Remember that thing he did, and how much it drove you crazy? Yeah, but better.

I'm as guilty as the next football fan for having too many things to say about Brett Favre.  His career and latest season-ending mistake (whether it's even appropriate to call it that) have been dissected and re-bagged and dissected again like a small town upper-level biology class fetal pig.  Everyone's sick of it.  Even the smell of the debate ("will he or won't he retire?") makes people throw up just a little bit in their collective mouth.  But before I can let it go for this off-season, I need to break it down one last time.

For the super majority of Packers fans, Favre is an old girlfriend (or boyfriend, depending on your chosen gender).  Actually, he's "The Ex" from hell.  The one you took to Prom, the one you went all the way with for the first time, the one that (cover the kids' ears, folks) is a first-ballot Hall of Famer.  In the sack.  But after years and years of creative shtupping, Favre is the one that the Packers dumped because they met somebody new that was kind of hot in college (Aaron Rodgers).  Favre and the Packers goofed around with trial separations and reunion hook-ups.  But a few years ago, Favre was gone for good after the Packers broke it off.  If that was all there was to it, both parties would have gone on with their lives.  Except that after fooling around for a year, Favre did the unthinkable.  He hooked up with the next door neighbor.  And Packer fans can hear them doing it ALL THE TIME, making a big deal out of how great it is and how could anyone have ever let something like this go.  So when it looked like Favre and his new flame were on their way to the Big Show, Packers fans cursed their "Ex" with the sort of vitriol that could never be taken back.  In the end (at least for now), Favre didn't get the storybook wedding and honeymoon that was desired.  And Packers fans jumped up and down and partied extra loud in the parking lot outside where the ceremony was to take place, making it sound like they always knew it wouldn't work out and that anyone that messes around with Favre ends up broken-hearted in the end.  Favre's new flame wants him back.  Maybe this time it will be different, they're trying to tell him.  Maybe this time, the Vikes will get what they've always wanted and in the process Favre will get what he always dreamed about.  Meanwhile, Packers fans are still taunting and laughing.  Maybe while imagining how great it once was.  Maybe while closing their eyes and trying to make it work with the new flame.  It will never be the same, and all those old pictures and memories are not only faded.  They're now dirty and some Packers fans can't even flip through them any longer.  It just hurts that much.

Sound ridiculous?  Probably.  But the point for me is that all this overheated emotion and overly sexualized lust or revenge or whatever it is misses the real point by a million miles.  Money.  The NFL is a business.  And they are the ones that truly love him.  Brett Favre came back and for one year got $12M in salary.  In endorsements alone, I'd bet that he can pull down $50M in the year ahead - even if he retires for good this time.  If you think not, consider his substantial upside in a post-Tiger Woods world (grizzled veteran who just had his best year ever at age 40, married to his high school sweetheart, appealing for his toughness and, yes, he still takes chances like a big ol' kid).  But aside from what may be to come, just consider what has happened to both franchises from a money position.  The sales of Vikings merchandise went up 533% from 2008 to 2009.  Their merchandise was the Number 3 team as of December 2009, Brett Favre's Vikings jersey was #1 among all players.  The Packers?  Last year by some rankings they were in the top 10 (#8 as of before this Season).  As of December 2009, they don't even make the top 10.  They've got no players in the top 25.

Say what you will about Brett Favre.  But I can tell you one thing for certain.  I'm not going to be blogging about it anymore.  Because on some level, that's exactly what the NFL wants.  And I've got other things to do, what with life and all.  I suggest everyone else look elsewhere for their drama, in similar fashion.

Hope your own merchandise is flying off the shelves today, no matter what color.  Rock on.

Yea, but Jay Leno claims he's the Brett Favre of Late Night TV, so that kinda blows my whole point...

Aside from adding my support to Conan O'Brien - especially given the thoughtful wit employed in today's written statement where he lays out why he thinks NBC sucks - the time has come to reflect briefly on the Green Bay Packers.  Or, more specifically, on the end of their season in the Wild Card game loss on Sunday to the Arizona Cardinals.  If ever there was a game that neither team deserved to win, it was this mess.  The Cards pulled out a 51-45 victory in Overtime of the highest scoring game in NFL Playoffs history.  To this very day both teams are insisting that they suited up their Defenses.   Some people have even gone so far as to complain about the missed incidental face masking which maybe should have been a penalty, even though Aaron Rodgers then trumped that doofus complaint by kicking up the ball like a hacky-sack right to the Cards linebacker Karlos Dansby.  No matter what might or did or someone imagined happened in an alternate universe replay of that game, Rodgers kicked this season out the door with the most appropriate metaphor of a play in Packers history.  The statistics were all amazing.  The heart was all empty.  Team executives, coaches and a healthy majority of Packers' fans will say that this is a great young bunch of players.  I don't disagree that this team has the ability to enthuse.  But cheering for this year's version of the Packers is like getting all pumped up for a "Caddyshack" sequel or a new Kelsey Grammer sitcom or, heaven forbid, a run by the Cowboys at the Super Bowl.  No, this Green Bay Packers season is one that will forever remain cemented in place thanks to one unfortunate memory.  This was the year that fans at Lambeau Field booed Brett Favre as he played his way to an impressive victory.  For the Vikings.  I'm still nothing but a Packers fan.  It tastes awfully different saying that, though, given that lingering memory.  

It is an essentially human thing to cheer for athletic competitors, especially ones that you identify with on a personal level based on proximity, history or just plain adoptive fun.  Cheering for the Packers this year took on a new level of identification that I think on some karmic level utterly doomed the experience.  We were expected to cheer for the Packers out of a sort of guilty denial.  As in "sure we know there's some major league bad juju going on here, but if you don't support them then all those years of cheering for good and bad teams will be cast aside and you'll be a Judas just like that 800-pound purple gorilla no one wants to acknowledge".  To that I say "good day, sir."  I will not be a party to this madness.  Nor will anyone else until next year.  Because Mike McArthy is a moron, Ted Thompson tortures puppies and anyone who thinks they had a chance this year almost certainly has at least one Favre jersey still hanging in their closet that they're pissed they won't ever be able to wear again.

Hope you also get something big off your chest today, even if it couldn't be any less important in life's grand scheme.  Rock on.

Next time, get through the "boos!" on Halloween

I grew up in Wisconsin, cheering for the Green Bay Packers. I did so before I even knew why, like most kids from that part of the world. To this day I have a hilarious picture of a favorite childhood Packer on my fridge. Below average but lovable running back Eric Torkelson did an afternoon autograph session at a True Value Hardware store in Medford, the "big town" in the county. My dad drove me the 30 miles there and snapped a crappy 110-film shot of Torkelson with his arm around my shoulder. I'm wearing a delightful Shopko-quality Milwaukee Brewers jacket while I'm holding my 9-year-old boy-sized football that Torkelson signed. I continued to play with that ball until his autograph eventually wore off. Which in the late fall months of northern Wisconsin meant about a week worth of games at recess. My younger brother and his family currently live in Green Bay and last year got both Torkelson and Lynn Dickey to sign a postcard for me at Packer Day during the pre-season. In short, I go all the way back. But this past weekend, I rooted for the Vikings.

The rift caused by Brett Favre going to the Vikings is unlike any icon's departure in the history of professional sports. There are deeply entrenched opinions on both sides. Depending on where you stand, Favre is either a traitor or the Packers screwed the pooch by not finding a way to keep him. Regardless of where you stand, though, all Packers fans are by their very nature meant to despise the Vikings. That animosity developed in full during the 70s, when the Packers were running on the fading vapors left from the iconic Lombardi era and the Vikings were making it to and then losing four Super Bowls in the decade. Fran Tarkenton was the devil in my childhood home. One of my earliest lingering memories of the NFL in the 70s was feeling great about the Vikings getting the lutefisk kicked out of them by John Madden's Raiders after the '76 Season. I was in second grade. Yada yada yada.

As an undergraduate I went to the University of Minnesota, like my dad and older brother before me. The rest of the family went to college in Wisconsin. While in the Twin Cities, I met and befriended countless Vikings fans. I came to see their point of view as possibly valid. They, too, had hopes and dreams of a Super Bowl victory in their lifetimes. They too hated. They too loved. And even though their stadium situation has been a major drawback for decades, I saw them as real NFL fans of the highest order. I still hated the Vikings. But I'd come to know them, while still rooting against them to my very core.

Until this year. Favre and I are the same age, and I've identified with him during his career like no other professional athlete. That is why, on some level, when he had trouble finding satisfaction in Green Bay because of a boss that was being a complete prick, I started rooting for him to make it in another uniform. I knew he wanted to be in the NFC North, most obviously in the system he knew best like what they run in Minnesota. Last year's sojourn with the Jets was like a wealthy hayseed dating a brainless supermodel - it sounded like fun as a concept, but it basically never worked for either side of the equation. Even when the Jets were winning and Favre wasn't injured. But then when the chance came for a move to Minnesota, I saw it as a surprisingly obvious chance for Favre to get back to the Super Bowl. Many others have a very different view of Favre's choice to move to the Vikes, usually predicated by some nonsensical claim of his self-centered nature. To those I have one thing to say - Brett Favre is an NFL quarterback. Aside from ballerinas or dictators, I can't think of another line of work more tailor made for people with such a prima donna complex.

So at long last Sunday in Green Bay playing for another team, NFL fans the whole world wide saw just what Favre had left in the tank. The Packers are a team that currently constitute a Wild Card level of competitiveness. The Vikings are a complete team that could compete for the Super Bowl. In a year when there are a hearty handful of darn good teams and an equal portion of just plain awful teams, the Packers are in the upper middle. Favre puts the Vikes up near the very top.

Seeing and hearing the Packers fans boo Favre mercilessly was so abhorrent, so beyond classless that you can't even joke your way to a justification. Even back in Sconnie, a hearty majority of people grew uneasy with events such as the "Funeral 4 Favre" event some moronic radio station staged Friday at a bar in Appleton. On the Coast where I live or just about everywhere else, it looks like sour grapes of the lowest order. You know what, funeral goers? Favre buried you. In his two games against the Vikes this year, he threw seven touchdowns and no interceptions. His field awareness is unparalleled and he still throws the ball hard enough to break fingers from 20 yards away. When the camera was on him, he smiled or winked or just plain ol' got fired up like a player half his age. More intangibly, no one's got his star power. By the end of the game, I was outright rooting against the Packers. Not the team, mind you. The people that for decades I sat next to at Lambeau and in countless bars that are so damn well-versed in terms of football, but so damn mindless in their embrace of the Packers brand. Did Favre handle his retirement gesticulating well? Absolutely not. But to call the guy a traitor, burn his jerseys and boo his return? Face it, Packer fans. The rest of the country is laughing at us right now. Favre has more fans than ever before. And the Vikings are a brand on the rise. For way too long, NFL fans all across the country have tired of the expected genuflecting for the history and tradition of the Packers. In some ways, they are the NFL's Yankees, or the Celtics, or the old Canadiens. People wanted to root against Favre and the Packers when he was still there because they were so ceaselessly told to do so, usually by John Madden or comedians making fun of the man-love directed at Favre in the Green and Gold. But now that equation has been flipped. People want to root against the Packers for what they've done to Favre.

I fear that even if Aaron Rodgers is a very good quarterback the effects of booing Favre's return will damage the Packers brand for years to come. No other franchise could have generated such a big, over-hyped event like yesterday's game because it was the gawddamn Green Bay Packers at frickin' Lambeau Field. Bud Lea for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is the dean of Wisconsin sports writers and he says he's never seen anything like the hype that went into the build-up to yesterday. But here's where it hurts - no other franchise could have so horribly fumbled the snap. Booing Favre may have felt like the rush you could get from throwing a asphalt block through the bay window of your ex-girlfriend's sorority house. But when you sober up and realize what you've done, everyone involved in the prank ends up feeling like a criminal. I hope we can recover. But as any football fan knows, unforced turnovers just kill a team's spirit. Maybe that of its fans, too.

And maybe throw in a "please, God, give someone - anyone besides Charlie Gibson - the chance to ask Sarah Palin a question before time runs out"

First up - sports. The Green Bay Packers won a big opener last nite against the Minnesota Vikings. There was plenty of sloppy play, but Aaron Rodgers certainly performed better than I expected. Which means that NFL fans across the Nation will continue to debate the soap opera that is Brett Favre's breakup with the Pack. Because, in case you were in a cave all weekend and didn't see the highlights, Favre had an equally great first game as a New York Jet. Tom Brady's out for the year, the Chargers got spanked harder than Jessica Simpson after a Cowboys rout, the Colts look as old as a Sarah Palin-free John McCain rally in a diner, and everyone else still has hope since it's only the first week of the Season. Ah, football. Smells like America without a Bush in the White House.

Secondly in the same vein - the Brewers are swooning. They still lead the National League Wild Card race by 3 games over the Phillies. Less than 20 games left in the Season for everyone. If you've got a few dollars left after contributing everything you can to Barack Obama, please buy a bratwurst and say a prayer for Milwaukee. Not one of those "pray away the gay" prayers from Sarah Palin's church. A prayer that may actually do something. If you believe in that cut of jib.

Hope your own home teams have plenty of good seats miraculously available. Rock on.

J-E-T-S! Gets! Our! Brett!

Sports fans - Brett Favre has been traded to the NY Jets. Holy frickin' moly. The previously beloved and respected Packers receive a 4th round draft pick, which can be upgraded based on his performance. Yawn. The Pack now have 3 quarterbacks on their training camp roster that have started a total of zero games in the NFL. Zero. Opinions on this run the gamut, as I heard up close and personal as I travelled through Minneapolis and into the wild of Northern Wisconsin this past weekend. By a large margin, 'Sconi folks are pro-Pack management. Everyone else simply cannot understand how these rubes actually got control of one of the most storied franchises in all of sports. I guess I've been off the ranch for long enough to qualify as an "everyone else" because I sincerely cannot believe how stupid this move makes the Packers look. Was Favre a drama queen? Duh - he's a quarterback, and quite possibly the greatest in history. This ain't high school, but you still gotta throw some love at the guy who gets it done and pays for the new turf thanks to his skills. Should the future of a team that missed last year's Super Bowl by a field goal in overtime now depend on a 4th year quarterback with 300 lifetime passing yards? Duh - unless the Packers win it all this year and Aaron Rodgers is the MVP, no one will let this story die. Ted Thompson and Mike McCarthy will forever be known as the men that chased Favre out of Green Bay to suburban New Jersey. Say what you will about all of this. Everyone else has. But for the first time in my lifetime of NFL fandom, I'm going to actually root on some level for the NY Jets.

Hope your own allegiances are not jeapordized by arrogant, over-compensated morons today. Rock on.

Plus, Brett will arrive in a biofuel pickup truck running entirely on oil recovered from Bud Grant's illegal Idaho fry operation

A few supa quickies. The Brew Crew swept a four-game series in St. Louis last night with an heroic 9th inning homer by Ryan Braun. That young man possesses the sweetest swing ever to grace a Milwaukee uniform. Sorry, Stormin' Gorman. The Cubbies come to Beertown on Monday for a four game series. Before that we've got the Astros for a weekend of sure-to-be sellouts. Oh, how I love it when a plan comes together...

All sports' journalists are currently stumbling over the headline that Brett Favre is going to report to training camp in Green Bay on Sunday. Unless, of course, Big Cheddar steps into the fracas, ya know, and has him whacked. Yea, yea - it's the biggest football summer soap opera since Joe Montana and Roger Staubach shacked up in Mexico for a stolen month of passion way back in '79. Still, funnier than a bag full of cats getting dropped onto a dogfood assembly line. My prediction remains the same - the Pack screwed up royally and will rue the day that they didn't make every effort possible to get Brett back on the Reservation.

Big music weekend for us here in GrungeCity. Sarah's heading to the first night of the Capitol Hill Block Party tonite with a friend to see Vampire Weekend, among others. I'm making the same trip tomorrow to see The Hold Steady and DeVotchKa, among others. Expect copious reviews. Maybe a few pics. Hope your own tickets were pre-purchased and came with a free bobblehead. Rock on.

Mine's on vibrate, Ted's getting the finger...

To continue the Wisconsin sports theme from yesterday (Brew Crew won last night in CC Sabathia's first start). Brett Favre. Is he indeed still retired? The jury's out. For those unaware, Brett's been playing a bit of a PR game the last handful of days testing the waters of what those of us who claim to know what's what expected all along - his retirement was premature. But the reaction from the Packers - specifically Ted Thompson, the single most tone-deaf major sport GM since George Steinbrenner got sent to Guantanomo Bay - is simply infuriating to this lifelong fan. If Brett Favre sent a text message to the Governor of Wisconsin and said he'd like to redraw the map of the State, we'd all be getting new almanacs in a week. If Brett Favre sent a text message to the Pope and said that he'd like to spitball a few ideas for a new Saint or two, the Vatican would be ordering in brats and searching for jambalaya recipes post-haste for the meet and greet. If Brett Favre...oh, you get the point. You don't just give the Heisman to one of the greatest players to ever put on the uniform because you're sipping a pinot noir with your dooshbag cousins on the Oregon Coast. Which is where I imagine Ted Thompson vacations. Stunning locale. But totally dooshy. Bring Brett back, Dooshy. If you don't, you'll be forever branded as the one person that denied Packer fans a final chance at Favreian grandiose disappointment/drama. And your house will be egged every day for what I estimate to be, oh about, the next 17 years.

Hope your own Hall of Fame legends at least merit a call back today. Rock on.

I only hope he also quits making Wrangler commericals.

Oh, the sadness. Brett Favre is retiring. It has been suggested that the Green Bay Packers didn't work hard enough at encouraging him to return for another year. If true, Ted Thompson (the Packers' GM) will soon replace Osama bin Laden as the favorite burning effigy at every frat party in Wisconsin. I mean - COME ON! Not doing everything possible to get Favre back for another season is like McDonalds deciding that Ronald McDonald should be replaced as chief spokesman by Grimace. Or College Republicans replacing their worship of Ronald Reagan with a newfound zeal for Bob Dole's zombie-like visage. I'm just glad to have been able to cheer for Favre over the past 16 years. When he replaced the horrifically self-absorbed Don Majkowski and went on to start the next 275 games, old and new Packer fans everywhere got that special glint in their eye. Brett was a revelation. He scared the pants off everyone, including his biggest fans. He threw like the meanest kid ever, joked with the baddest asses on the other side of the line, and made it up as he went along. But that was all an act - he was as smart as anyone who ever played the game. Sports icons can be overly lauded, to be sure. But Favre earned it - every season, in every way. So I hope we all raise an Old Style in his honor this evening. I can honestly say that I will truly miss seeing him play and thank him for every touchdown, every victory, and, yes, every interception and those few crushing losses. On balance, he gave Wisconsin more joy than anything ever invented. Besides Vince Lombardi. Or beer.

Hope your own teams have a decent back-up waiting in the wings that didn't just crap his pants this morning. Rock on.

Was that snow or Gawd's frozen happy tears falling in Green Bay?

It was a hugely satisfying weekend for the Green Bay Packers and fans like me the world over. The Pack spotted the Seattle Seahawks two touchdowns in the first 4 minutes. Believe me or not, but I wasn't all that worried. And then they bore down and found gold under the accumulating snow. You could run off a full roster of great performances from that team. No disrespect meant to the Seahawks. The Packers were on fire amidst the swirling storm. Just. Plain. Loved it.

And then the Dallas Cowboys got punked by the New York Giants. Never overlook a team that's won 9 of 10 games on the road - the Giants are dream-killers. I suspect next week at Lambeau will be a true test. Yet, seeing all the swirling humiliation around Texas Stadium just made the weekend all that more sweet. To be fair, I've been to one game in Dallas while we lived there back in the med school era. A college roommate of mine from Milwaukee (who was also at Lambeau Saturday) came to visit and scored tix for a Packers-Cowboys game through a family connection. I was shocked that the Cowboys fans couldn't have been nicer, even before the Pack stunk it up on their turf yet again. So my view of the Cowboys had been somewhat softened by experience. Until this Season. Seeing "Lover Boy" Romo go down in flames again brought back that good ol' cynical tang. Yummy.

Speaking of Romo, the NYPost offered the most original insult yesterday by hiring a Jessica Simpson impersonator to wander around the stadium. Karma tossed in a snarky joke with the fact that she's apparently from a Seattle suburb. And then Terrell Owens poured extra laughing gas on the gag and lit a roman candle by getting all teary-eyed after the game in defending his QB's choice of bye-week nookie getaways. Somewhere right now, Roger Clemens is probably even cracking up as he hunkers down with his lawyers.

Hope your own impersonators have nothing to work with today. Rock on.

Throw another handful of brats on the grill, America!

The Green Bay Packers play the Seattle Seahawks tomorrow. (As if) you didn't already know. Big game. Lotsa fun. As goes the bizness of not-much-actual-newsiness around such events, I nonetheless commend both the generally lame Seattle Post-Intelligencer for a delightful profile of Mike Holmgren and the always-obsessed Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel with a fun puff piece detailing the so-called "leaders" on the Pack's especially young and talented squad. For those that know me, Eric Torkelson will always be my favorite Packer - who else ever did an autograph session at the Medford True Value Hardware store, for the love of cripes? But my now-less marginal awareness of the below pictured uber-leader, Rob Davis, is the most delicious surprise of the day. Favre will always be the brightest silver ever mined for this Torkelson lover. And I have a strict bronze medal list of beloved Packers - John Anderson, Lynn Dickey, Ed West, Paul Coffman, and Sterling Sharpe. Rob Davis is now officially added to that elite roster. Go Pack Go!



Hope y'all cover the spread while spreadin' the compliments around all weekend. Rock on.

And Fred Thompson will stop a staged armed-robbery with his trusty .45 and blow the smoke off the barrel as a tear wells up in his eye.

Boy, was I wrong. Hillary apparently nailed it with women voters by showing her human side. Unlike almost every single living American spouting off yesterday about what was bound to happen in New Hampshire, I'll actually apologize. I'll never be wrong again. Promise. We should all expect the next rush to judgment will come from the same punditocracy describing Obama's demise. I should take a break from commenting and just read a few books about other things and/or begin prepping brats for this weekend's NFL Playoff game between the Packers and Seahawks. But, well...I'll just pop off briefly to keep the chops up. Barack Obama will raise cash in the next four weeks like a junkie Trump. Hillary Clinton will get back on the inevitability train, taking the occasional heart-to-heart Sanka break. John Edwards will labor on and still no one will notice. Bill Richardson will pour three fingers of single-malt and light a phattie. Dennis Kucinich will keep the Viggo Mortensen vote, lose those few thousand hippie-veggie-oil biodiesel votes. My Republic Party picks for New Hampshire were pretty close, so I'll stand pat - John McCain faces many laps worth of hurdles but pulls it out. Mitt Romney will flop all over the place like a wounded marlin. Mike Huckabee will add the surviving cast of "Hee Haw" to his celebrity cavalcade. Ron Paul will soon be riding the bus with Mike Gravel. Duncan Hunter will still be in the closet. And we'll hear about it until this fascinating election actually ain't so much anymore.

Hope your endorsements all come from the exotic dancer unions today. Rock on.

The Chicago Cubs will die angry and miss everything cool

Today's Top Three driveby stories of the most obvious and overdue derision.

1. O.J. Mudderfu**ng Simpson. Stealing back memorabilia including the suit he wore at his acquittal in '95. I strongly suggest the judge in Las Vegas require that he wear his bounty at his upcoming sentencing.
2. Britney Spears. I, for one, thought she was totally hot as she meandered around the stage in Las Vegas. Oh wait - what are the odds that both O.J. and Britney would dissemble entirely at the same hotel (Palms Oasis) the same week. What happens in Vegas should please, PLEASE stay in Vegas. Even though we know in either of these cases it won't.
3. The Packers are hot (2-0) and the Brewers are in a race for the playoffs after months of wavering frontrunnership. So all these years of wishing on those falling chunks of Skylab have finally paid off. Thank you, Gawd.

Hope your own moments of self-congratulation don't come back to bite you in the panties today. Rock on.

My "intent" is to name my third child Favre

For today at least, undeniably disgraced Senator Larry Craig is testing the waters of a continued perp walk in his seat. Anyone who denies that politicians parse their words as carefully as legally possible should listen to this dandy that Roll Call rolled out today. The operative word is "intent" - as in, "my intent is to weasel out of this if everyone gets distracted by the September debate over Iraq and my wife doesn't snip off a testicle." It appears Ol' Wide Lair doesn't program numbers into his cell phone. Point blank - the Dems are praying that he's stupid enough to fight for his reputation. And it appears that stupid does strike more often in one place than lightning.

At long last, Oprah is getting serious about taking over the Nation. Thank gawd. If anyone can add some luster to a surprisingly buzz-free Barack Obama, it's this American Hero. Respect the "Oprah bounce". And, no, I'm not talking to you, Tom Cruise.


The NFL Season starts tomorrow night. I'm sure you've also got goosebumps by just saying that. I fully expect my Green Bay Packers to be sucking a middle teet somewhere out of the headlines aside from the magical Favre Farewell Tour sequel. Regardless, set your Tivos, call your bookies and kiss your kids goodbye for a few months worth of weekends.

Hope your own pre-season roster cuts left you with all the pieces necessary for a serious run toward the playoffs. Rock on.