The Best Jobs For Brett Favre When He Finally Doesn't Play Football Anymore (Number Two)

It's a MiniBest!

If you're a sports fan, you probably thought it was over, for real, last week when Brett Favre said he wasn't going to play for the Vikings.

(If you're not a sports fan, then you probably said, just now, Brett who? But if you're not a sports fan, too, what's your deal? I'm not saying you have to be obsessed, but you probably ought to like at least one sport. Maybe Brockian Ultra Cricket.)

But it's never over with Brett Favre -- and thank God, because what else would people who like sports do for fun and entertainment right now, when the best thing sports networks can do is claim that people actually watch the NBA playoffs which are now entering their third consecutive year -- just two more and we'll have a champion!

It's a little-publicized fact that the NBA playoffs are so long that they actually overlap. Since they expanded to best-of-seven games (best of seven for no apparent reason) the NBA playoffs take, on average, 5.3 years. So the games that you're watching now are an amalgamation of several years of NBA Playoffs -- the 2009 versions, which just began, and all the prior years back to the 2004, which should be done any day now. This model has been so successful that the NBA, word has it, plans to eventually just say that every game is a championship, and award a trophy every week.

Which (a) I suggested long ago on my now-defunct sports blog, and (b) is what golf and NASCAR do already.

Anyway, it wasn't over, and Brett Favre The Greatest Living Quarterback (And Also Best Quarterback Ever) is still contemplating coming back to play another season. While I'm hoping that he does -- and, now, hoping that he does it as a Viking, because that'll help guarantee that my prediction about Packers' GM Ted Thompson's fate (he'll be fired on January 9, 2010) will come true -- I know that there will come a time when Brett hangs up the cleats and calls it a day on his football career, for real.

But I don't want to lose Brett, and the public doesn't want to lose Brett, and Brett doesn't want us to lose him, so as a public service to Brett and me and the public, I'm offering up, today, the Second Of The Best Jobs For Brett Favre When He Finally Doesn't Play Football Anymore.

Today's job is:

Not Being A Spy In Iran.

This is a job that opened up only recently, when Roxana Saberi, who was definitely not being a spy in Iran, was released by the Iranian government recently. Ms. Saberi was convicted by an Iranian "court" of being a spy... even though she clearly was not being a spy in Iran... and then had her 8-year-sentence commuted to a two-year-suspended sentence by another Iranian "court."

Ms. Saberi was originally arrested, she said, for buying a bottle of wine on the black market. Iran then said she'd been arrested for not actually having press credentials, and ultimately charged with buying information about Iran's nuclear program. She confessed to that, although she recanted that confession later. She also had a classified Iranian government report on the U.S.' involvement in Iraq.

All of which leads to one inescapble conclusion: she obviously wasn't a spy. If being an uncredentialed journalist who is in possession of foreign government's classified documents makes one a spy, well, then, we're all spies, aren't we? Or, at least, those of us who are uncredentialed journalists in possession of foreign goverments' classified documents are spies.

Except Roxanne Saberi.

Although she's kind of shady, anyway-- nobody seems really sure if she was Miss Dakota 1997, or 1998. With those kinds of questions about her, it's no wonder she was convicted.

Anyway, the job of "Not Being A Spy In Iran" is open now, and Brett Favre would be perfect for it: He's used to keeping people guessing about his intentions, he's comfortable dealing with the media and the constant swirl of speculation, and he's already made a lot of money (which is important, because I don't guess the job of Not Being A Spy In Iran pays much.)

Plus, Favre likes attention, and the world loves to focus on people who are not spies in Iran -- witness the 299 people who signed the online petition asking to free Roxanne Saberi! She got 299 people to sign up to free her from Iran's evil clutches.

And you may not think that 299 people is very many, but it is -- it's 71 more people than signed the petition to relocate the Windemere grad hallway -- a petition that echoes the words of the Declaration of Independence with its lofty goals and flowerly language:

We, the future graduates of the 2007/2008 school year, would hereby like to request that our grad hallway be relocated to where it originally has been for the past number of years. We all have shared the vision for the past 4 years of one day being in the grad hallway, all together and celebrating our last year. It has been a tradition for graduates from year to year to have lockers located on the basement floor grad hallway and we feel as if we should have been given at least some notice or some warning before the hallway was moved. The grad hallway isn’t just a hallway to us, it’s going to be apart of our memories and it’s an area where we can be by ourselves and share the laughs, tears and special moments. We will not give up on the hallway we have looked forward to for many years. Attached is a list of names of graduates and undergraduates who feel the hallway needs to be relocated to its original placement. We, the grads and undersigned undergraduates hope you will reconsider on the placement of the grad hallway.


Don't you get a lump in your throat just reading that? I almost stood and saluted.

Ms. Saberi's plight drew nearly 33% more worldwide attention than the deplorable state of Grad Hallways at Windemere-- and that kind of publicity is the kind of publicity that Brett Favre craves, and the rest of us want for him. Here's hoping Brett follows in Ms. Saberi's footsteps and becomes the next person who is Not Being A Spy In Iran.