Brett Favre is a Minnesota Viking, and it’s sitting none too well with Packer nation. The Northern Star’s two most vocal green-and-gold supporters sat down to discuss the psychologically crippling saga of seeing their childhood hero defect to the enemy.

Justin Weaver: When the news broke and you saw Brett Favre standing on that podium holding that horrible hideous purple jersey, what was the first thing that ran through your head?

Chris Dertz: I was packing some things up to come back to NIU when I saw it and I stopped. I couldn’t do anything with my day. It’s hard to put into words because there’s an entire generation of Packer fans that know no other quarterback and no other face of their franchise than Brett Favre.

JW: Brett Favre started every game at quarterback for the Green Bay Packers from when I started preschool through my sophomore year of college. If you were a boy growing up in Wisconsin in the 1990s – as I was – you had a Brett Favre jersey in your closet. It didn’t even matter if you were a Packer fan, it didn’t even matter if you liked football, you had a Favre jersey. And you were taught almost religiously growing up that Brett Favre is representative of everything that is right about sports, everything that is right about life and that you’re supposed to look up to him. We were ready to love him again. We tried so hard. The thing he said that infuriated me the most is he basically said ‘if you don’t still love me you’re not a real Packer fan.’ And that was the biggest burn of all.

CD: I almost believe him when he says revenge wasn’t a factor. He’s going to an offense he’s familiar with. He’s going to a division where he’s spent the last 16 years dominating every team in that division. But to come out and say that if you don’t still love me after I jerk you around for the last three years? What happened this week, there’s nothing more he could have done to tarnish his legacy.

JW: He says ‘it’s my legacy and it’s what I think about it.’ OK, Brett. That’s true. No one has to live with the decisions we make more than we do. But that revenge wasn’t a factor? I don’t buy it. Even Jets players were saying all he could ever talk about was how much he hated Ted Thompson.

CD: Just the speculation was driving Packer fans crazy. The thing that made Favre so great for so many years in Green Bay was his likability. During that stretch he was probably the best quarterback in the NFL, but during press conferences and interviews he still seemed liked a normal guy that you could go out and have a beer with. I just find it so fascinating that over the last three years that likability has eroded into almost a Terrell Owens wide receiver-like desire for attention.

JW: Are you planning on taking part in any jersey burning effigies?

CD: My only question is not if I’m going to burn it, it’s when and how. And it’s my childhood jersey to make it worse.

JW: I’m pretty sure my Brett Favre jersey is probably going to wind up on the wood burning pile. This is such a valuable lesson for us because this has taught me that never again will I invest any personal emotional attachment into an athlete. From this day forward I am never buying a player jersey again.

CD: I can honestly say I’ve had girls cheat on me, I’ve had my favorite teachers refuse me recommendation letters and I’ve been denied interviews when I applied to wash dishes in a kitchen. And despite all that I have never felt this betrayed by a human being, much less someone I’ve never even met and probably never will meet. No matter how flakey he is, you can’t erase those years he had in Green Bay. But 100 percent forgiveness? Never. The Jets was one thing – the Jets we could live with. But Minnesota? That just won’t fly.

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