More Sports  Brett Favre having some trouble mastering art of
retiring with grace  Like regular people, great athletes retire
in all sorts of ways. Some do it gracefully. Some do it
tragically. Some do it almost invisibly. And some do it
endlessly.  Oceans of ink and billions of pixels have been spent
deconstructing Brett Favre's on-again, off-again retirement. As
far as I can tell, the conversation about a Favre-less NFL has
been taking place since at least September 2002, when the
quarterback told SI's Peter King that he was homesick for
Mississippi. From that season forward, Favre saw the need to
hold news conferences or grant lengthy interviews devoted to his
future status. The amount of reluctance and suspense and
dithering varied from year to year to year, but ultimately, the
result was the same. Yes, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is
still dead.  I have little interest in whether Brett Favre plays
for Minnesota in 2009. Ultimately, I think athletes should play
as long as they are comfortable playing an