It’s like watching the great Rodin sculpt his masterpiece statue The Thinker.  Brett Favre barks out the snap count, takes the ball from beneath the center’s meaty sweat-stained haunches, glides back three steps with a gazelle’s effortless lope, deftly rolls towards the sidelines like a Stealth bomber in Baghdad, and with child-like abandon lets fly with one of his patented rocket-fueled bullets.  That he’s throwing off his back foot against his body downfield 50 yards into triple coverage is nothing new.  That he’s doing it in Gang Green gear, however, is.  That’s right — in case you missed it, the most anonymous superstar in the country’s (and soon the world’s) most popular sport is now entering the largest media market in the entire world.  Better late than never, I guess.  But, boy, how late it is.

Up until recently, the greatness that is Brett Favre has been Wisconsin’s best kept secret, the sort of cheesy beer-soaked morsel Packers fans would prefer to have stayed hidden beneath their foam hunks of Swiss.  Favre was — heck, he is — a warrior amongst warriors, an old-fashioned gunslinger in a world of remote-controlled missiles, an ego-free anomaly in an age where even wet-eared rookies have someone on the payroll telling them how great they are.  As lesser players hogged the spotlight and made their outrageous demands, Favre simply stood back and left the light alone.  Throughout all the touchdowns, all the wins, the three MVP awards, even his improbable Super Bowl victory against those soon-to-be dynastic Patriots, the fortune and fame that other NFL players seemingly stumble into on a regular basis managed to evade this modest Mississippian.  To John Stockbroker and Polly Babyburper, Brett Favre was just another nobody.  That’s just the way Brett Favre liked it.

This man-child with the golden arm, picked up for a first-round song from the clueless Atlanta Falcons all the way back in 1992, became one of football’s most respected field generals and one of its most unsung record breakers.  On every given Sunday — that’s right, every Sunday; pain was for the non-Favre — you could see #4 in his green-and-gold colors eviscerate enemy secondaries like he was sitting in front of his parents’ home burning unsuspecting ants with a magnifying glass.  He would canter and careen through and around the defenses’ onslaught like a pale-skinned Barry Sanders, only to stop on a dime and unleash throws that would incur the jealous wrath of Zeus himself.  And he would do it with a smile on his face and a song in his heart.  Even hobbled and hurt, Favre never lost sight that, hey, this is a kid’s game I’m playing right now.  I should be having fun.  Well, he had fun all over the faces of every player in the NFC North for 15 years.  And just like that, without so much as a gold watch and a cheap farewell lunch, the Green Bay Packers decided they didn’t need the best quarterback no one’s ever heard of.  It took all of Favre’s intestinal fortitude to fight them every step of the way and allow him a shot at QBing another hopeful team.

While this obviously isn’t an MMQB column (to heck with paragraph breaks, I say!), but there is one Thing I Think I Know that I’d like to offer right now: I think I didn’t do enough to get Brett’s story out there.  You’d think that with a player of Favre’s talent and undeniable animal charisma, there’d be cameras and reporters around him 24-7, tracking his every thought and movement.  And even if that did exist, would that still be enough to fully encapsulate everything that is Brett Favre?  I don’t think so.  And I don’t think I tried hard enough as a journalist, as a fan of football — heck, as a fan of Favre — to get his face out there so everyone knows how amazing and special this quarterback truly is.  And as Favre finally enters the spotlight he deserves after toiling in obscurity for nearly two decades, there’s no one I can blame for this turn of events but me.  I’m sorry, Brett.  I let you down.  And I let the world down as a result.

As I sat a few yards behind Favre during this scrimmage, watching him run a lithe hand through his pepper-gray head of hair (still as full and lustrous as it was during his rookie year in Atlanta) following an ill-opportune interception, I couldn’t help but get caught up in his youthful essence.  What the French call joie de vivre.  As a journalist, one strives for impartiality, but even journalists have a fan’s heart beating beneath their professional exteriors.  I cheered, “You’ll get ’em next time, champ,” as Favre skulked to the sidelines, wearing the failure of that interception over his sturdy shoulders like a superhero’s powerful responsibility.  I couldn’t help myself.  I hooted and hollered.  I stomped and clapped.  I even tried to start a “here we go, Brett Favre, here we go” chant amongst my fellow stand-dwellers (to no avail).  All with the hope that, for just one brief shining moment, I could see that enthusiastic twinkle return to Favre’s haunting world-weary eyes.  I was no longer the decorated reporter that’s spent countless hours and days with Favre and his beautiful family.  I was no longer a co-host on NBC’s well-respected Sunday night football pre- and post-game show.  I was now Peter King, fan of Brett Favre.

Suddenly, Favre turned towards the stands, looked up in my general direction, gave what looked to be a wink, then returned to shouting at an anonymous receiver for not getting enough seperation from his defender.  And I got something in my eye.  Something called Brett Favre.  This is what that kid must have felt when Mean Joe Greene threw him that towel, I thought.  What a player he is.  No, scratch that — what a man.  What a man’s man.  Godspeed, Brett Lorenzo Favre.

Peter King is a columnist for Brett Favre and Sports Illustrated.