DanMargarita.com

The Minnesota Vikings quarterback returned from yet another brief retirement, for his 20th season in the NFL. I can’t help but think of the end of the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, when after the final credits roll, Matthew Broderick, as Ferris Bueller, emerges from the bathroom and says to the camera, i.e. the audience, ”Are you still here? It’s over. Go home.”

No doubt, Mr. Favre will one day be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I think when he’s inducted he should then be unindicted, then reinducted, then uniducted and reinducted. Seems appropriate…

Okay, I can understand someone changing their mind about retiring from the game and still feeling the urge to compete, but this is the third year in a row we’ve dealt with the “Will he or won’t he?” retirement question and frankly, it’s getting quite old, as is Mr. Favre, at least in professional sports terms.

He’s in danger of becoming “The boy who cried ‘retirement.’” When he does actually, finally, completely retire, who will really believe him? (Similar to the late comedian Dick Shawn, who, after doing a bit about a politician saying “I will not lay down on the job” made for a slow realization to those in the theater that evening that his last flop onstage wasn’t part of the act, but instead, a fatal heart attack).

This season proved to be an even more excruciating Farve-watch. He indeed seemed to finally be retired (praise be to God), when Viking’s coach Brad Childress sent three of Farve’s teammates, well had-been teammates who wanted him to once again be a teammate, to visit Farve on his ranch in Mississippi. Mind you, this is during training camp when the rest of the squad was working out in the hot misery that is August. Anyone who has ever even gone through high school football training camp in August can tell you that it is no picnic (even, I’m sure, in Minnesota).

Most likely the players that were asked to undergo the mission were happy to get away from camp for a few days, but I don’t imagine that the players who had to stay in camp were all that thrilled about not being the ones asked to go.

Hopefully, Mr. Favre hasn’t been always so non-committal in other aspects of his life. It would have made his wedding vows more entertaining.

“Do you, Brett, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

“I don’t. I do. I don’t…yes, I do.”

Favre injured his ankle last year in the final game against the eventual Super Bowl Champs the New Orleans Saints, requiring off-season surgery. That’s certainly a reasonable excuse for perhaps being undecided as to whether or not he felt up to the task of another season on the gridiron. However, if he’d given the Vikings a clear indication early enough, they could have perhaps taken that into consideration at the time of the NFL draft and drafted or traded appropriately.

Perhaps another inducement to return was the increase in salary from $16 million last season to $20 million with incentives, this season, because apparently when you only make $16 million a year, to need that extra little incentive (note to editors: if you want to increase my salary by $4 million dollars, I will be that much funnier, what with more incentive).

I guess that’s 20 million good reasons to want to come out of retirement.

As Stephen Colbert queried, “What hell is wrong with you? And what the hell is wrong with your family? Every time you spend ten minutes with them, you suddenly decide you’d rather be crushed by 300 pound linebackers!”

When Favre does finally retire, the standard retirement present of a rocking chair would seem most appropriate because like Mr. Favre, it goes back-and-forth, back-and-forth.

There’s a Country and Western song that asks the question, “How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away?”

Ostensibly a relationship song, little did the composer realize he was writing about Brett Favre.

So, once again sporting his purple number 4 jersey, Brett Favre will attempt to lead the Minnesota Vikings on another quest to win a Super Bowl; and once again it’ll probably end up with Brett Favre blowing it by throwing an ill-advised pass that will wind up in the hands of an opposing player for a game-clinching interception.

Like Brett Favre coming out of retirement, it’s something you can count on.