Brett Favre and Robert E Lee

One of the great "what if" stories to come out of the American Civil War occurred just as hostilities had broken out between the North and South. Each side was scrambling to lay claim to the host of general officers who had cut their teeth more than a decade earlier in the Mexican-American War. President Abraham Lincoln, desperate for credible combat leadership, offered overall command of the Union Army to then-Colonel Robert E. Lee, believing this distinguished officer could be a game-changer. Lee most certainly was, but for the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.

As Austin Powers would say: very ouch.

Lee's resignation from the Union Army was a difficult personal ordeal. In the letter he sent to General Winfield Scott on April 20, 1861, he spoke of "the struggle it has cost me to separate myself from a service to which I have devoted all the best years of my life & all the ability I possessed." Lee was fifty-nine years old, retirement age for a four-star general in today's army. But because Virginia went with the Confederacy, Lee went along with it.

Two years later, after the disaster that was Gettysburg, Lee once again offered his resignation, this time to Jefferson Davis. The Confederate president, of course, refused it. But what if he hadn't?

Lee knew many in the Southern press had turned on him ("I have seen and heard of expression of discontent in the public journals at the result of the expedition") and had all but declared himself a spent force ("I am becoming more and more incapable of exertion"). He asked Davis to consider that "a younger and abler man than myself can readily be attained." If the Confederate Army's rising young superstar, General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, had not perished a mere two months earlier, one can easily imagine the popular push to replace Lee with the very man he called "irreplaceable."

So imagine this: At the kickoff to the Fall 1863 campaign, Lee suddenly announces that he's coming out of retirement... and signed with Lincoln's Union Army! Declaring that he has at least one or two more campaigns in him, Lee proclaims that this is nothing personal and that he simply wants to end his military career on a high note, playing for a team with a better chance at near-term victory. Yes, he'll always be a Confederate at heart, but since his wife and children are more than supportive, why not just give it one more go? As for his many admirers in the South who feel a deep sense of betrayal, Lee offers this terse response: "If they don't want me to win in a blue uniform, then they never believed me in the first place."

Now fast-forward to early 1865: Lee sits on the other side of the surrender table in Appomattox, declaring that "it's strictly business" and how he enjoys being part of "the most talented team I've ever been associated with."

You can't tell me, if this alternative history were to have gone down, that John Wilkes-Booth wouldn't have had another theater date.

Now you know how this lifelong Packer fan (as in, stockholder, season ticket holder, grandpa in the Packer Hall of Fame) feels headed into this week's much-anticipated Vikings-Packers showdown at Lambeau Field — the Gettysburg of NFL battlefields. After a sixteen-year affair with Favre, I now suffer the great indignity of his return to that sacred ground while wearing... purple.

Yes, our rivalry with the Chicago Bears is far more storied and occasionally more intense (my son and I will always treasure being spit on by Bears fans last December when we dared visit Soldier Field), but the Vi-Queens and their dome-weather "fans" hold a special place of personal enmity among the Packer faithful, if only for the reason that we're... related to so many of them.

Seriously, though, that's where the comparisons to the Civil War become less outlandish: The populations of Wisconsin and Minnesota largely consist of the Norwegian and German immigrants who migrated westward until they bumped into farmland that looked familiar. (What, you thought all this brat-and-cheese cuisine was some sort of accident?) And, looking back on the whole re-unretiring deal seven-and-a-half weeks into the NFL season, it's hard not to admire Favre's patience and stealth. A quick breakdown of his inter-divisional military scheme:

Tactic A: Fake coincidence. Favre announces his tear-filled retirement in March 2008, only to famously reverse himself later that summer, after the Packers had made all the necessary moves to install his successor, Aaron Rodgers. Timing can be everything in war.

Tactic B: Secret communication. Amidst all the recriminations that ensue, the Packers accuse the Vikings of tampering with Favre, who demands his release presumably to play for them. The Vikings, naturally, deny everything.

Tactic C: Protect the troop levels. Favre helped engineer a trade to the Jets, only with a poison pill in the deal: If New York dares to trade Favre to a NFC North team, they must relinquish three top draft picks. Nothing like short-term loyalty to make a GM happy.

Tactic D: Bait. Switch. Repeat. After a disastrous finish with the Jets, Favre retires again, thus rendering null and void the poison-pill clause and freeing himself to join the Vikings. He then prevaricates repeatedly before the national press about wanting to stay retired, virtually right up until the day he boards an executive jet and lands at the Vikings' training camp — just after it ends. The Molotov-Ribbentrop-like pact, we later learn, had been secretly worked out weeks earlier. How conveeeeeenient!

A kinder man than I might say that Brett Favre is an emotional guy in the midst of a mid-life crisis. This would be that man's prime example:

The not-quite-as-kind perspective? Brett Favre is less Hamlet with a Sears card than a congenital liar and world-class egoist on par with Bill Clinton, another I-feel-your-pain Southern seducer.

I know, I know — all's fair in love and football. We Packer fans would take it all a whole lot better if Brett was a shell of his former self, but the bitter truth is that he can still sling those cruise missile-like shots across the field (you have to see him in person, as I have many times, to appreciate the sheer velocity). Worse, when paired with the league's premier running back, Adrian Peterson, he's the proverbial Hitler-with-nukes scenario — the sum of all Packerland fears.

Who will rid me of this meddlesome player? It worked with Brady.



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