He's a tractor-lovin' gunslinger

Had to watch yet another Favre game in which the announcers made me sick with their ridiculous, over-the-top fawning praise. Make no mistake about it, Favre is good. Considering the guy's my age, and he's still putting together outstanding clutch performances like he did in today's playoff game, I can't really heap my customary dose o'hatred upon his undeserving shoulders. It's just that I'm tired of the "gunslinger" who's "just havin' a ball" hyperbole. We get it. The guy's good. The guy's apparently very likable. He still enjoys playing the game, even at his advanced age. He still has an alarming propensity for zipping the ball into triple coverage, and he still gets a free pass (pun intended) when those ill-advised passes get picked, because when he gets away with his craziness, exciting things happen. Good. Great. Lovely.

But not so good when the lunacy leads to an unsportsmanlike, in-your-face, running up the score late TD toss when the game was 27-3 with a little more than a minute left in the 4th quarter. Scummy? Unnecessary? Childish? Absolutely. But the TV talking heads loved it. If that had been a non-media darling like Matt Schaub or Aaron Rodgers running up the score for the sake of beefing up his statistics, I'm sure there would have been quite a bit of holier-than-thou outrage. Instead, the announcers were practically high-fiving each other over Favre's hayseed, aw-shucks bullshit. So, it's not necessarily Favre I hate (although I do find him annoying), as much as the way the media fellates him. At any given point in a game, you'll hear countless references to gunslingers, ballplayers, good old boys, tractors, rugged manliness, gunslinging, good old-fashioned fun, having a ball out there, gunslinging, playing the game, enthusiasm, craftiness, and gunslinging. Typical TV talking head soundbite after a 7-yard dumpoff to Adrian Peterson resulted in a first-down and an exuberant display of good ole' boyishness from Favre:

Oh, that gunslinger... he's a gunslingin' son of a gunslung gunslingin' gun that slings gunslung gunslingin' gunslingers. In short, he's a gunslingin' slung-gun gunslinger who slings guns like a gungslingin' son of a gunslung gunslingin' gunslinger. Oh, and he's just havin' a ball out there. 'Cause he's a gunslinger. Gun. Sling. Gunslinger.

Give me a break. I hope he gets his hillbilly ass handed to him next week-end. In a tractor. With a gun. And a sling. Gun. Slinger.