3) Brett Favre’s retirement saga
GREEN BAY, WI – MARCH 06: Quarterback Brett Favre of the Green Bay Packers announces his retirement at a press conference on March 6, 2008 at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)
If #4 was The Decision, #3 was The InDecision. See what I did there?
The longest saga for our list of most annoying sports stories has to be the retirement drama of Brett Favre. Each and every offseason, seemingly for a decade, Favre would waffle over whether or not he would play another season. Each and every offseason we would have to hear about the debates and drama, each and every offseason there would be hysteria over his “comeback” and each and every offseason we’d be following Favre’s plane or poor Ed Werder would be stuck in Favre’s bushes outside his house.
In 2008, a teary-eyed Favre said this at just one of many retirement announcements:
“I’ve given everything I have to give, and that’s it. I don’t have anything left to give.”
He’d go on to play three more seasons!
Let’s put Favre’s on-again, off-again, As The World Turns-inspired retirement saga into perspective. It was back in 2006 that The Onion wrote a satire piece on Favre’s waffling. 2006! Favre would then go on to hold ESPN and the rest of the sports world captive by his flip flopping that we would have to suffer through five more seasons of Favre Watch until he finally, really, actually called it quits after the 2010 season. Favre retired from the Packers and then came back to play for the Jets, then retired from the Jets and came back to play for the Vikings. But hey, he was just a kid out there, right?