Favre Gunslinger 101: It Ain't About You

Getting ready for a Minnesota Viking game used to be easy. Don a few fake golden braids, use them to beat your chest in rhythm to the incessant question of why, why, why are the Vikings are 0-4 in Superbowls, and then ask the wife if putting a few rhinestones in the braids make you look too fat or too 'you know.'

Now, the player Vikings fans abhorred, hated, criticized, threatened, and spent 15 years abusing in the stadium stands, the bars, on the Internet, and the newspapers is their hero.

I pity da fools.

The pity is not because I think Brett Favre can't get the Vikes to a Superbowl. I predicted the Vikes would win the NFC North last year with Tarvaris Jackson (you can look it up). The pity is not because I think Favre can't win the Superbowl with the Vikes.

As a Packer fan who lives 90 minutes from the Minneapolis Metrodome and spends every day interacting with Viking fans, I know the churning upchuck Vikes fans had to face about Favre. Before Favre was signed, a poll indicated a majority of Vikings' fans didn't want him.

No one could possibly measure the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years after years Viking fans have wasted labeling Favre as an interception machine, a drug-addicted player, a “product of the system,” a “stupid hillbilly,” "trash when compared to Montana, Elway, Tarkenton," etc., etc.

Bears fans were tough on Favre but admitted some respect. Vikings fans trashed him for many endless minutes and days and hours and years. Many of the Viking bloggers who trashed Favre for 15 years now adore him. Twin City newspaper columnists who pronounced Favre "average" or "not as good as Tarkenton" or "unable to deal with the Metrodome noise" or "unpredictable" now praise him to the high heavens, in part because saving football in Minneapolis also means saving their jobs and their newspapers.

Favre was smarter than the Vikings fans who mercilessly trashed him for 15 years.

Favre knew what he was doing moving to the Minnesota Vikings: play eight games in a climate-controlled environment with no wind, no chill, no snow, and great offensive and defensive lines. (Vikings kicker Ryan Longwell, also a Packer product, paved the way in that department: any savvy kicker knows 8 games inside a controlled-environment like a dome will really pad the stats and extend the career.)

The sad reality for Vikings fans is they root for a quarterback they spent so much time, and energy, and heart hating. The Vikings are made up of Wisconsin football products: the aforementioned Favre and Longwell, plus head coach Brad Childress, an offensive coordinator with the Wisconsin Badgers for seven years, and offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell, a Wisconsin Badger quarterback and former Packer quarterback coach.

True Vikings fans know the taxpayers will have to pay for a new stadium or a renovation of the Humpty-Dome in order to keep the team in Minnesota. Team ownership wants about $700 million from the public to get it done.

That's a pretty scary number when considering the infrastructure issues Minnesota has faced in the recent past and will likely face in the future. (And, yes, it's a different economic climate than some teams recently faced when building or renovating their stadiums).

I hope the Vikings play the New Orleans Saints in the NFC championship game and lose. Why lose? Because the hype for a new stadium will be even more fervent if the team gets to one game of the Superbowl and loses. Then the bandwagon fans who jumped on this year will be hyped to keep the team for another year. Most Packer fans would love to see the Vikings, their little brother expansion team, continue in Minnesota.

Of course,  even if the braids don’t make you look too fat or too girlish, Viking fans will always have a little burp in the getup—a little indigestion. Vikings fans will always remember all the years they hated, and protested, and jeered Favre, criticized him, thought he was a bad quarterback and spent millions of hours posting about his foibles and "lack of talent" on the Internet.

No matter what Favre does for the Vikings, he’s no Bud Grant (Wisconsin native), no Kirby Puckett, no Joe Mauer. He's not one of your guys no matter how you try to make him so.

Favre's a hired gun and, no matter how hard they try, Vikings' fans ain't the posse. They're just like those bankers in the old-time Western movies: weaselly, cross-eyed, writing the checks but always just sitting on the sidelines.

No matter what happens, a tiny piece of a Vikings’ fan’s purple heart will always connect with the term “Green Bay Packers West.”

Hey, you look real nice in those braids. And No, they don’t make you look fat at all!! Especially since your wallet is about to be stripped.

Demand a retractable roof on the stadium you are about to pay for!! Do you think Longwell or Favre would have played for you in real weather??

Packers West Forever!

Go forth and tax thyselves.