Gunslinger Read online

  Varsity Blues

  * * *

  THE CLOAK of invisibility fit young Brett Favre like a snug Champion sweatshirt, and no matter what people say about his frenzied recruitment by colleges back in the fall and winter of 1985 and spring of 1986, well, there was no such frenzy.

  On page 110 of his very own autobiography, for example, Brett wrote of receiving an offer to play football at the University of Alabama.* Nobody at the school seemed to remember this.

  He also wrote that Pearl River Junior College offered him a scholarship to play quarterback. Ditto.

  In multiple interviews with multiple people, Irvin Favre said his son was pursued by Delta State and Mississippi College. “They both wanted him bad,” Irvin told a reporter. Louisiana State, he insisted, “was interested for a while.” As was Florida. False, false, false.

  Brett Favre was neither wanted nor unwanted by America’s Division I, II, and III college football programs. To be wanted or unwanted one must exist. And if you walked into the offices at the University of Alabama, or Auburn, or LSU, or Georgia, or Bucknell, Duke, Brown, Clemson, San Diego State, Arkansas—Brett Favre was a phantom. A nonfigment of nonimaginations. All college football programs have boards ranking the top desired high school prospects at every position. Brett Favre wasn’t merely on the bottom of the boards, or just to the south of the boards. No, he wasn’t even considered for the boards. Within the athletic departments of the state’s three major Division I universities (University of Mississippi, Mississippi State, Southern Miss), Brett Lorenzo Favre failed to register. Pearl River College’s starting quarterback was a kid named Scott Favre—and the Wildcats could not have cared less.

  “Brett was a fun kid to cover,” said Brenda Heathcock of the Sea Coast Echo. “But the scouts were never there to see him.”

  Entering his senior year of high school, Brett Favre was fully aware of this fact. He had the arm, and he had the work ethic, and he even had the dream. In their nightly phone conversations, Brett assured Deanna he would wind up playing “big-time” college football. “You watch,” he’d say. And she told him she believed it to be true, too. Which, perhaps, she did. But not rationally.

  Scouts did descend upon Hancock North Central’s campus, notepads in hand, to decide whether the school’s best player warranted a scholarship and roster spot. Ultimately, all deemed Charles Burton—owner of nearly 2,200 rushing yards in two varsity seasons—too small (at the time, five-foot-six running backs barely existed) and not quite fast enough (he had 4.6-ish speed in the 40-yard dash). “It didn’t help that my test scores were low,” said Burton. “I blew any chance by not studying hard enough.”

  Brett Favre studied hard enough. His grades were solid, and he went his first three years of high school with perfect attendance. But, at six feet two and 200 pounds, he was too slow to draw any real interest as a safety, and too unaccomplished to intrigue recruiters as a quarterback. His one hope was that the 1986 Hawks would need him to throw enough that some college might notice. Granted, in the Sea Coast Echo football preview of the Hawks, Brett Favre is mentioned but once, in the third-to-last paragraph midway through a listing of all the team’s players. And granted, Doug Barber of the Biloxi-based Sun-Herald limited his take on the Hawks to praise for Burton. And granted, Irvin Favre had no plans on deviating from the cozy confines of his limited offensive knowledge. Still, if scouts could observe his arm strength, Brett Favre knew he had a shot. “He wanted to be seen,” said Scott Favre. “He needed exposure to have an opportunity.”

  Any morsels of optimism surely died on the night of September 5, 1986, when the Hawks opened with a 20–7 home win against the St. John Eagles. Before every game, Irvin Favre had his players walk the field in search of divots, holes, slick spots. Burton always refused. Instead, he would stand in the two end zones. “This is where I expect to wind up,” he explained. Facing St. John, Burton compiled touchdown runs of 43, 58, and 55 yards, en route to 191 total rushing yards. When asked why his team lost, St. John coach Mike Gavin sighed and said, simply, “Too much Charles Burton.” Favre, meanwhile, threw five passes—six if you include the 28-yard touchdown strike to Vincent Cuevas that was overturned by an illegal-procedure penalty. He completed two, for zero yards. The front page of the next day’s Sea Coast Echo featured an enormous photograph of Burton, slicing through the Eagles’ defense. Inside the sports section, Heathcock—surely inadvertently—excluded Brett Favre’s name, writing in the game recap that the “quarterback tossed the ball to Casey Hoda for a two-point conversion.” The Picayune Item, another local newspaper, referred to Brett as “Scott Favre.”

  Through three games, Brett threw 17 passes, completing 8. He also tallied 40 rushing yards on 18 carries. But what could he say? The team was soaring.

  In the lead-up to a Week 4 clash with Pass Christian, Brett decided to have some fun. With his father’s attention elsewhere, he gathered the offense around and declared that, instead of clapping and saying “Break!” upon leaving the huddle before every play, they would clap and say “Banana!” or “Horse!” or “Fish!” Whatever word came to mind. Most of the Hawks chuckled, but Jesse Dupree, an offensive tackle nicknamed Mongo, did not. “We’re losing focus!” he screamed at Brett. “You wanna goof off and lose this game? Fine! Not me!” Irv overheard the confrontation and ordered his players to run five punishment laps after practice.

  “Well, we take a break for water and Brett comes right up to me and said, ‘After practice—you and me, it’s on.’ And I said, ‘OK, no problem,’ even though he was bigger. I mean, we’re in pads. How bad can it be?” When practice concluded, Irv called the team together. “Jesse’s right—y’all need to focus more,” he said. “But it ain’t worth running laps over. But you better not lose this fucking game.”

  The fight never happened.

  The Hawks won, 53–14.

  On the sidelines, Brett pleaded with his father to let him throw. Dad, we’re winning by three touchdowns! Dad, send Charles on a post! Even Scott, who regularly came home from Pearl River Junior College, took up his brother’s cause. During the fourth quarter of the Pearl River Central clash, Brett begged his brother, who was standing on the sideline, to convince Irv to open up the offense. When the game was in hand, Scott turned to his father and said, “Dad, let Brett throw a bit.”

  Irv, decked out in his requisite coaching attire (dark collared shirt with COACH FAVRE embroidered above the right pocket; beige polyester pants with a pullover snap), chestnut-dark eyes focused on the field, was not a fan of unsolicited advice. “Hey,” he snapped, “why don’t you get up in the stands with your mom!”

  That was that. The Hawks were ranked 11th in the state’s latest 4A football poll. Why mess with a good thing?

  “It’s just how Dad was,” Scott said. “He wasn’t the type who would showboat. He’d never put his son out there and try to make him star.”

  In case one is under the impression that Brett Favre—big-armed, nonthrowing signal caller—was living in a state of misery, worry not. He wasn’t. Even with meager statistics, few positions in American culture hold more status than starting high school quarterback. Especially during autumn in the Deep South.

  On the Friday afternoons before games, Brett cruised down the long gray hallways of Hancock North Central, his red-and-white No. 10 game jersey screaming, I AM IMPORTANT! He was both a cliché and an enigma. Favre seemed to spend all his free time either lifting weights in the garage and listening to Phil Collins’s “Against All Odds” or hanging with Deanna. There wasn’t much to do in Hancock County, so students flocked to two local bars, Henry’s and Diego’s—both popular with underage patrons. Sometimes the football players would sneak into the local VFW hall for a beer. Brett did not. On occasion he’d visit Skater’s Paradise in Waveland. Sometimes he’d catch a flick at the Choctaw Theater 4. There was a local arcade with Pac-Man and Space Invaders. Our Lady Academy in Bay Saint Louis held dances every month. He didn’t have a car, and rode to school with his parents. His
last scheduled class of the day was physical education, and Brett begged the teachers to arrange a game of football—“just because he loved it more than anything in the world,” said Jason Dupree, a classmate.

  “He wasn’t that guy,” said Cuevas, the wide receiver. “The party guy, the bigger-than-everyone-else guy. He was just Brett.”

  Kristin Hjelm, Deanna’s friend, remembers Brett as “obnoxious and really gross. He farted loud and thought it was funny. He had a weird sense of humor that could be mean.” The football team sometimes held practices during sixth period, when Hjelm was in phys ed. “This one time we were doing hook shots, and Brett was watching,” she said. “He’d clap every time my sister or I caught the ball. But not in a nice way. I also thought he could be a jerk to Deanna. Kind of a dick. Just rude to her, not always so kind. He was basically the cracking-jokes, farting, not-paying-attention-to-anyone guy.”

  Favre systematically alternated warm moments with cruel ones. He complimented Burton one minute, ridiculed a teammate’s sneaker choice the next. He could pull a friend aside and reassure him everything would work out, then come home and burn his sister’s socks. One never knew. There were white students at Hancock who viewed blacks warily, who felt comfortable dropping “nigger” in casual conversation. Favre was not one of them. During his senior year, a classmate named Jackie Bush was nominated for homecoming queen, and a handful of white teammates insisted they would never vote for a black girl. Favre considered Bush a friend, and implored his fellow Hawks to support her. “I’m not what you would call a civil rights leader,” he recalled years later. “But I do know that I did the right thing.”

  At the same time Irvin Favre and his Hancock North Central coaches had been readying for their 1986 season, Jim Carmody and his University of Southern Mississippi coaches had been preparing for their 1986 season.

  Expectations were high at the Hattiesburg-based school, what with a loaded roster returning to a program that finished 7-4. With all the talk of great things to come, few noticed a shift on the coaching staff, where a former East Carolina assistant named Mark McHale was taking over offensive-line duties for Bill D’Andrea, who’d left for Clemson.

  McHale had been hired by Keith Daniels, the Southern Miss offensive coordinator, in June. The interview and negotiations were conducted entirely via phone, and McHale’s subsequent move to Mississippi was also his first trip to the state. Which was somewhat peculiar, considering McHale was immediately assigned the recruiting area that encompassed New Orleans’s 75 high schools, as well as the entirety of Mississippi from Hattiesburg to the Gulf Coast.

  To help McHale make the adjustment, Thamas Coleman, an assistant with the program, handed him a list of top regional prospects, as determined by a national scouting service, plus a large pile of completed questionnaires from local football stars. Inside the corner of his small office sat a cardboard box stuffed with VHS tapes of prospects. The recruiting period for soon-to-be high school seniors had only just concluded in May, so McHale was woefully behind. “I had a whole bunch of names to consider,” he said. “But Brett Favre wasn’t one of them. I didn’t know who he was. And if you showed me his name on paper, I wouldn’t even know how to pronounce it.”

  On his first Friday on the job, McHale drove from the Southern Miss campus down along the Gulf Coast. He was armed with a list, a pen, a Coca-Cola, and minimal knowledge of the area’s players. He stopped at a handful of schools and explained his precarious status. “One coach asked if I had seen the quarterback from Hancock North Central,” McHale recalled. “I asked his name.”

  “Brett Favre,” he was told.

  He checked his list—nothing.

  McHale assumed this was simply the case of a coach overhyping an opponent. Then a second coach mentioned Brett Favre. And a third. Their assessments were limited, and often accompanied by some variation of the sentence, “I really only saw him warm up, but . . .”

  Here is a moment that changes everything. You’re Mark McHale, sitting in your car in Nowhere, Mississippi, hearing about a wishbone/Wing-T quarterback opposing high school coaches both love and know nothing about. You’re way behind in your work. There are 40 other kids to see. You’re hungry. You’re tired. You haven’t even moved into your new apartment.

  Do you call? Or do you ignore?

  “I called,” said McHale.

  He introduced himself and told Irv Favre that he’d like to stop by Hancock North Central. The Hawks coach was euphoric. Nobody had expressed a morsel of interest in his son, and now a Division I coach wanted to talk! Upon arriving at the athletic facilities, McHale was underwhelmed. The stadium was small, the stands dumpy. He entered the football office and came across one of the most unique-looking people he’d seen in some time—square head, buzz cut, everything meaty. He sat down on a vinyl couch with foam bursting from the seams. Irv’s oak desk was sloppy, covered with papers and notepads. Suddenly, McHale—whose brain had been overwhelmed by 12,471 tasks—realized the coach was both the father and a Southern Miss alum. “This wasn’t good,” he recalled. “I figured next I’d get the ol’ speech—‘He can play for you even though he’s my son.’”

  Irvin Favre’s next words: “Brett’s my son, but he can play for you.”

  McHale asked to see tapes, and Irvin found some VHS footage of games from Brett’s junior season. The first one was popped into the VCR. Irvin pressed Play, then excitedly noted, “That’s him wearing No. 10 in the white jersey!” It was preposterous. There was Brett handing off to Charles Burton. And Brett handing off to Charles Burton. Oh, wait! There was Brett—handing off to Charles Burton. McHale was speechless. What the hell was he supposed to do with this? He saw Favre make four throws. As McHale rose to leave for his next appointment, Irv begged him to attend Friday’s game against Pass Christian. “I’ll try,” he said. “But I can’t make any promises.”

  As McHale walked to his car, he was approached by a tall, sturdy boy with light brown hair. This, Irvin said, was Brett, his son. “Coach McHale,” the kid said, “I know I can play for you and I want to go to Southern Mississippi.”

  McHale promised he would be back on Friday.

  “That’s great,” Brett said. “You won’t be sorry.”

  When he returned to campus, McHale added the name “Brett Favre” to the master recruiting list and told the staff that, sure, he was unknown, but he was also big and strong and eager. “And you never have enough good quarterbacks,” McHale said. “It’s not like recruiting kickers.”

  The following Friday evening, he was back at Hancock North Central. He arrived a half hour early for the 7:30 game and made certain to check in with Irvin while his players stretched. “I wanted to emphasize how important it was that Brett throw,” he recalled. In his book, 10 to 4, McHale wrote of watching Brett Favre during warmups—his first exposure to the kid in action:

  He started out throwing from a three-step drop. The receivers went downfield six yards and broke out. Brett’s throws were crisp, on target and had a perfect spiral. The receivers dropped most of them. He threw the out cut like it was his deepest ball—hard. He progressed to throwing to his backs and I noticed the same thing. They were having trouble catching the ball. It was obvious Brett didn’t have what coaches call a grading mechanism. A grading mechanism is controlling the velocity of the ball, having a soft touch on short passes and throwing harder on deeper routes. Brett started throwing some deep balls. It was unbelievable! He could throw it deep and it had smoke on it. His throws were pretty, with the right arc and nose path. I was impressed. Very impressed.

  McHale couldn’t wait for kickoff. He found a seat, grabbed his notebook, and readied for an aerial bonanza.

  Pfft.

  The 53–14 Hawks victory featured five Brett Favre passes. When the game ended, Irv asked McHale whether he had been won over. Won over? “Um, no,” he replied. “I didn’t see what I needed.”

  Irv Favre was crestfallen. “Coach McHale,” he said, “if you come back next week I promise to
throw the ball more. I’ll do whatever it takes to get him a scholarship. I promise!”

  Irvin was not one to put his son’s interests over the team’s. The Favre boys were to be pieces of the puzzle, not superstars. McHale was on the fence: the Favre kid was intriguing, but equally mysterious. The recruiter retreated to campus with the intention of trying to see him again, “and hopefully he’ll throw some more,” McHale said. “Because I need to see what he can do in a game.”

  The best thing that ever happened to Brett Favre during his high school career was one of the worst things that ever happened to Charles Burton during his high school career.

  On the evening of October 18, 1986, the Hawks traveled 23 miles to Long Beach High to play a team it had never defeated, in a hostile environment, on homecoming, in 90-degree heat, before a standing-room-only crowd. Hancock County desperately wanted to beat up Coach Paul Magee’s Bearcats. “When you always lose,” said Burton, “you hunger to win.”

  On the first play of the second quarter, with his team leading 22–7, Burton, playing cornerback, went in for a head-first takeout of Todd Sims, Long Beach’s scrambling quarterback. He popped to his feet, heard a whistle, and looked toward the official—who was ejecting him from the game for spearing. Irvin Favre couldn’t believe it, and launched into an expletive-filled tirade. Before Burton left the field, his quarterback grabbed him around the waist. “Don’t worry, big brother,” Brett whispered. “We will win this.”

  Irv finally allowed Brett to use his arm, and the results were glorious. He tossed 11 of his 13 passes in the second half, completing 7 for 105 yards. There was a 39-yard beauty to Cuevas, another 37-yarder to Frank Miller. Late in the fourth quarter, with the score tied at 22, Favre and Co. took over at the Hawks 41-yard line. The quarterback’s legs were cramping. He felt nauseated. On first down he fired a 17-yard completion to Tim Cox, then hit Miller for 12. Donald Vince, normally Burton’s blocking fullback, carried three straight times, taking the offense down to the Bearcats 4. With 38 seconds remaining, Favre rammed a sneak 3 yards into the defense, down to the lip of the goal line. There were now 29 seconds left in the game. Favre glanced at the sideline for the call. It was a handoff to Vince. He didn’t want to hand off to Vince. The Hawks approached the line. Favre looked to the left, looked to the right, barked out the signals. Vince expected the football, his moment of heroism in the Year of Charles Burton. Instead, Favre took the snap from center and drove straight toward the end zone.