An American icon

By Roy Hicks
Thursday, October 4, 2007 2:46 PM PDT

I hope you were watching the Green Bay Packers’ last two football games, friends. If you did, you saw a monumental piece of NFL history.

Professional sports in this country go back well over 100 years. Professional teams were formed before the turn of the 20th century. College football is about the same age, but professional football only came into being in 1920 with the formation of the fledgling National Football League.

Baseball has always been called “America’s game,” but let’s face it, football is America’s game today, and its pro history is studded with the names of its on-field heroes. Men like Jim Thorpe, George Halas, Bronko Nagursky, Paul Brown, Bobby Layne, John Unitas, Sam Huff, George Blanda, Frank Gifford, Jim Brown and Y.A. Tittle, to name but a very few.

Some spectacular athletes have starred in America’s game during the last 80-plus years. Most of them are in the Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. These were very tough guys. Pro football is a brutal game — the space-age equivalent of Roman gladiatorial contests — and anyone who can survive and excel for 10 or more years deserves the respect of sports fans.

Now a man who started this grueling game nearly 17 years ago has proven himself one of the best players ever. Bret Favre, the veteran quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, is going to walk into the Hall of Fame. On Sept. 23, he threw three touchdown passes to lead his team to an excellent 3-0 start and equaled the NFL’s record for all-time career touchdown passes, tying former Miami quarterback Dan Marino’s 420 and surpassing every other quarterback in the league. Last Sunday, he threw two more to stand alone.

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For the 37-year-old Favre, this was a most remarkable achievement. He has been in the NFL since 1991. He has started 241 straight games and played 251 altogether. Favre is a big, strong man— about 6 foot 3 inches and 240 or so pounds — but through the years, he’s taken so many devastating hits it’s a wonder he can still walk, let alone continue to play so well. He’s as tough as scrap iron, and no matter how often he’s been flattened by big, mean opponents (let’s estimate about 400 to 500 times), he’s never missed a game. Put more accurately, he’s the “Iron Man” of professional football.

A Sept. 24 Associated Press wire photo of Favre carrying one of his favorite pass receivers off the field bore the caption “Favre is like a kid again this season.” Rightly so. He’s playing very well, and thus far has every chance to lead his Lambeau Field gang to a shot at another Super Bowl title.

I don’t care where your NFL allegiance is, folks. You’ve got to like Bret Favre. Favre is not only a real sports hero. He’s also one of those genuinely likeable people who has been through an almost unimaginable amount of personal pain and hardship and yet persevered as a cheerful and irrepressible Huckleberry Finn. A “kid again this season,” a man who loves his chosen game and still has fun playing it with a fierce desire to win.

Moreover, he’s done it without drugs. The Green Bay Packers are off to a fine 4-0 start and hopefully another trip to the NFL playoffs. Favre’s records for durability and overall achievement may never be broken. Holding all passing touchdown records, he has earned the title of one of the greatest NFL quarterbacks of all time ... which is exactly what he deserves.