Gunslinger Page 13

  The pass was perfectly thrown. Harris glided into its path, extended his arms, and used two meaty hands to cradle the football as he stepped across the white G (for Gator Bowl) painted on the turf. He lofted both arms in the air. Soon, he and Favre were besieged by an ocean of black uniforms. The TBS cameraman immediately shifted to the Florida State sideline, where wide receiver Matt Frier stood, hands on his hips, dumbfounded. What in the world had just happened?

  The aftermath was mayhem.

  Upon entering the Gator Bowl with two dozen other relatives that morning, Karen Favre, Brett’s aunt, was asked by a Florida State fan, “What are you people even doing here?” Now exiting, she spotted the man again. “We kicked your ass,” she snapped, “and now we’re leaving!”

  Inside the Southern Miss locker room the players were sprawled out on the floor, in the bathroom, anywhere there was space. It was exhaustion mixed with euphoria, and Brett Favre wore both. Chris Ryals, his closest friend on the team, leaned to the side on a neighboring chair, steam rising from his scalp. Every couple of minutes another player would walk by, place his hand in the quarterback’s wet brown hair, and ruffle it. He completed 21 of 39 passes for 282 yards. It wasn’t the best game of his career, but it was the most rewarding. A cornucopia of thoughts darted through his brain. Elation. Disbelief. A few days earlier, a Sports Illustrated writer had arrived in Hattiesburg to write a lengthy Favre profile. He told him the piece was sure to run should the Golden Eagles trump the Seminoles. Now Favre was giddy with anticipation—a real lengthy story in his favorite magazine! “I remember standing there, looking at him,” said Billy Watkins, who covered the game for the Clarion-Ledger. “And he was wearing a big gold chain around his neck. His grandma had given it to him. And I thought, When do you ever see a football player wearing a gold chain during a game?”

  The Golden Eagles took a seven-hour bus ride to travel to Jacksonville for the game. The 54-minute return flight to Hattiesburg is an event most Golden Eagles never forgot. It was filled with laughter, shouting, relief. Throughout the game, Florida State fans repeatedly broke out their famed “Tomahawk Chop” chant to intimidate the visitors. Now the Southern Miss players and coaches did their own derisive Tomahawk Chop. More than 20,000 fans greeted the plane at Hattiesburg–Laurel Regional Airport, and Favre and many of his teammates headed straight to the End Zone bar. The following afternoon, the team met to review film of the game. Usually, such gatherings are businesslike. This was a party.

  Before the replaying commenced, Pete Antoniou, a defensive tackle, tapped Hallman on the shoulder. During the win, Antoniou’s father, Constantinos, sat in the stands, wearing a sweat-soaked white tank top and shorts. He had arrived from Greece in the mid-1950s, opened up Dino’s Spaghetti House and Lounge, and knew nothing about American football. Yet that Saturday in the Gator Bowl, he shed tears of happiness. This, he told those who would listen, was his son realizing the American dream.

  “Coach, I came here to play football and to contribute to winning,” Pete Antoniou said. “But that was one of the best times I’ve had in my life, and one of the best times my dad has had in his life, and I want you to know how proud I am to play here at Southern Miss.”

  Hallman’s eyes grew moist. He was proud, too.

  The week that followed was bliss.

  The journalists came, and Southern Miss was ranked 18th in the latest Top 25 poll. Favre was asked oddball questions by oddball reporters about his favorite music (New Edition, Kool and the Gang), favorite food (shrimp po’boys), favorite TV program (The Tonight Show), and greatest dislike (working). He was hailed as a sudden Heisman contender and a potential NFL draft pick.

  Then, as quickly as it began, it ended. For only the second time since 1979, Mississippi State and Southern Miss met outside Jackson. The game was held in Hattiesburg, and a record 34,189 filled a normally half-empty stadium to see one of the nation’s hottest teams. The Bulldogs had been a trainwreck for years—1-10 in 1988, 4-7 the year before. But, to the shock of everyone, they ran the ball freely through the Golden Eagles’ defense while beating up Favre, who completed 18 of 39 passes for 182 yards, no touchdowns, and one interception. When Joel Logan’s 34-yard field goal passed through the uprights with eight seconds remaining, Mississippi State left with a 26–23 win and Southern Miss lost everything. You don’t remain in the top 25 with a loss to one of the worst teams in the nation, and you don’t make a case for the Heisman by delivering a stinker. “Honestly, I think we blew our entire wad against Florida State,” said Antoniou. “We didn’t have anything left.”

  After the game, Hallman called a 2:00 a.m. team meeting. It was the worst beatdown most of the players had ever heard. They were soft. They were quitters. They had an opportunity, and they lost an opportunity. “It’s up to you!” he said, veins bulging from his neck. “It’s up to you! You can make this season something special, or you can make this season a waste! You decide!”

  The next week Southern Miss traveled to No. 5 Auburn and suffered a humiliating 24–3 thrashing. The week after that, Texas Christian, in the midst of a 4-7 season, pulled out a 19–17 squeaker. Then it was a trip to Texas A&M, Hallman’s alma mater, and a 31–14 pulverizing.

  Even as Southern Miss dragged its way to a 5-6 season, scouts from across the NFL landscape were beginning to descend upon Hattiesburg to watch the Golden Eagles quarterback flex his golden arm. To the nation’s football-talent evaluators, wins and loses are irrelevant, especially when compared to strength, durability, and moxie. Not that there weren’t concerns. The first time Favre worked out for an NFL scout, he arrived late, ran the 40-yard dash with a turtle’s speed, reached the end, fell to his knees, and vomited. “Jeez,” the personnel official asked, “what did you drink last night?”

  Favre grinned. Beer. He drank beer.

  The scouts were particularly abuzz after a heavily attended October 14 game at Louisville. Although neither team was a traditional power, both featured junior quarterbacks who were thought to be potential franchise-makers—Favre and Cardinals starter Browning Nagle. Because the teams played each other every season, there was an ongoing debate over which man had the more powerful arm and the brighter future. Both were right-handed flamethrowers with a love of action and a love of the nightlife. Both were athletic marvels somehow overlooked by bigger schools.

  “Browning was a much better college quarterback than Brett,” said Howard Schnellenberger, the Louisville coach. “Nagle made some of the best defenses in the country look like children. It wasn’t close.”

  “If you asked back then who was better, it was probably a flip of the coin,” said Rick Lantz, the Louisville defensive coordinator. “Browning was a great quarterback. He could do 100 different things physically. But Brett . . . I mean, c’mon.”

  This time, Favre and Nagle spent 59 minutes and 51 seconds as near equals. Each quarterback threw for a bunch of yards (232 for Nagle, 224 for Favre) and suffered a fair share of drops. Then, with nine seconds remaining and the game tied at 10, a miracle occurred. Southern Miss had the ball on its own 21-yard line. Terry Lantz, a backup defensive back for the Cardinals, told Derek Hawthorne, one of the starting safeties, “Whatever you do, don’t go for the ball, don’t jump. Just stay behind the pile.” Hawthorne rejected the advice. “Man,” he said, “I’m gonna intercept that ball.”

  Favre dropped back 11 steps, drifted right toward the sideline, and was partially swamped by Ted Washington, the six-foot-five, 320-pound defensive lineman. Somehow, Favre broke free with a stiff arm, stepped forward, cocked twice, and let loose a high, deep Hail Mary that soared through the air before landing in a sea of white and red jerseys. The ball glided over Hawthorne (Lantz: “Christ, I warned him!”) and came down atop Michael Jackson’s hands. He tipped it behind him to Tillman, who was crossing the center of the field. After breaking one tackle, the senior sprinted into the end zone with no time remaining. “It was an absolute fluke,” John Gainey, Louisville’s cornerback, said afterward. “Things like that aren
’t supposed to happen.”

  With that throw, in that moment, Brett Favre officially placed himself on the NFL map of top junior prospects to watch. Did the university’s Heisman campaign pay off? Hardly. For a mere $10,000, Favre received zero votes. His 2,588 passing yards were a school record, but 14 touchdowns and 10 inceptions hardly jumped from the page. “The numbers didn’t matter,” said Jim Hay, who worked as a vice president with the Atlanta Falcons. “It was more like, ‘There’s this kid at an OK football program, and every game he doesn’t look good for two or three quarters, but all of a sudden he does something completely amazing. And we need to know more about him.

  “‘We needed to know everything about Brett Favre.’”

  8

  Near Death

  * * *

  ON THE AFTERNOON of July 14, 1990, Brett Favre, his older brother Scott, and two Golden Eagles teammates, Toby Watts and Keith Loescher, met on Dauphin Island, Alabama, for a day of fishing in the Gulf of Mexico.

  There was nothing particularly unique or special about the plans—“A boat, lunch meat, beer,” said Watts, a defensive end who had transferred to Southern Miss after a year at Southern Methodist. “Just a college day of it, hanging out”—and after several hours of eating and fishing and drinking and drinking and drinking and drinking, the young men split up. Watts returned to his hotel room, and the three others made the 95-mile trek back to Kiln, where they were to have dinner with Bonita and Irv. Keith and Scott were in one car; Brett drove his white 1989 Maxima.

  The straight shot along I-10 West was scenic, but hardly noteworthy. Before long, the cars were rolling through the Diamondhead resort development, a stone’s throw from the Favre home. What happened next—at approximately 7:45 p.m. on Kapalama Drive—is somewhat confusing. In 1997 Brett told Steve Cameron, author of the book Brett Favre: Huck Finn Grows Up, that he was distracted by the high beams of an oncoming vehicle and was not speeding. In 2007 he told Mark McHale—his former coach and the author of 10 to 4—that he merely “slid off the road” (high beams never noted). In his 1997 autobiography, he also failed to mention an oncoming car, simply that he was traveling above the speed limit (about 70 mph in a 35 mph zone) and that his right front tire “hit some loose gravel on the shoulder.” Favre wrote that he straightened the wheel, but, “because I was going so fast, the car shot across the road.” When asked about the accident by Russ Brown of the Louisville Courier-Journal, he said he might have been blinded by “the setting sun.” In 1991 he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that “they’d been repairing the road and I forgot it.”

  Loescher, trailing Favre by no more than 20 feet, witnessed the entire incident. “Brett was probably going 60, and he just kind of went off the edge of the road,” Loescher said. “He overcorrected and his car just shot across the road and started flipping sideways and it rolled up to a stop at a telephone pole. There was actually a point when it was flipping, where if we hadn’t hit the brakes we could have driven right underneath his car. It went off the side of the road and into a telephone pole and up on its side.”

  Loescher slammed the breaks and backed up. He sprinted toward the Nissan, glanced through a window, and saw no Brett. “He was gone,” Loescher said. “He wasn’t anywhere in the front.” Loescher shifted his view to the rear of the vehicle and spotted his friend, crumpled behind the backseat along the shelf. Blood covered his left knee. Shards of splintered glass were everywhere. “I punched the window—the driver’s side window—three or four times,” Loescher said. “I couldn’t break it. So I ran to Scott’s car and opened the back.” An avid golfer, Scott kept his clubs in the trunk. Loescher grabbed a 3-iron and hammered it into Brett’s window, causing a slight crack in the glass before the clubhead broke off and flew through the air. “I’m standing there with the shaft of the club, and I started stabbing the window,” Loescher said. “Before I got all the glass out Scott jumped into the car.”

  “I drug him out the back as quick as possible,” Scott said, “because I had no idea whether the car would catch on fire.” The two men grabbed Brett beneath his shoulders and laid him on the side of the road. They screamed his name, but he did not respond. “I thought he could have been dead,” said Loescher. After a couple of seconds, Brett mumbled a handful of nonsensical words. Then—“Scott, stay right here, don’t leave me. Am I gonna be alright, Scott?”

  “Hell, yeah, you’re gonna be alright,” his brother replied. “You’ll be fine.”

  Scott and Keith tried to flag down a bypasser. A woman finally stopped, and immediately lectured Scott on safe driving. “She was bitching about how we ended up there,” Loescher said. “We were driving too fast or too recklessly or whatever. I remember Scott started yelling back at her.” Brett, still on the ground, tugged at Scott’s leg. “Be nice,” he said in a whisper. He then complained about severe stomach pain, so Loescher pulled his shirt off. A purplish-red steering wheel imprint was embedded in Brett’s torso. At long last, the sound of sirens could be heard.

  “I remember Scott screaming at me, ‘Are you alright?’” Brett recalled. “I had one of those concussions where you don’t know who or where you are, but I was talking.”

  Bonita Favre was attending a function at St. Paul Catholic Church in Pass Christian. Karen, Irvin’s sister, excused herself to take a phone call. She returned moments later, her face ashen. “We’ve gotta go!” she said. “Brett’s been in a wreck not far from the house.” They rushed to the scene. Lights were flashing; police officers and firemen lingered. “I saw the car,” Bonita said, “and thought, ‘Oh my, they’re dead.’”

  Bonita rushed toward Brett, who was on a stretcher. “Mama, I’m alright!” he said. “I’m alright!” He was taken to Gulfport Memorial Hospital. “I screamed with every bump we hit because it hurt so badly,” he recalled. “I’d scream every time they moved me.”

  Shortly after he reached the emergency room, a groggy Favre was told by the attending physician that, with his injuries, football wasn’t an option for the upcoming season.

  “Just watch me,” he replied.

  The next morning, readers of the Clarion-Ledger opened up their newspapers to the frightening headline FAVRE HURT IN WRECK. Staff writer Robert Wilson, who learned of the accident two hours after it happened, filed a detailed piece, explaining that Southern Miss’s star quarterback suffered a hematoma (a swelling caused by a collection of blood) on his liver. “He has a lot of soreness in his abdominal wall,” Dr. Jare Barkley, the treating physician, said. “We hope his body can absorb it. He is in a lot of pain and under medication, but he is alert and in full possession of his faculties. He had a concussion briefly. He was like a prize fighter being knocked out. He doesn’t remember the accident.”

  The article quoted multiple sources, filled in myriad gaps (he had six stitches in his left kneecap, a severely bruised left arm, a bruised vertebra, and a right side that was black and blue from ribs to hip), and left Southern Miss fans to wonder whether Brett Favre would recover in time for the upcoming season. Two days later, a piece from Billy Watkins in the Clarion-Ledger added a bit more information, including that the cause of the wreck “is under investigation.”

  One detail remained secret for the next two and a half decades. After the accident, Slim Smith, sports editor of the Sun-Herald, called the hospital to find out whether Favre’s blood alcohol content had been above the legal limit of .08 percent. Smith found a hospital employee who was willing to share the information but then, according to Smith, backed out with cold feet. It was made clear he was not allowed to speak with the press. The reason: Brett measured above the legal limit, but benefited from a system that had long protected local athletic heroes. “Brett almost certainly got preferential treatment from law enforcement,” said Smith. “It’s not a big surprise.”

  “We were all shitfaced,” said Loescher, never asked about the specifics of that night until years later. “I can just hold up a little better.”

  Brett Favre should have been arrested on D
UI charges. In a region that loved and protected its football stars, however, he never was.

  Division I college football players are slabs of meat, and if you don’t believe it, see how popular a big-time halfback or superstar linebacker is three months after suffering a career-ending injury. It’s one of the central themes of Willie Morris’s landmark book, The Courting of Marcus Dupree, and it’s long held true. You’re only as valued as your last play.

  Having been largely ignored throughout his high school career, then suddenly thrust into Heisman dialogue, Brett Favre fully understood the fickle nature of sports fame. That’s why, despite an accident that left him hospitalized, bloodied, bruised, and in severe pain, he never entertained the idea of redshirting the season in order to recover. “His resolve was amazing,” said Mark McHale. “I first presumed he’d have to sit out. To Brett, there was no way.”

  The Golden Eagles began two-a-day practices while Favre was hospitalized. McHale visited a couple of days after the wreck, and turned visibly agitated when Bonita suggested Brett might not return. He had yet to walk, after all, and she, her husband, and Deanna (who, despite their on-again, off-again difficulties, was at Brett’s disposal throughout the recovery) were taking turns feeding him food, taking him to the bathroom, wiping his rear. “Oh, Coach McHale,” she told him, “this doesn’t look good. All we ever worked for is over.” McHale entered Brett’s room. There was a small grease board, intended for the day’s menu, at the base of the bed, and McHale started drawing up plays. “[Brett’s] eyes were wide open,” McHale recalled, “and getting bigger.”