The Favre Connection

It’s not that I didn’t believe; I just needed to see it for myself. And there it was, bobbling on the church windowsill. Before this year’s NFC championship game between Brett Favre’s Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants, I traveled to Green Bay to try to capture the singular bond between Favre, the legendary quarterback who announced his retirement on March 4, and the NFL’s company town, where Packer football is more than a Sunday pastime. After riding along Packerland Drive in the -7°F (-22°C) chill, I pulled into the parking lot of Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church, to glean some insight into whether football really is religion in Green Bay, and Favre the Heavenly Father. The avuncular pastor, Steve Witte, shared some concerns that fans had called a reverse on their priorities. There were the shuffled services and the canceled choir practices to accommodate Packer kickoff times. But Pastor Witte knows whence he serves. On his sill stood two sacred bobbleheads: one of Martin Luther, the other of Brett Favre.

We’ll probably never see this relationship in pro sports again. Big-league teams aren’t owned by the community, as the Packers are, and don’t play in small-market towns like Green Bay, an icy industrial city of 100,000 nestled in northeast Wisconsin. Big-league quarterbacks don’t throw like Brett Favre–for 275 straight games (including the playoffs) over 16 years, an all-time record 61,655 yds. He threw it hard and threw it wild–a record 288 career interceptions–through searing pain, prescription-drug and alcohol addiction, deaths in the family. We’ll never forget Monday Night Football, 2003–399 yds. on the day after his dad died, a memorial of spirals.

Big-league players and tiny towns don’t bear-hug each other the way Favre and Green Bay did. On the field, Favre gave Green Bay thrills, chills and a Super Bowl. Off the field, his foundation helped disadvantaged kids in the place where he worked and in his home state of Mississippi. Post-Katrina, groups of Green Bay volunteers trekked down to Favre’s hometown of Kiln to assist in the rebuilding effort there. “For a boy from the South, he was one of us,” says Jo-Ann Mikulsky, 55, a Green Bay homemaker. “He gave us all the leadership you can ask for.”

As he holsters that arm, it’s fair to ask if Cheesehead love for Favre was overripe. “No, I don’t think so,” said Irene Olson, 86, who wore a glittered Packer sweater to church the morning of the Packers-Giants tilt. “Especially since I’m one of the ones going overboard.” Dawn Bugos, a Milwaukee resident I had met at the New York City airport gate, slipped me three separate, impeccably handwritten notes describing her feelings for Favre. “Fierce. Passionate. Hilarious. No ego included–ever,” read one. In January an SI.com columnist had said a La Crosse, Wis., man named Robert Ruprecht actually dreamed about going shopping with Favre. I called Ruprecht to assess his mental state. “Believe me, if Freud were still alive,” said Ruprecht, “I would call him myself to analyze it.”

Michael Holton, who grew up in Milwaukee and now lives in Atlanta, built a Packer-themed vacation house across the street from the team’s home at Lambeau Field, complete with a flat-screen TV that displays a picture of the stadium. That TV sits above a urinal in his bathroom. “I’m in love with Brett Favre, O.K.?” Holton says. “He’s a different breed from what’s been developed over the last 10 years.”

Sure, it could all pass as creepy at times. But today athletes are harder to admire, so you have to envy the connection between Cheeseheads and Favre. Football–and sports–is worse off now that he’s gone. And though the Giants had a riveting run to the championship, I wish I could have soaked up Green Bay on a night that Favre led the Packers to a Super Bowl. I mean, is anyone less deserving of a more horrid final moment than Favre? His last fling sailed right into the hands of Giants cornerback Corey Webster, setting up New York’s upset.

Long after that game was over, past midnight, I wandered over to a Green Bay sports bar, expecting tears on tap. But you never would have known the Packers lost: fans in Favre jerseys were drinking, dancing, carrying on. Green Bay can accept a loss. “Titletown” bid goodbye to the great Bart Starr once; it will move on without Favre. It’ll be odd, though. “I can’t imagine the Packers without him,” said Olson, the nice lady from church who has been following the team for 76 years. “Can you?”