Don't call it a comeback: The Favre unretirement saga considered as hip-hop

The annual will-he-or-won't-he pageant surrounding Brett Favre—which has lately seen the 39-year-old—he'll be 40 in October—former Green Bay Packers quarterback toying with unretirement  and a new spot at the helm of, weirdly enough, perennial Packers rivals the Vikings—appears to have finally reached its conclusion: He won't. At least not today. And almost certainly not in a purple jersey. Which is a relief, in some ways: Vikings fans are granted the privilege of maintaining their decade-long hatred of that doofy-looking motherfucker, and the scores of Wisconsin children between the ages of 2 and 13 whose parents named them "Brett" will not begin going by their middle names.

With the embarrassingly unsubtle, occasionally painful flirtation between the scorned-by-the-Packers QB and Vikes head coach Brad Childress now resembling a particularly heartbreaking episode of Elimidate, the Purple People Eaters are back in the uninspiring position of cramming dubiously credentialed passers Tarvaris Jackson or Sage Rosenfels into the starting role. The Vikes’ remaining options in free agency are a bunch of never-will-be's and an ex-con who sat out two seasons in the pokey on a dogfighting charge.

With that in mind, it's hard not to still have Favre on the brain, regardless of what, exactly, he's telling reporters today. While those who bleed purple may never enjoy the schadenfreude of watching the man who was the face of the hated green-and-yellow proudly wearing a Vikings ballcap and smiling a broad "fuck you, Packers management" grin, we can't help but wonder: What might Favre's unretirement have looked like? Football, like hip-hop, is a young man's game, but the occasional old vet has made a comeback, to results both stellar and embarrassing. Now that we can rest easy knowing that the embarrassing will be avoided and the stellar may never have happened anyway, The A.V. Club looked to the music world to determine which result was most likely.

The Disaster: Eminem
One of the lingering narratives surrounding the googly-eyes that Favre and Childress had been making at one another all summer was that the aged QB may have just been donning a purple helmet mostly just to spite Ted Thompson, the Packers general manager against whom Favre has a well-documented grudge, by signing on with one of Green Bay's arch-rivals. Even the most deafening of the pre-emptive cries of "skoooooooooool" from the Vikings faithful could never shout down doubts of "Are we just a shitty rebound?" The uninspired mess of a record that Slim Shady dropped back in May after a four-year break is a reminder that even one of the greats can end up making a mockery of his former proficiency. That could be a real disaster for a team otherwise poised for big things. If revenge fueled Favre's comeback fantasies—after all, Green Bay wouldn't give him back the starting QB job when he unretired in 2008—then we can safely assume that the games following the Nov. 1 Vikes/Packers showdown at Lambeau Field had the potential to be every bit as lazy and half-assed as Em's comeback record.

The Best-Case Scenario: Jay-Z
Jay-Z's initial unretirement salvo failed to live up to the promise of its first single or the hype that accompanied the return of "the best rapper alive," and the disappointing fizzle to Favre's 2008 season with the Jets provides a clear analog to Jay's Kingdom Come. If Favre had taken Childress up on his offer, #4 might have stepped into the Metrodome with a vibrant, youthful bounce like the one Jigga exhibited on American Gangster. While it's unlikely that Favre's second comeback would have mimicked Jay's return to his exalted place, the hype that surrounds a superstar's return can lead to unrealistic expectations. If Favre had come back—or, hell, if he gets the itch in November, after a team or two loses their starter to injuries—it's possible that, with the weight of those expectations off his shoulders, he could reboot his legend from the ground up. Regardless of whether you’re relieved or disappointed that Favre won't be handing off to Adrian Peterson or passing to Bernard Berrian this season, we can all lament this possibility has passed us by: The look on those fucking Packers fans’ faces if Favre entered the Hall Of Fame clad in deepest purple would have been at least as awesome as the looks on the faces of Jay's haters when "Blue Magic" dropped.