I've loved the Minnesota Vikings for as long as I can remember. Every Sunday morning at 11:55, my dad and I would march downstairs with snacks in hand to watch our beloved team play.
One player - and one player only - made our blood boil and our lives miserable for the better part of two decades.
Brett Favre.
The NFC North has some of the most heated rivalries in NFL history. For me, the regular season games that mattered most were the two against the Pack. The Vikings-Packers rivalry is, to us, what Duke-UNC is to North Carolina or what the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry is to the Northeast.
Pure, unadulterated hatred.
Former Vikings legend John Randle had a long, heated battle with Brett Favre, who he sacked more than any other quarterback. In the mid-1990s, Randle starred in a commercial that featured him buying green and gold cloth and sewing a baby-sized Favre jersey, placing it on a chicken and chasing it around a backyard. The commercial ends with the sizzle of a grill, and Randle sticking a fork into the cooking chicken. YouTube it. It's classic.
In the first few grades of elementary school in Minnesota, children are taught the basics: reading, writing, arithmetic and science. We're also taught to hate the Green Bay Packers, and especially Brett Favre.
I could never do it.
Don't get me wrong; I loathed Packers fans then, and I still do now. They are some of the most obnoxious people I've ever met, and I'm sure they feel the same about us.
But for all the jokes about Packers fans' propensity to get sloppily drunk, Vikings fans, whether some want to admit it or not, respect the quarterback from Southern Mississippi.
It's impossible not to.
Sure, he got lucky from time to time. Like on Nov. 6, 2000 at Lambeau. After a missed field goal sent the game into overtime, the Packers won the toss, and drove to the Minnesota 43. The Purple showed blitz, and Favre called an audible for a slant-and-go pattern. The Vikes' corner, Cris Dishman, didn't bite on the double move and had Antonio Freeman covered nicely. Favre threw an ill-advised lob down the sideline, and it appeared Dishman batted the pass down.
In Dwight Smith-like fashion, Dishman began celebrating like a complete ass, not realizing that Freeman had actually caught the deflected pass and was running into the endzone for the game-winning score.
It was torture.
Luck or not, for the majority of his 17 seasons in the NFL, Brett Favre was pretty damn great. Is he the best ever? No. His stats - 61,655 yard passing, 442 touchdowns, three MVP awards and one ring - are indeed absurd, but so are his 288 interceptions.
But with Favre, it's not about statistics or ESPN analysis as to whether he belongs in the top 10 of all time.
With Favre, it's about how he played the game. It's about how he played so brilliantly the day after his father died suddenly. It's about how, in 1995, he threw a TD pass to Mark Chmura after coughing up blood the series before. It's about how he lined up under center 275 consecutive times regardless of injury - a streak so remarkable that it's only rivaled by a certain Orioles shortstop. It's about how watching Brett Favre play in the snow seemed as natural as watching Mario Lemieux on the ice.
It's about how Favre represents everything the Vikings - from Rich Gannon to Randall Cunningham to T-Jack - haven't had at the quarterback spot since Fran Tarkenton: an absolute no-holds-barred gunslinger, a colorful personality and a true leader.
Count this Vikings fan as one who'll miss seeing No. 4 twice a year.
Ross Marrinson is a senior majoring in international relations. He can be reached at Ross.Marrinson@tufts.edu.
