Packers fans are pro-Brett Favre, no matter what he does with the Jets

11/20/08
brett favre
By Max J. Dickstein

Packers fans are pro-Brett Favre, no matter what he does with the Jets

By Max J. Dickstein

Say what you like, but Brett Favre’s career was not supposed to end in New York.

The unretired quarterback’s Jets (7-3) have played their way into first place in the AFC East, and a showdown looms against undefeated Tennessee on Sunday to help determine if his new team can really contend for a title.

And yet even though Favre has become the grizzled face of the resurgent Jets just over three months after he was traded here, the 39-year-old continues to look odd — unnatural even — in a white and hunter-green uniform.

The feeling persists: why is Brett Favre in anything but Packers green and gold? The sight of “Brett the Jet” must be despicable to a Packers fan, I thought.

So I asked one.

It does look “a little odd,” said Patrick Daley, a Wauwatosa, Wisc., native whose West Village bar, Kettle of Fish, is the Manhattan home of Packers fans in exile.

“It should have never happened. I wish it hadn’t have happened,” Daley said of Favre’s bitter divorce from Green Bay. “Did I want Brett to die a Packer? Definitely. But hey, things happen, and I’ve been rooting for him since he came out here.”

Really?

“I am Packers first,” the 53-year-old Daley explained. He is a shareholder in the fan-owned team, and his father used to sell programs at Lambeau Field as a high-schooler. “But the Jets are now my second team. I hope he gets another Super Bowl — as long as it’s not against the Packers.”

That February matchup appears highly improbable, with the Packers (5-5) playing well only in spurts behind Favre’s capable young replacement, Aaron Rodgers. More probable, apparently, is continued loyalty to Favre, the man whose arm, instincts and passion restored Green Bay to prominence, and won Wisconsin a Super Bowl in 1997.

“I’ve always been a Brett Favre guy. I’ve been in his corner,” said Daley, noting the quarter-century of mediocrity that followed Green Bay’s glory years in the 1960s and preceded Favre’s arrival in 1992. “Come on, Brett gave us Sundays.”

In Wisconsin, support for Favre transcends, but does not replace, support for Green Bay.

Reached by telephone Thursday, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel news reporter Tom Kertscher pointed out that the CBS affiliate in Milwaukee signed on to show as many Jets games as possible this season.

“All in all, he’s still got the majority of fans here,” said Kertscher, whose third edition of “Brett Favre: A Packer Fan’s Tribute” was issued by Cumberland House Publishing in September. “Even the fans who are still upset will come around. He really played the game like we in Wisconsin would play if we ever had the chance.”

Newly adored here and still adored in Green Bay, Favre has a lot to give thanks for next week.
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Packers fans are pro-Brett Favre, no matter what he does with the Jets

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