{"id":134644,"date":"2020-09-29T11:41:27","date_gmt":"2020-09-29T19:41:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=134644"},"modified":"2020-09-29T11:41:27","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T19:41:27","slug":"gunslinger-the-remarkable-improbable-iconic-life-of-brett-favre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=134644","title":{"rendered":"Gunslinger: The Remarkable, Improbable, Iconic Life of Brett Favre"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeff Pearlman wrote in this 2016 book<\/a>:<\/p>\n

* \u201cThe 8,000-pound gorilla in the room was Brett\u2019s philandering and Brett\u2019s drinking,\u201d said Bill Michaels, host of the Packers\u2019 postgame show. \u201cWe all knew it\u2019s there. But most of us chose to ignore it.\u201d Favre went out when he wanted to go out; he had sex with whomever he wanted, whenever he wanted. There was a Milwaukee bar, Taylor\u2019s, with couches and a spare room designated for Packers players. Favre, Winters, and Chmura became frequent Tuesday-night attendees\u2014Deanna and Brittany be damned. \u201cIt was widely known that Favre, Chmura, and Winters would come to Taylor\u2019s, and they could do whatever they desired,\u201d said Tom Silverstein. \u201cYou\u2019d hear all types of stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a Madison bar, Buck\u2019s, overflowing with drunk, bubbly coeds from the University of Wisconsin. \u201cI saw Brett and his guys there a lot,\u201d said one Madison native who later, as a journalist, wrote extensively about the Packers. \u201cThey\u2019d be down on State Street, drunk, surrounded. All the stories ended with Brett with this woman, Brett with that woman. I think half of Wisconsin has some Favre-drinking-woman story. An amazingly high percentage of this state saw Brett doing something, somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Favre was trapped between being what he was supposed to be (a loyal partner and devoted father) and what he was (a 20-something football player with money to spend and women to please). Perhaps in other locations (New York, Los Angeles, Miami), the media would catch wind and investigate the titillating world of a superstar gone wild. But not Green Bay; not Wisconsin. Dating back to May 29, 1848, the day it gained statehood, Wisconsin\u2019s predominant non-Indian ethnicity was German\u2014\u201cand Germans are not ones to look down upon drinking,\u201d said Tom Oates, the veteran sports columnist for the Wisconsin State Journal. \u201cWhen towns in Wisconsin were founded, they\u2019d build a church, a mill, and a brewery. It\u2019s the odd state where drinking is celebrated.\u201d Hence, while many saw Favre and his friends stumbling from bars, or chugging pints, the behavior was never deemed problematic, even with football games to win.<\/p>\n

The local press, meanwhile, covered the Packers with the hometown friendliness of a 500-circulation rural weekly. Most of the beat writers and columnists knew of their quarterback\u2019s off-the-field wildness, but in Green Bay such information was not to be divulged. Unless there was a direct link between Favre\u2019s partying and Favre\u2019s Sunday performances, his late-night whereabouts mattered not. \u201cI remember struggling, asking the editors, \u2018How far do we take this? Do we find out details?\u2019\u201d said Silverstein. \u201cWe talked about sending an intern to the bars, but never did. And a lot of the stuff was exaggerated. You\u2019d hear, \u2018Someone saw Brett snorting coke off the bar,\u2019 and you\u2019d sort of sigh, assume it\u2019s not true, and move on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was protected,\u201d said Kyle Cousineau, a longtime Packers blogger. \u201cYou could write about Brett Favre\u2019s play. But him drunk with some girl? Never. It wasn\u2019t allowed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Multiple journalists who covered the Packers agree that, during Favre\u2019s heyday, the team made it clear that reporting on his hard-living ways would result in restricted access and, ultimately, no access. This wasn\u2019t New York, where the Post and Daily News would sneer at such an order, then blast the team in an editorial. No, this was Green Bay\u2014where the townspeople owned the team, and victories trumped journalistic integrity, and being a Packer meant wide-ranging protections. \u201cGreen Bay isn\u2019t a city,\u201d said Jeff Ash of the Green Bay Press Gazette. \u201cIt\u2019s a Packer city.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every now and then, a member of the team would get in trouble with the law. But it took something especially big for that to happen. A Packer who raped someone might wind up behind bars. Armed robbery? Also not a great decision. Otherwise, all was good. \u201cIf you\u2019re a player here and you get arrested, it has to be by a cop who doesn\u2019t want to be a cop for long,\u201d said Jerry Watson, owner of the Stadium View, a bar near Lambeau. \u201cBecause they\u2019ll fire him, and switch him to doggy patrol. Will the cops admit that? No. Is it the truth? You bet. If you\u2019re a Packer and you get picked up for drunk driving, they\u2019re gonna call the team and handle it quietly. The G on that building doesn\u2019t really stand for \u2018Green Bay.\u2019 No, it\u2019s for \u2018God\u2019\u2014because that\u2019s what the team is here.\u201d<\/p>\n

As far as the franchise was concerned, Brett Favre was not to be touched\u2014unless \u201ctouching\u201d meant supplying him with pills to numb the pain. Which the training staff and teammates did. As Favre\u2019s play morphed from good to great to legendary, few people noticed that anything was awry. In the Packers locker room, he was the same guy he\u2019d always been\u2014snapping towels, pulling down shorts, spitting out rap lyrics like a hip-hop guru. LeRoy Butler, the star safety, calls him \u201cthe best teammate in the history of sports.\u201d<\/p>\n

* [1999] Now, however, Green Bay was 4-5 and sinking quickly. Sports Illustrated even featured the team on the cover of its September 27 issue with an accompanying headline, BOTTOMS UP. Wolf, the man who considered [Ray] Rhodes the solution to the franchise\u2019s fortunes, was bewildered by his coach. Where was the emotion? The passion? Mostly, where was the discipline? Many of the team\u2019s practice rituals reminded Wolf of the dreaded Lindy Infante era. Jerry Parins, the team\u2019s longtime chief of security, was hearing more and more weird things about Rhodes\u2019s behavior, so he did some investigating. \u201cRay was going out to the casino, and he\u2019d stay there until 3, 4 in the morning,\u201d Parins said. \u201cThen people would call me and say, \u2018Your head coach is in the casino.\u2019 Everything that year turned relaxed, and the players knew what they could get away with. I love Ray, but he lost control.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was an awkward and uncomfortable thing\u2014firing the first African American coach after a sliver of a chance, with a marred quarterback and an aged roster\u2014but Wolf felt he had little choice.<\/p>\n

* Though Irv was never diagnosed as an alcoholic, he was an unrepentant drinker whose dependence on alcohol went far beyond the occasional beer. Stories abound of an intoxicated Irv Favre falling asleep with his head slumped atop a wood bar; of him saying inappropriate things, doing inappropriate things….<\/p>\n

A waitress at one of the more popular Green Bay bars recalled the evening Irv [Brett’s dad] offered her $100 for sex. When she declined, he upped the ante to $200. \u201cHe tried to pay me off, right there,\u201d she said. \u201cI said, \u2018Do I have w-h-o-r-e written across my forehead?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

One time, when the Packers played in San Francisco, Irv was in Brett\u2019s hotel room when the phone rang. His son had stepped out, so Irv answered. A young woman was on the line, searching for the quarterback. \u201cThis is his daddy,\u201d Irv said. \u201cI taught him everything he knows. You bring that sweet little pussy over to the apartment and I\u2019ll fuck it real good.\u201d<\/p>\n

She showed up later, clad in leather\u2014looking for Brett.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Irv hit on women because he was aging a bit and looking for acceptance,\u201d Kelly said. \u201cWe\u2019d drive, and Irv would say, \u2018When women get older they don\u2019t want it anymore.\u2019 That was a disappointment to him, and it probably led him to straying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Irv\u2019s father, Alvin Favre, hadn\u2019t been faithful to his wife, and his father\u2019s father probably hadn\u2019t been faithful to his wife. Infidelity seemed to come naturally to Favre men. Brett\u2019s came accompanied by guilt. Irv\u2019s generally did not. \u201cLove was a complicated thing with Irv,\u201d said Kelly. \u201cHe never received affection from his dad, and he didn\u2019t give much affection to his kids.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeff Pearlman wrote in this 2016 book: * \u201cThe 8,000-pound gorilla in the room was Brett\u2019s philandering and Brett\u2019s drinking,\u201d said Bill Michaels, host of the Packers\u2019 postgame show. \u201cWe all knew it\u2019s there. But most of us chose to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t