GREEN BAY, Wisconsin. Angered by the Green Bay Packers' refusal to give him his unconditional release, quarterback Brett Favre today announced he would un-retire from two other teams, Hancock North Central High School in Kiln, Mississippi, and Southern Mississippi, where he played college football.
#10, Brett Favre
"I don't care how many teams I have to un-retire from," Favre. "I'm going to be playing football come August 18th," when two-a-day football practices can begin under state interscholastic athletic rules in Mississippi.
Favre started as an 8th grader for the Hancock North Central baseball team, but played only three years of varsity football during which he averaged five passes per game in a wishbone offense. Under Mississippi High School Athletic Association rules, he accordingly has remaining eligibility of either two years or 680 passes, whichever comes first.
Southern Mississippi Golden Eagle: "Brett's back!"
Favre frequently played with a hangover at Southern Mississippi, including a thrilling 1987 come-from-behind victory over sixth-ranked Florida State, and will seek a do-over for any game in which his blood alcohol level exceeded .04. "Brett can play better hungover than a lot of guys can sober," said Favre's agent, James "Bus" Cook. "Carson Palmer's always calling me asking me what he drinks."
The ex-wife of New York Giant defensive end Michael Strahan held a garage sale at her $3.6 million Montclair, New Jersey, mansion over the weekend saying she can no longer afford to keep the 30-room home, which includes an 8-car garage. Associated Press.
It was a sad day for Jean and Michael Strahan, but only Jean was around to live it; their hopes, their dreams, arrayed along the edges of their quarter-mile-long driveway for all the world to see the dejected state to which they had fallen.
In happier times.
The couple's marriage had ended in a bitter divorce, with the judge awarding Jean $15.3 million and monthly child support of $18,000. It was no wonder she was forced to part with her Garden State Turnpike throw pillows and New York Giants lap blanket--a steal at $450.
"How much you want for this 2001 Defensive Player of the Year Award?"
Strahan has to date paid his wife more than half of what the judge awarded her, but he's holding out on the last $6.5 million. "It's not about the money--it's the principle of the thing," he tells a reporter from the Bergen County Record. "She put all my Earth, Wind & Fire cassettes out on a table in the hot sun, and now they sound like Jabba the Hut on Prozac."
"This here Lamborghini's got a ding in it--you take $80,000 for it?"
For her part, Jean says she is just pinching pennies as any newly-divorced woman should. "How do you put a price tag on a dream?" she asks as a little girl tugs her skirt to ask how much she wants for a Big Wheels riding toy that retails for $99.99 at Toys 'R Us.
"That's $275 sweetie, because the child of the all-time sack leader for the New York Giants rode in it, okay?"
"I have fifty cents."
"I'll take it."
Yeats: A Philadelphia Eagles fan during the Sonny Jurgensen era.
Jean turns back to a reporter who, recalling a line by Yeats that he read in a college English class, asks her whether she will be able to salvage anything from the "foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart" that her once-beloved home has turned into.
"Good Lord--it's a life-size Brett Favre doll!"
"Is it really foul?" she asks, curling up her nose. "We're on town sewer, but sometimes it backs up in the spring."
An elderly woman in a housedress picks through items in a plastic laundry basket, searching for toys for her grandchildren. "Good Lord!" she exclaims. "It's a life-size Brett Favre doll!" And indeed when she holds up the limp figure for inspection it is a dead-ringer for Green Bay's Mr. Durability, going down to allow Strahan to record sack number 22.5 of the 2001 season to top Mark Gastineau's record of 22.
The infamous Sort-of-Sack.
"How much you want for this?" the old woman asks Jean.
"That? That should be in the Canton."
"I'll give you a dollar for it."
Jean waits a nanosecond before saying "Sold!"
The woman pays and walks off as her Jack Russell terrier nips at Favre's frayed right foot.
At the end of the day, Jean totes up her take--$49.25 cents--with a smile on her face.
"Big Wheels, fifty cents. Favre doll--one dollar. Taking seven and a half million from your ex-husband--priceless."
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
