Brett Favre: 2009 MVP Has The "Narrative" Edge.

 He is the patron saint of football fan ambivalence. You love him, hate him, but you can't stop telling everyone about it. And whether you like it or not, that's why he is your 2009 NFL MVP.

 In a year in which the vertical game took center-stage, a handful of quarterbacks have all achieved MVP-like stats. A host of arguments have already begun to circulate favoring one skin- slinger over the other, based on all the usual biases, and they are all equally inconclusive. Statistical comparisons are hairsplitting, they all played great. Value to their respective teams is also a wash, they were all critical components to their team's successes. Favre has plenty of arguable contemporaries in 2009 in all categories except one; storyline.

 In the postseason, Favre will run onto the field the oldest quarterback to ever start a playoff game. In a career spanning two decades he's managed only two dull seasons and one of them was as a Falcon. He has scaled the heights of NFL greatness with 3 MVPs and a Superbowl XXXI ring. He has also plumbed the depths battling addiction, family deaths and his wife's breast cancer fight. Through it all he has failed at only one thing, being unwatchable. This year has been no exception, even on the sidelines, people are watching and they're talking, and there's the rub. The AP MVP is decided by people who write stories and Brett Favre has been the NFL story of 2009 from beginning to end; and AP writers are all about the hook, and the hook in sports-writing is the narrative.

Brett is the NFL's Iron-man, a shoe-in 1st ballot Hall of Famer, the comeback player of the year and has just completed arguably his best season in a career filled with superlatives. And, he's doing it with another team! (This isn't Jordon with the Wizards, if anything it's like Gretzky with the Kings.) Name a narrative, Favre has it and his MVP has publishing legs. They can write about it for weeks and they are the AP writers. Any of the other contenders are a single day colorless blurb but the Favre narrative has it all. In entertainment terms, every other potential candidate is an info-mercial to Favre's two hour epic with cartoon and intermission. Does Favre deserve the MVP because he's more interesting? No, he deserves it because he played as well (or better) as anyone AND he is more interesting.

 Favre's Stats