Favre and Away

I like Brett Favre. As a Broncos employee for more than 10 years and prior to that a lifelong Dallas Cowboys fan that may come as a surprise. But I honestly do. I even still have a Favre jersey I won in a bet at least 12 years ago. But for crying out loud, can we PLEASE just end the seemingly never-ending saga of is-Brett-going-to-play-or-not, with the added wrinkle this time of if-so-where?

Like the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano and Britney Spears making us think she's finally hit rock bottom, Brett announcing whether or not he was going to retire had become quite the annual ritual. A ritual that had apparently finally come to an end when he said in March that retire was exactly what he intended to do. Four short months later, and the rumors are moving at breakneck speed that he wants to un-retire, but the Packers don't want him back, so he wants them to release him only they have no intention of doing that, either.

Brett, the Packers organization and goodness knows the fans all deserve a clean resolution to this increasingly messy situation. Fortunately, I have the answer.

Danelle and I had a system we used to use when we were trying to decide where to go to dinner. We retired the system once issues like whether or not the menus could be colored on became critical factors, but up until that time it served us well.

Basically, we'd each throw out a few options and then we'd take turns ranking them all on a scale of one to 10 with one being "would rather eat dog food" and 10 being "would pick this for my last meal." Whatever place ended up with the highest combined score is where we'd go.

I know what you're thinking -- it's way too easy for one party to manipulate the numbers so that their favorite option ends up winning. Sure, Danelle and I both may have fudged a teeny bit to tip the scales the way we wanted them to fall. But for the most part we played it straight. Besides, the fudging on each side usually just ends up cancelling itself out.

So in the Favre-Packers scenario, I can see Brett presenting options like guarantee me the starting job, give me my unconditional release or trade me. The Packers would counter with choices like stay retired, come back as the backup or accept a trade.

You can already see where this would end up. If both parties played it straight -- or at least fudged to appreciably the same degree -- some sort of trade would likely end up the winner. And that's pretty much how I expect this to end up, though unfortunately I doubt the path it takes to get there will have as little acrimony as this method.

As for how to decide where he should be traded? Well, we employed rock-paper-scissors pretty regularly when dealing with dirty diapers...