.’ Is Favre lying about that? Probably not. He saw what Aaron Rodgers did and knows things worked out better. Yet that’s the beautiful thing about hindsight 12 years later. If you asked Favre in 2013 that question, he would probably tell you to fuck off.

Does this make Favre a bad person? Not at all. It is not Favre’s fault that the media and the general public take him for being almost ‘aw shucks dumb’ versus his true personality. That begs the question, should we believe Favre when he said he knew nothing about the Mississippi scandal? Honestly, I tend to believe so. This feels like the State of Mississippi was trying to leverage his name to make a profit. Despite my cynical approach to Favre’s media appearances, I do take him for his word when it comes to the Mississippi stuff. If that proved to be inaccurate for some reason, people may point to these manipulation tactics. t

Will we continue to see Favre in the media? Who knows. It seems like he is more open than ever to talk about his life. I wouldn’t be surprised if I see even more of Favre as the year goes on.

Charlie.