King Kaufman's Sports Daily
S.I. Sportsman of the Year: Brett Favre. No, really. It's Brett Favre.
Read more: Sports, Baseball, Barry Bonds, Football, Sports Illustrated, College Football, King Kaufman, Sports Daily
Dec. 5, 2007 | Brett Favre has been named Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year. Kind of a puzzling choice, if you ask me, but you didn't ask me.
It's clearly a lifetime achievement kind of thing. "It is for his perseverance and his passion that S.I. honors Favre with the 54th Sportsman of the Year award," writes Alan Shipnuck.
Favre, near the end, has had a nice half-season or so, a comeback after a couple of down years. He's never won the S.I. award despite being one of the most visible, successful and beloved American athletes of his era. Shipnuck's article is mostly about the intense love affair Packers fans and Favre have conducted over the years.
We like Brett Favre around here too. Good for Brett Favre. Yay, Brett.
Still weird, though.
Sports Illustrated's version isn't any more significant than any other Sports Person of the Year-type awards, none of which are significant at all. But it's probably the best-known, and it's more fun to debate the Person of the Year than the Most Valuable Player in a sport.
Favre is the fourth pro football player to win S.I. SOTY, not counting Reggie Williams, a Cincinnati Bengals linebacker who was one of eight "Athletes Who Care," winners in 1987 more for their good works than their athletic performance. If you didn't know and I asked you to name the four pro football players who'd been named S.I. Sportsman of the Year since 1954, would Brett Favre 2007 be among your first 100 guesses?
Joe Namath didn't win it in 1969. O.J. Simpson didn't in 1973. Walter Payton, Bart Starr, Johnny Unitas, Jim Brown, Eric Dickerson, John Elway, Lawrence Taylor, Lynn Swann, Roger Staubach. Just to name a few. None of them ever won it.
Namath illustrates the bind the magazine's in when it comes to naming NFL players SOTY. He would have made a great choice as the co-winner in 1969 with fellow New York hero Tom Seaver, who did win that year after leading the Miracle Mets to the World Series title. A decade later, Terry Bradshaw of the Steelers and Willie Stargell of the Pirates shared Sportsman honors after bringing a similar double championship to Pittsburgh.
But the season Namath made his indelible mark on pro football history by leading the Jets to the AFL title and then an upset win in the Super Bowl was 1968, not '69. The famous Super Bowl win was on Jan. 14, 1969, but naming Namath Sportsman of the Year in '69 would have been rewarding him for one day's work, though the magazine's done that too. Muhammad Ali won in 1974 for knocking out George Foreman.
Next page: If it's about breaking all-time records in counting stats, there's a guy who broke a doozy this year