Favre-Packers, the Game You Have to Watch

Brett Favre. Brett Favre. Brett Favre Brett Favre Brett Favre.

Sound familiar? That sums up the tone of sports coverage during the past 24 hours or so. Given Brett Favre's triumphant, petulant return to professional football -- and his heroics last Sunday, when the Favre threw a last-second touchdown to give the Vikings a late win -- it makes sense. But we don't have to like it.

In fact, some of us hate it. Some sports fans have had enough of the Brett Favre nonsense that has dominated the airwaves these past few years. It's not as though this is a new sensation. This is practically normalcy. This has been happening ever since Favre first retired, first claimed he was done with the game, only to come back, and then later tearfully retire, and then come back, and rinse, repeat, ad infinitum. It's quite possible at this point that Brett Favre will play football forever.

ESPN is doing nothing to make this any easier. In fact, they're throwing it in football fans' faces: On today's "SportsNation," a joke of a poll-based show starring one of ESPN's most execrable personalities in Colin Cowherd -- a guy who readily admits he says things he doesn't believe on the radio to rile people up -- ESPN is planning to set the record for most times the name Brett Favre has ever been said in a half hour show. This is not a joke; this is really happening. It's almost as if ESPN hates you and wants you to be unhappy, isn't it?

Chicago fans have a special relationship with Brett Favre, but now we're not the only ones who hate him so. And now we're not the only ones forced to watch as he experiences miraculous late-career success after miraculous late-career success. The whole country's long been on the Favre hate-train. More than ever, this Monday Night, we're unable to get off.

Eamonn Brennan is a Chicago-based writer, editor and blogger. You can also read him at Yahoo! Sports, Mouthpiece Sports Blog, and Inside The Hall, or at his personal site, eamonnbrennan.com. Follow him on Twitter.