Before baseball season begins it has become tradition to wait for Brett Favre to decide whether or not he will retire. Word is in that he has decided to retire. Of course, we all remember that last season he told his agent the same thing. Then he found that he could still throw the ball around with some zip with a bunch of high school kids, decided to comeback, and cause the Packers a gigantic headache, sabotaging Aaron Rodgers transition into the starting quarterback role.

Michael Jordan used to do this with the Washington Wizards at the beginning of the century. The waiting game probably helped lead the Wiz down the road to mediocrity, that and Gilbert “Injured List” Arenas. The lesson seems to be clear. Never begin an offseason be showing a willingness to appease an aging superstar. I do not care how many jerseys they sell or how much the owner thinks the player can actually help their team.

Sports legends have a difficult time letting go of the game and sports fans have a hard time imagining the game without them. But after five years of Brett Favre threatening to retire for good and years of Michael Jordan wanting to leap out of the owners’ box (where he makes terrible decisions) and onto the court we should all learn that letting a legend go is like a heart-felt breakup. It is difficult, but it must be done.

With that said, I have a request for every high school football team, every junior high team, and every Pop Warner team. If you see Favre walking toward your pickup game, run. Run away. Save professional teams the drama and refuse to play with him. If he completes one pass he is liable to try and make a comeback. If you cannot run away and he has to play then his team should lose badly. Remind him of this last season when he did not make the playoffs after blowing it hard with a 1-4 finish.

Sports fans should be concentrating on catching up on college basketball to better fill out their bracket for March Madness. They should be watching NBA basketball during the weeknights. They should be waiting to get Red Sox tickets to Fenway or Cubs bleacher seats to Wrigley.

Fan should be trying to think of tasteless jokes and taunts to scream from the stands as A-Fraud takes the plate for the New York Yankees. If they must think about football, that thought should be about the draft or a free agent.