Book Report: Brett Favre: The Tribute by Sports Illustrated (2008)

Sports Illustrated must have had this book ready to go, as it was published in that brief period in which Brett Favre had retired as a Green Bay Packer but before he did his little thing and got traded to the New York Jets, for whom he would actually play (unlike his predecessor). Favre announced his retirement on March 4, 2008; the book was published March 31; and Favre started making unretirement motions on July 2. I presume that book sales cratered in summer and autumn. I bought this book as my first ABC Books online order during the great national time-out in 2020 and picked it up last week when I could not watch the football game on television (reading this book was probably better for me anyway).

When I picked up the book, I mentioned to my beautiful wife that I’d read another book on Favre earlier in the year. I am correct if I did not specify the year; I read Life After Favre in May 2021 (which led me to ask was it that long ago?)

The book is composed of numerous stories about Favre’s career from the magazine–perhaps these were all his cover stories. At the outset, it looked like it was going to be a pretty comprehensive retrospective, as the first articles are on his background, his drafting by the Falcons, his trade to the Packers, and the Packers’ playoff return and two Super Bowl appearances in the mid-1990s. Then we get a story about his painkiller addiction around the same time, and then…. Well, a gap, until it starts talking about his pending retirement (the first noises the first year he thought about it) resulting in a moving tribute followed by another article the next year about how he did not retire. Then half the book is given over to Sports Illustrated photographs not only of Favre but also other Packers of his time.

I must admit I became an active Packers fan during the later Favre years. Although I went to a couple of Packer games at Milwaukee County Stadium in the early 1990s, it was before Favre’s time, and I did not follow football then. I really started following in the early part of the century after the Packers lost to the Rams in the playoffs, buying and wearing Packers apparel to shine on my co-workers. So I missed the mid-1990s Super Bowl years, but some mentions of the early 21st century Packers teams and players resonated with me (and led me to ask was it that long ago?)

The articles are feature stories, which have a depth and richness to them that you don’t get from reading modern sports Web sites. I guess the 90s represented the swan song of magazine writing much like the 2020s might represent the swan song of human writing at all. But the sports photography–I don’t get that. Although they have crazy depth of field, everything is flattened to the foreground. Blockers a couple of yards down field? The crowd at the back of the end zone? Right there with Favre on the 20 yard line. Not my bag.

Also, for posterity, I would like to note this: In my whole life, I shall probably only read two books that mention that Leslie Nielsen had a “fart machine” that he used to make sounds of flatulence at unexpected times. The first was Surely You Can’t Be Serious. The second was this book, where the Sports Illustrated writer mentions that Nielsen had it when he and Favre played in a golf tournament together (although the journalist here mistakenly calls it a “whoopee cushion”). Friends, I will in all my life only read about this in two books, and I read those books one after the other. That’s some sort of cosmic kismet, and probably the best kind of luck I can hope for (all these losing lottery tickets piling up on my desk affirm it). Which might not be true, as I think I have Leslie Nielsen’s “autobiography” around here somewhere which might mention it depending upon how surely serious it is.