Maybe I should root for Favre after all?

With a scowl on my face, I watched Brett Favre’s postgame interview after his team dismantled the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday and earned a berth in the NFC Championship Game. As a lifelong Packers fan, it pained me to watch the local version of Benedict Arnold spew out how great the experience with the Minnesota Vikings has been and how it’s been everything he thought it would be.

Like so many Packers fans during the Favre saga, I’ve gone from joy to disappointment to anger, and I was hoping an early exit from the playoffs would befall the Old Gunslinger. Instead, I watched in horror as his team continued to ride the Favre Renaissance and took one step closer to the Super Bowl.

I found myself thinking, "I hope at the end of this, if he does win a Super Bowl, he looks back and feels hollow inside." Apparently driven by revenge against Packers general manager Ted Thompson and feeling a driving desire to prove people wrong, I wanted him to glance back at the tattered remnants of his legacy in Wisconsin and be forced to consider that maybe all this wasn’t worth it.

If the motivation is spite, then the accomplishment offers an opportunity to say "I told you so." Great. Then what? Is that single moment worth fracturing a career’s worth of memories and accomplishments to a deeply loyal and loving fan base?

But a couple days later, I re-evaluated my outlook somewhat. I thought about the satisfaction I would feel if Favre lost to the New Orleans Saints on Sunday and fell short of the Super Bowl. Wasn’t that the exact same thing – an "I told you so" moment that offers a fleeting moment of fulfillment, and then ... what exactly?

Nothing gets accomplished. The Packers have already moved on, the Favre legacy has already been torn apart, and it would ensure that I have no vested interest in the Super Bowl two weeks from now.

The truth is, at 40 years old, Favre is enjoying virtually unprecedented success for an NFL quarterback his age. He’s been outstanding, even if his motivation has poisoned how I view him, with more production than anyone expected and a lack of home-stretch ineffectiveness that the nay-sayers foresaw.

One last Super Bowl would be an extraordinary opportunity for theater, especially pitted against another great in Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning, whose prime may also be one or two years away from past.

It’s true that Favre is worth some of the ire, but I think I’m far more irritated with former Packers fans who have essentially traded in their allegiance to the Green and Gold for irrational loyalty to the player. People call in to sports talk radio defending Favre’s actions, seemingly eager to rub it in the face of Packers Nation on behalf of Favre.

I can’t understand how this vocal minority finds no fault with Favre’s selfish behavior and believes his departure from the organization was a direct detriment to the team’s past and present championship chances. But they’re out there, and shutting those people up is important to me. But is that worth rooting against Favre, whose colorful career probably should be appreciated by any football fan, regardless of team allegiance?

I recognize that the more he wins wearing purple, the longer it will take for the Green Bay-Favre relationship to heal, although I do think over time it will heal. The generations after mine will know Favre the way I know Bart Starr, as one of the greatest to ever play and someone that can be happily called a Packer. In the biggest of pictures, making the Super Bowl with another franchise will only heighten Favre’s legend, not completely change the way the world associates him with Cheeseheads. So is it really so bad if he succeeds? It’ll be a fun ride, if nothing else, to watch the aging wonder compete for another Super Bowl more than a decade after his last one.

Sigh. No matter the logic I can give you and give myself, I’m probably going to root against Favre on Sunday. I can’t stand him, after all. But there is a tiny part of my Packers-loving heart that wants to see Favre go out a winner. That’s what he brought to Packers football.