Favre Fever

Usually on my drive into work, I try and listen to some kind of talk radio. Whether it be NPR or something sports related, I find it refreshing to catch-up (katsup?) on whatever might be happening in the world/country. However, for the past few months the sports and news networks on TV, radio, and printed press have been saturating us with information on whether Brett Favre plays football in Green Bay, or ever again. Pardon me if I could care less. Let me preface this by saying that I've never been a big NFL fan to begin with (I've always been a college football fan). I find a great deal of them to be over-paid children that can't seem to control their actions or verbage. What they fail to remember somewhere along the way is that they play a game for a living. They don't do scientific research (does the film room count?), cure cancer, find ways to reduce the debt or high gas prices. THEY PLAY A GAME! What's worse is, they get paid far more than any of the aforementioned. But I digress.

Mr. Favre, after last season, claimed that he was going to retire from professional football. Months later, as the new football season rolls around, he begins to feel "the itch" to play again. I'm sure it is difficult for any competitive person to sit out and watch after playing the game they love for so many years. I can understand their desire to potentially come back. You see it from superstars like Roger Clemens and Michael Jordan. But the way this whole Favre fiasco has been thrown in our faces and covered non-stop for the past few months makes me ill. Is there really nothing better to report on in sports than what time Brett Favre went to the bathroom? There are cameras and reporters stationed (no joke) at some obscure Mississippi airport just in-case Mr. Favre decides to fly to Green Bay. What kind of sad life do you live where your reporting circles around the whim of an almost 40 year old quarterback and his decision to fly somewhere? To take it further, what kind of sad life do you have to live to mind-numbingly report 24/7 on this guy's every move in the first place, let alone the idiot waiting at the podunk Mississippi airport?

In the grand scheme, what does this media circus say about our culture? What does it say about what we value? If we didn't value the information in some fashion, there would be no need to report it, right? So where does this value come from? From Green Bay fans who want to see if their "Maximus" has come back to the Colliseum (Lambeu Field)? From NFL fans as a body? I highly doubt that one. This may sound like I am railing on sports in general, but I'm not. I'm a fan of teams and I cheer and jeer as much as anybody. In fact, I think sports can be a great venue for relief and even healing. What I hate is when the media (not just sports media) finds what they feel to be a significant story and they run it into the ground over and over again. They do so to the point that I begin to hate whatever it is they are covering, where as I wouldn't have had they not. Maybe real journalism can make a comeback one of these days.