Marketplace of Ideas Blog

The New Orleans Saints gained a couple of million new fans when they were playing the Brett Favre-quarterbacked Minnesota Vikings in Sunday’s NFC Championship.

The New Orleans Times Picayune coverage of the Saints’ first Super Bowl berth in their history reads a lot like the Wisconsin coverage of the Packers’ Super Bowl XXXI trip. As bad as the Packers have been at times, the Saints have been even worse, having taken 20 seasons just to get into the playoffs. Any reader who has offices or customers in Louisiana should probably postpone business until after next Sunday.

Meanwhile, the Vikings discovered the highs and lows of having Favre quarterback your team. Favre’s 2009 season ended as Favre’s 2003 and 2007 seasons ended — with a playoff-game interception that led to the opposing team’s ending Favre’s season.

Given that fact, it’s unclear why Vikings play-by-play voice Paul Allen was so surprised at Favre’s fourth-quarter-ending interception Sunday — an interception that, it should be noted, probably would never have happened had it not been for the Vikings’ 12-men-on-the-field penalty that turned a potential 51-yard field goal attempt into a potential 56-yard attempt. One overtime coin flip later, Allen sounded as if he had overdosed on a benzodiazepine, while Saints announcer Jim Henderson felt quite the opposite. (Henderson, who a YouTube poster calls “a true marvel of Western Civilization,” now has the honor of replacing this call as the most famous call in Saints history.)

(Allen, by the way, is, if not the worst announcer in the NFL, the most unprofessional announcer in the NFL, dating back to this sportscasting gem. Then again, he freely admits that “I don’t consider myself a member of the media. I do a feel-good radio show, call races and football games.”)

ESPN.com’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback calls Favre’s interception not merely a mistake, but a tragic flaw:

Perhaps you are thinking, “It was just a dumb mistake, and the whole thing happened in a couple of seconds.” No. Two years of Favre’s life built up to that moment. For two years, Favre has insisted that entire NFL franchises, the Jets and the Vikings, become thralls to his celebrity. He has used his stature to demand, demand, demand — the crux of the demands are always attention and publicity for himself. Now he is brought low. In two of the past three seasons, Favre has lost in the NFC Championship Game. Each time, his team seemed poised to win at the end; each time, Favre’s final play was a disastrous interception. And each of those title losses eventually came in overtime — to punish Favre for his hamartia, twice the football gods allowed him to come so close, so close, then denied him. Favre has been brought so low, he is now being laughed at in Wisconsin, and he has only himself to blame. Aristotle would not be surprised by the ending of the Favre saga. If, of course, it was the ending.

Favre undoubtedly got Packer teams into the playoffs that probably weren’t good enough to make the playoffs without him. Favre, however, has become the Moses of the NFL — he can get teams toward the promised land, but he can’t get to the promised land himself. No one on the planet knows if that was Favre’s last game, but, for what it’s worth, the Fox TV announcers noted how old Favre looked, and former quarterback Joe Theismann said that “if you take approximately 40 years of professional football, I have never seen one man take the beating that Brett Favre took.”

Sports Illustrated’s Peter King wrote:

No matter what you think of Favre — and it’s no secret I think he’s the most charismatic and interesting player I’ve covered — you have to admire how he bleeds in front of us. He goes out and gets the snot knocked out of him (“We were determined to hit him over and over and make him feel it,” said none other than his old friend with the Packers, Saints safety Darren Sharper), somehow survives, then makes a throw he never should have made. And he stands there for the inquisition and answers the questions as honestly as I think a man can in these circumstances.

Sunday’s game didn’t take place in a vacuum. One reason the Vikings got Favre was to drive Minnesotan support for a new stadium to replace the unloved Metrodome. Last weekend the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that the Vikings were looking to build a new stadium in the Twin Cities suburbs using federal stimulus money, either for the stadium or for its infrastructure.

The Vikings have been pining for a new stadium for several years, and are on the short list of candidates to move to Los Angeles (as are Jacksonville, St. Louis, Oakland and San Diego), where the NFL would really like to site one (or more) teams. Of course, Minnesota taxpayers are already paying for a football stadium for the University of Minnesota and a baseball stadium for the Twins, so if you think Minnesota taxpayers are tapped out, that would be a logical conclusion.

On top of that are the impending labor–management storm clouds. Unless a new labor agreement between the NFL and the NFL Players Association is reached soon, the 2010 season will be played without a salary cap, leading to the specter of such billionaire NFL owners as Dallas’ Jerry Jones, Washington’s Dan Snyder or even the Vikings’ Zygi Wulf trying to buy themselves a Super Bowl.

And that next Super Bowl might be the last for some time if, as speculated, the NFL locks out players for the 2011 season.

Get well, Lee: King also writes:

My very best wishes to one of the classic and classy men in the NFL business, longtime Packer PR man Lee Remmel, who is ailing in Green Bay. He was always one of Brett Favre’s favorites. He called Favre in his deep voice, “Brett Lorenzo Favre,” and Favre once played one of the great bus-to-the-stadium jokes on Remmel anyone has ever played.

Favre bought a remote-control fart machine (what a country!) and put it beneath Remmel’s seat near the front of the bus for the ride from the Chicago hotel to Soldier Field before a game against the Bears. As the quiet bus made its way to the stadium, Favre kept pressing the button on the machine, and the fart sounds kept coming from under Remmel’s seat, and Mike Holmgren shot a few dirty looks over his shoulder at whoever was doing this nonsense.

Remmel covered Don Hutson and later Vince Lombardi as a sportswriter, then went to work as the Packer PR man, one of the best ever to do the job. “Lee’s been a great friend,” Favre told me in a text-message over the weekend. “He truly loves his Packers. A walking stat book!”