FAVRE RIPPED OFF THE UNDERPRIVILEGED, DESPITE HIS PARKINSON’S DIAGNOSIS

No one doubts a wild child suffered a progressive disease, but to suggest his mind was elsewhere ignores his crime in Mississippi: He received an illegal $8 million to help his company and daughter

     Did a battle with Parkinson’s disease prompt Brett Favre to cheat the rest of us? He wants football fans to buy in, as some might after his glorious 508 touchdown passes, though most medical practitioners certifiably would disagree. He is testifying about the $8 million funneled to him, his daughter’s volleyball facility at Southern Mississippi and the defunct firm he backed. Was he so ravaged mentally, with a degenerative disorder, that he politically juked the world?

     Please don’t disintegrate amid sports mania.

     He is a crook. This is his latest scheme. Arrest him.

     Any murderer or rapist, I suppose, could claim he had a devastating illness during his act. None would be pardoned. Favre can’t claim five doctors in January discovered his plight when his alleged misuse of welfare funds happened years ago. Issues with his arm wouldn’t cause career health conditions to bring America’s sudden criminal forgiveness, though he was bludgeoned often as a wild-child quarterback.

     “They all said the same thing, if it's not in your family, and there's none on either side of my family, then the first thing we looked at is head trauma. Well, hell, I wrote the book on head trauma,” Favre said. “I would be doing something, and my right arm, I'd notice it was just stuck right there. I could not guide it. Eventually, I was like, you know, I’m just gonna get it checked.”

     The checkup doesn’t change his legal diagnosis. The text messages are alive and not well, when Favre asked Mississippi officials for money to help his concussion drug company, Prevacus, and Breleigh Favre’s sports career. He is alleged to have ripped off the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families helping the underprivileged, part of a $77 million swindle among 47 “well-connected people.” And now, because NFL colleagues are siding with him, Favre thinks he’ll escape despite a Congressional hearing.

     “I feel bad for him and (wife) Deanna, but it's unfortunately part of our game. That's part of the risk of playing, and we all in the back of our mind know that that could be a reality at some point,” said Aaron Rodgers, his former teammate. “We just kind of hope medicine at some point can catch up and either make the symptoms easier or eradicate some of these issues that we have.”

     Said former NFL quarterback Tommy Kramer, who came forward after learning about Favre: “I was diagnosed with dementia just over a year ago. … Please, no sympathy. I’ve lived a great life and wouldn’t change a thing. Nobody wanted to win more than me and I never gave up, and that’s exactly how I’m going to battle this.”

     Feel bad for Favre, the person. I remain outraged about Favre, the lawbreaker.

     “I urge Congress to put TANF guardrails in place to ensure that what happened in Mississippi doesn’t happen again,” he told the House Ways and Means Committee. “To help low-income Americans find and keep a job, to limit how states spend TANF grants and reduce wasteful bureaucracy and to protect taxpayer funds from fraud and abuse.

     “The challenges my family and I have faced over the last three years — because certain government officials in Mississippi failed to protect federal TANF funds from fraud and abuse, and are unjustifiably trying to blame me — those challenges have hurt my good name and are worse than anything I faced in football.”

     But what about his dirty relationship with former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant? Favre hasn’t been charged because the state takes care of its own. Anything he says, they remember his magnificent days with the Green Bay Packers and, naturally, Southern Mississippi. “I wanted to help my alma mater and benefit the community,” he told Congress. “Southern Miss introduced me to the nonprofit to see if they could help with funding. I had no way of knowing that there was anything wrong with how the state funded the project, especially since it was publicly approved by many state agencies and multiple attorneys including the attorney general.”

     What? Favre thought he was receiving millions of dollars in real life? Or did it occur to him, as the public turns on him, that concussions would be a safer play? In 2018, he said he probably suffered 1,000 head injuries in his career. “When you have ringing of the ears, seeing stars, that's a concussion,” he said. “And if that is a concussion, I've had hundreds, maybe thousands, throughout my career, which is frightening.” So if a player is conked in the brain for 20 years, or 27 including college and high school, it’s OK to defraud Mississippi? If he somehow wins freedom, how many others will attempt his subterfuge?

     “Sadly, I also lost an investment in a company that I believed was developing a breakthrough concussion drug I thought would help others,” Favre said. “I’m sure you will understand, while it’s too late for me because I’ve recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, this is also a cause dear to my heart.”

     Tell Anna Wolfe, a reporter who won the Pulitzer Prize for uncovering Favre at the nonprofit Mississippi Today. She has been sued for defamation by Bryant. The judge wants her notes, emails and sources. She might go to jail.

     Her paper is struggling through the tumult. In that state, commoners want Favre to walk away and heal in the mind. Dr. Rodney Bennett, the former president at Southern Mississippi, is targeting No. 4. “I’ve asked Brett not to do the things he’s doing to seek funding from state agencies and the legislature for the volleyball facility,” he wrote to Bryant. “I will see for the ‘umpteenth time’ if we can get him to stand down. It’s time for him to pay up — it really is just that simple.”

     Even Bryant agreed, at one point. “Maybe he wants the state to pay off his promises. Like all of us, I like Brett,” he said. “He is a legend, but he has to understand what a pledge means. I have tried many times to explain that to him.”

     Now, with false pretenses, Bryant has charged back. The state is coming down on Wolfe and the newspaper while Favre howls about Parkinson’s. He has failed twice in condemning the media, including would-be cases against ESPN’s Pat McAfee and Shannon Sharpe. Favre was sent home by a court that didn’t care Sharpe called him “a sorry mofo to steal from the lowest of the low (who) stole money from people that really needed that money.”

     The comment has held up. The Parkinson’s detection is past tense. He knew what he was doing, to some rational degree. Remember Jenn Sterger, the former media host who accused Favre of sending inappropriate texts and photos when he played for the New York Jets?

     “PSA: Please don’t send me links to it. I’ve seen it. I can read it,” she wrote. “I don’t wish bad things on anyone, but I know Karma never forgets an address. Imagine being diagnosed with such a terrible disease and not having the resources to fight it bc some Hall of Fame quarterback stole it. Those are the people that need your attention, support, and sympathy. And at least now, his pictures won’t be in focus. Mississippi, you deserve better.”

     Mississippi gets what it deserves.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.