Why I (shhhh) wouldn’t mind seeing Brett win the Super Bowl

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I know it makes me a bad Packer fan. I know it puts me in a small minority consisting, as far as I can tell, mostly of women who can’t bear to root against their crush. But part of me still wants to see Brett Favre and the Vikings beat the Saints in the NFC championship game today and roll on to the Super Bowl. Who’s with me?

Or who’s with that part of me, anyway? Because it’s definitely only part. There’s another part, a big one, that would find nothing more satisfying than to watch Favre have one of his only-too-familiar postseason meltdowns and throw three or four picks en route to a humiliating loss. It’s deeply, karmically unfair that the Vikings somehow managed to get a full season of Good Brett with only the briefest hints of Bad Brett. A Favre who doesn’t go buck-nutty once in a while and throw head-scratchingly-stupid passes? Why, that’s hardly Brett Favre at all!

But I don’t think we’re going to see that today. I think we’re going to see more of the same beyond-brilliant play we’ve seen most of this year, and especially last week against Dallas. And, yes, it’s a damn shame that Favre is playing the best football of his life in a uniform that looks best on the turf buried under a pile of green and gold, but it’s also a beautiful, inspiring thing to behold. This is a man on a mission. A man who, let’s not forget, brought Packer fans and lots of other people enormous amounts of joy for 16 years (and who also, bear in mind, was probably just as big an asshole for most of that time as he seems to be now, a fact we were only too willing to ignore).

Plus if Favre wins his Super Bowl he’ll finally retire for real, right? And then Brad Childress will have to defend his title with Tarvaris Jackson under center, against a Packers team led by the NFL player of the future. And that will also be a beautiful thing to behold.