Is It Over? Is It Safe To Watch ESPN?

OK, so now that Favre's been traded, we won't hear anymore about him, right? The reign of terror is over? What? He's playing for a team very near the New York metropolitan area? Aw crap. Hopefully the discussion will at least center on how well he can play this year (as in, was his good 2007 a sign he'd rebounded from a couple of ugly years, or just an aberration as he continues his decline?) and what it means for the Jets. You know, actually football discussion, as opposed to this video tape of Farve getting off the airplane. Who is he, the fucking Pope or something*?

I do look forward to that Ombudsman they have on the ESPN website, LeAnn Schreiber I believe, covering this in her next column. I'm sure she's going to get a lot of e-mails from people sick and tired of being beaten over the head about this stuff.

Maybe this whole situation will teach teams not to push players so hard in the off-season. Players don't get any time to really reflect and think about what lies ahead, because as soon as a team's season is over, the coaches and general manager are already focusing on next year: who'll they'll draft, who they need to resign, who needs to be replaced, etc. A player can't get enough time to really think about it. I don't think anything will change though, because a team is rarely going to be as hesitant to just release a player uncertain about their status as the Packers were with Favre.

Aaron Rodgers is really under the gun now though, huh? He's the guy whose presence convinced the Packers they could go on with Number 4, and the fans are going to be on him from the start. Well, the Farve fans will be, Packers' fans may be more accomodating (one can only hope). Too bad for Rodgers he couldn't have taken over after the '05 season (when Farve threw 29 picks), or even the '06 when Farve's TD/Int ratio was 18/18. Could have eased expectations a bit. And what about Chad Pennington? As I understood it, he was at least in the hunt with Kellen Clemens for the Jets' starting QB job, then Farve comes along and he's out on the streets. Ouch. I'm sure Jeff Garcia's fine with this turn of events though.

* You knew it was getting bad when you turn on Sportscenter in the morning, and they have that little list of what they're talking about now, and the next 7 or so topics, and about 75% of it is Farve-related. Then maybe highlights from 2 baseball games, six more Farve segments, a couple of more baseball games, more Farve. Insane.