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The day before Tractor-Gate Bowl I (or whatever moniker you choose for this contest), my wife and I happened to bump into a friend in church.

The Mass was done, and we got around to catching up. The subject came to tonight's showdown in the Metrodome between the Packers and the team with the quarterback who played for them for 16 years.

From our friend, the words "I hate Favre" came out of her mouth. In a church, no less.

Trust me. I have had plenty of radio time, on-line analysis stories, blog entries, and other things where I have given my opinion on all the things Brett Favre has done, lies he's told, backstabbing, Machiavellian manipulations, etc. etc. in this 19-month sad saga.

Regardless of all the antipathy I've felt toward what he's done, I cannot bring myself to say the words "I hate Brett Favre."

Why?

Reason one: the man is human. He, like all of us, is fallible.

How many of us, if we were blessed with the capability to throw a football the way he does, play football with the love he does, and be the co-difference maker (with Bob Harlan, Ron Wolf, Mike Holmgren and Reggie White) in turning around a sorry football franchise and making it the Camelot of the NFL again - all while battling an addiction to painkillers and struggling through a challenged marriage - would have the mental and emotional perspective to not let things go to our heads and try to become more than what we ought to be in the greater scheme of things?

It could be argued that in the 1990's, going into the 2000's, that Brett Favre was the most beloved athlete in the NFL, and perhaps all of American sports.

That's rather heady stuff, and it can easily make someone think they're bigger than the franchise they play for.

If the power structure in a team allows it to happen, I can see where you might believe you have the right to call the shots in the franchise and get preferential treatment, as I'm convinced - granted, this is a theory, not proven fact - that Brett Favre was given during the Mike Sherman GM years.

How many of us, with all that coming to us, would be able to live with the humility we ought to?

It would be VERY, VERY hard.

So it's understandable that Favre, in his mind, became what he became.

Then, in 2005, General Manager Ted Thompson comes in and makes a three-year effort to rightfully put Brett Favre - a player - in his place.

Regardless of whether Brett Favre is a legend - and I rank him as one of the five best quarterbacks ever to play the game - he does not have a right to go through the press to try and play general manager in terms of player personnel.

(Read: the whole Randy Moss mess, which was never going to happen - Green Bay never stood a chance against the almost-guaranteed Super Bowl champion New England Patriots - almost, because of Eli Manning and company. But I digress.)

Thompson made that point clear. Certainly it was done in ways that were not the most humane in terms of "bedside manner," and he has a rather big ego, but Thompson was correct in his point.

Favre, in his hubris, was unable to stand that, and I'm convinced that he then schemed a plot to get out from under Thompson and play revenge on him.

The plot - again, just a theory - included the whole retirement, the comeback attempt in 2008 at a time when it would be impossible for the Packers to truly take him back because they had rightfully planned for Aaron Rodgers to take over once Favre said 'buh-bye,' and the immediate request for a release to go to the Vikings.

It was one year delayed, but he finally got what he wanted.

I can't stand that whole process, all the things he did wrong in that saga.

And I can't stand his true revengeful motivation for tonight's game, and for his move to the Vikings - to get at Ted Thompson, regardless of what he says publicly.

But the fact is, the ability to commit hubris and throw humility out the window is something that at some point in our lives, all of us have probably done in some sort of fashion.

Could you seriously guarantee that if you would walk in his shoes, you could keep your humility and not step beyond the bounds of right character?

Inside that same church we went to, I pray that I could. Knowing my ability - like us all - for human foibles, it would be REAL hard.

That's the first reason why, despite all my complaints and near permanent state of regurgitation when I see him in purple uniforms, I can't hate Brett Favre.

Reason two: he's still a good guy and has shown enough of the good sides of human nature.

On December 22, 2003, Brett Favre still showed us all the courage to be not just the quarterback, but the man his father wanted him to be on the day after his father died, as he played - statistically and emotionally - the game of his life.

When Hurricane Katrina hit his hometown and much of the Gulf coast, he put much of his money where his mouth is and put up millions to help that area recover - an area which still has so much need.

When his wife discovered she had breast cancer, perhaps no athlete showed a greater love for his wife in such a circumstance like Favre.

There are also countless stories of people like Anna Welentowski, a girl with an incurable brain disease whose cause the Favre's took up. Favre even cried during a press conference where he received a good guy award for the difference he made to her.

That's the same human nature most of us, at our best, show every day. It just so happens he's the most media-covered, photographed, filmed, blogged-about, and attention-paid-to football player in history, so we get to see him do it.

All the above describes the different ways that Brett Favre has shown both the wonderful and ugly sides of human nature.

In the last 19 months, he just happens to have gotten caught on the "dark side" of that nature, which brings about people like my friend uttering the words "I hate Brett Favre."

Folks, Brett is just like you and me, with the same capability of wonderful human qualities and idiotic ones.

Do I hate the things he's done in the last 19 months, and his current attitude of revenge (which anyone with a brain can see, even beyond his claims that he's not out for revenge)? Yes.

Do I want the Packers to beat his football team to a pulp on the scoreboard twice this year (including tonight), three times if they meet in January? Of course.

But I don't hate the man.