Most sports fans know that old Yankee Stadium was referred to as 'The House That Ruth Built'; well, I like to refer to myself as 'The Fan That Favre Built'.
As Favre and the Vikings spend all week gearing up for a match up against the rival Green Bay Packers on Monday Night Football, I find myself torn as to who I shall cheer for on this Monday night.
I have tried to explain my feelings on the situation to many people but never seem to get through to them how agonizing this is for me as a Packers' fan. This is not true for all Packers' fans, but for myself this is the way I can best describe it...
A true sports fan develops a relationship with a team, kind of like an extended family. In my case it was the Green Bay Packers.
During the 1991 campaign was when I came across the Packers. It started off as nothing serious, I would catch the occasional game when I could. I had no strong attachments to any of the players. There was one guy who was kind of cool; they called him Don 'the Majik Man' Majikowski. He had a sweet mullet but he was nothing special.
The 1992 season started off much like the last had ended, no strong attachments, just cheering for a team to win.
In the third game of that season the so called 'majik man' suffered an injury and was pulled from the game. He was replaced by a player who's last name I could not pronounce. That players' name was Brett Favre.
At first he didn't seem like much, fumbling the ball 4 times after he entered the game and the team was losing with 1:07 to go in the 4th quarter against the Bengals.
And that's when it happened! From their own 8 yard line, he led them down the field and threw a game winning touchdown to Kitrick Taylor for 24 - 23 final. The excitement I felt was unmatched and over the next several weeks I saw a tremendous amount of potential in a future relationship.
The following two season he would lead the team to the playoffs and things started to get serious. I thought to myself, could he be the one?
1995 was the first of three consecutive MVP's and our farthest trip in the playoffs since Lombardi. It would end in defeat at the hands of the hated Cowboys, but I never doubted that he would get the ring!
Like all healthy relationships one person had to suffer from a drug addiction, so in 1996 Favre went to rehab for vicodine abuse. Like most of his strong supporters, we cheered him on and he was better than ever, having one of his best season.
Against the New England Patriots in Superbowl 31, Brett made it official and brought the Lombardi trophy home where it belonged.
He would soon sign a life time contract, making us seemingly inseparable.
Sure over the next ten years the marriage between Favre and Packer fans had its ups and downs: losing in the 1997 Superbowl to the Broncos and tough games against the Eagles and Rams. On the other hand we saw him break almost every great passing record held by Marino and no matter how banged up he was, he never let us down. He was out there fighting every single game.
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