Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

When I watched the ESPYs a couple of weeks ago, they camera kept going back from Beckham/Posh Spice to Favre/Deanna, and you could tell that Favre and his wife were supremely digging it--like they thought this was the way it should be.

That's when I started wondering if this whole thing was a ploy for Favre to go to a big market like Beckham did by coming to LA--that Favre wanted to have those mega-star moments in his last years (and so did his wife).

You think about the last few years and all the signs were there. It's natural. The guy's been the big star for a long time, even though his best years of success are about a decade past and the Jets are unlikely to give him any real shot (playing the Pats 2X).

So he wants a last couple of years playing in the Big Apple, where the attention will be magnificent.

I had hoped he wanted to play for the Packers and it was all just his wavering, but now I suspect the whole thing was fairly engineered in a campaign, because just when he had the Packers where he wanted them, he sabotaged the deal himself in the long meeting with McCarthy by playing the aggrieved party to the hilt.

When I heard that, I figured, big market, with the ESPYs image stuck in my skull.

Again, it's a fairly natural outcome--sad for us but the kind of thing you'd expect from a couple of aging thirtysomethings from a small town who really like being that famous (e.g., they both had bestselling books in the last year or so) and really like the idea of becoming even more so (going on TV a lot more, attending a lot of televised events, endorsements galore, giant ads in Times Square, etc., coverage all the time in the Times). They'll tell you it's all about the game and wanting to get to the Super Bowl, but that was the Packers outcome. This is about cashing in on some more profound level, and it's hard to begrudge them that after all the good years we got.

Still, no fun as a fan.