My God, you’d think the world is coming to an end. I realize he is a living legend. He is one of the greatest football players of my lifetime and in the entire history of the game. He’s set almost every record possible. Of course, “he” is Brett Favre.

I don’t know how I managed to make it through most of the afternoon on Tuesday before I heard that he was retiring because I definitely haven’t heard much of anything else since then. He got at least the first two pages of the paper and has had at least one main story and a sports story in pretty much every local newscast for the past two days. The NFL Network is running a special on him called “Brett Favre 4-Ever” – how clever. Several local networks are doing their own tributes.

Of course he couldn’t just make the announcement and be done. In fact, there’s a good possibility that it’s been in the works for a few days, since the Packers site slipped up last Thursday and put up a breaking news post that he was retiring. The word came out officially on Tuesday, but he waited until today to hold a press conference so everyone would have time to reflect and speculate about what he’d say in his final goodbye. Then everyone got together to have a big cry-fest and talk about how they can’t believe he won’t be leading The Pack next year. C’mon guys – how is an old quarterback making the logical decision to retire after a phenomenal season such a big deal? Why is it that Packers fans and the media are shocked by this? I’ve heard in more than one place that some people actually believe he may have been forced to retire – what?

Let’s be realistic here. Brett Favre had a phenomenal season, even by his standards. How could he ever top that? If he didn’t retire now he would risk becoming that guy who can’t let go until he really is forced out because he can’t hack it any more. The only way he can say he didn’t go out on top is that his last NFL pass was an interception that ended his chance at another Super Bowl ring. As ironic as that may be, the timing was right. Get over it.