Brett Favre’s retirement leaves behind an NFL that will be a lot less fun.

In Favre, NFL Is Losing Fun-Loving Entertainer
Favre, for 275 straight games the Green Bay Packers starting quarterback, was fun for neutral observers to watch even when his risk-taking hurt his own team. “On the list of quarterbacks, I’d pay to see, he’s first,” Jeff Jacobs writes in the Hartford Courant. “Give me the 50-yard line at Lambeau any time. He is Phil Mickelson. He is Reggie. He can make history. He can unravel history. If history is to record professional athletics both as sports and entertainment, Favre is a perennial Oscar winner.”
No matter his position on the field, Favre was always looking to throw. (Associated Press Photo)
Fun was the top priority for Favre. “Brett Favre has all of the numbers now: most completions, most yards, most touchdowns and, yes, most interceptions. He retires at the summit of quarterback statistics, responsible for more than 35 miles of passing gains and a record 160 winning starts,” Tim Sullivan writes in the San Diego Union-Tribune. “But to dwell on Favre’s ledgers is like counting Leonardo’s brush strokes, like summarizing Hamlet as 32,241 words. The sum of his labors is not its soul. More than any of his famous contemporaries — Tom Brady, John Elway, Peyton Manning, Dan Marino — Favre played quarterback with a jazz sensibility and a transparent joy. He was always improvising, ever daring, like a kid drawing up plays on a sandlot and then inventing something entirely different as conditions changed or inspiration struck.”
The Miami Herald’s Armando Salguero recalls when the Favre family opened their Kiln, Miss., home to him and other reporters before the 1997 Super Bowl. Favre’s father said then, “Brett really has fun playing, sometimes too much fun. He’d rather have fun playing football than breathe. Having fun is that important to him.”