Great Big Giant Ego can be difficult master to serve
July 27, 2008 - 9:00 pm
Johnny Unitas looked just plain silly in a San Diego Chargers helmet. Joe Namath, likewise, pathetic as a Los Angeles Rams quarterback. I felt a kind of humiliation for both of them.
Joe Montana with the Chiefs? Jerry Rice playing for the Raiders? It was just wrong.
I was fine with Michael Jordan's hiatus in favor of baseball, but felt somehow betrayed watching him play for the Washington Wizards. I'm from Arizona, but wanted to avert my eyes when I saw Emmitt Smith in a Cardinals jersey. Jim Taylor playing for the New Orleans Saints was a Greek tragedy. Magic Johnson plus 35 pounds as a Butterball Turkey power forward sub for his own Los Angeles Lakers? Better. At least it was the same team, but I still found myself feeling sad and sorry for him.
Babe Ruth finishing his career with the Boston Braves bordered on obscene.
One of the richest parts of professional sports in America is tradition. And a compelling component of tradition is the way truly great players become icons for a particular franchise, a particular city and the fans there abiding. Legacies are cheapened and tradition seems disrespected when icons are discarded, traded or depart of their own volition only to reappear masquerading in a new uniform. Makes about as much sense as the United States and Russia suddenly agreeing to trade national flags.
We lose something when we treat icons as mere commodity. For me, there is something even more disturbing about icons treating themselves thusly.
Breaks my heart to say it, but I'm disappointed in Brett Favre. Me, who bleeds green and gold. Me, who owns -- and wears -- a hat shaped like a huge wedge of cheese. Me. I'm disappointed.
Brett retired at just the right time. I thought he looked cold and old last January in the NFC title game against the eventual Super Bowl champion Giants. The Packers are known to be virtually invincible when playing in miserable cold, snowy conditions -- tradition, don't you know -- but on that day it was Brett who looked like someone eager to be sitting in front of a fireplace, leaning back in a La-Z-Boy, cradling a nice hot chocolate with melting marshmallows.
The better team won. And Brett retired. Sensibly. With dignity and respect for himself, the Packers and the game.
And now he's back. Wanting reinstatement. And, if the Green Bay Packers have the audacity not to rearrange the entire Packers Universe around Brett, subordinating every player destiny and the franchise's future in service to Brett's needs -- that is, to make him the starter -- then Brett wants to be released.
And released means he's actually willing to don a (gulp) Vikings helmet. My traditional sensibilities might more easily accept hearing Brett wants a sex-change operation.
He doesn't need the money. He has nothing to prove. What's going on?
I think a Great Big Giant Ego might be the unavoidable companion of greatness. Perhaps even the precondition of greatness. I'm not even saying it's a bad thing, this Great Big Giant Ego. The GBGE is the relentless driver of excellence. Of the passion to win.
Nope, it's not a bad thing, but certainly the GBGE comes with a price. It's something difficult to stare down when it's time to step aside. Time to quit. Time to honor oneself by saying "goodbye."
It's Brett's Great Big Giant Ego that has actually convinced him it's good and right and courageous and self-respectful to end his career as a pathetic shadow of his former self in something as ugly and cartoonish as a Baltimore Ravens uniform, writhing in agony on artificial turf.
I don't think John Elway has any less a Great Big Giant Ego. But he stared it down. Brett can't. He just can't. And I'm sorry for him. And I'm sorry for us.
Come back to the Packers, Brett, if you must come back at all. Pour your Great Big Giant Ego into the career of your heir apparent, Aaron Rodgers. Wear a head set with pride. Ride the bench with dignity, relishing the opportunity to mentor, to teach, to encourage -- to share the baton of your greatness.
But the path you're considering, good man, comes with every likelihood of making you ridiculous.
Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling Wellness Center in Las Vegas and the author of "Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing" (Stephens Press). His columns appear on Sundays. Comments can be e-mailed to skalas@reviewjournal.com.