Regular blog readers know that I made potentially the dumbest wager of all time when I bet my local liquor store owner a 12 pack that Brett Favre would be quarterbacking the Packers in the 2008 season...this was after his March retirement but before his Fox News sit-down with Greta Van Susteren.     

        My chances only deteriorated as the war of words escalated with every new fax, Chris Mortensen dispatch or Mark Murphy plane trip to the bayou.   It looked more and more as though Number Four was going to be playing elsewhere, if he indeed played at all.

        Now, it seems, common sense has prevailed in what has been to date a largely non-sensical process: Favre is headed to Green Bay to compete for his old job, with the team's blessing.

        It's how it should be.

       GM Ted Thompson kept telling anyone who'd listen that such a scenario wouldn't happen, that it would be unworkable to have Favre around after an off-season focused on prepping Aaron Rodgers for the job.      Coach Mike McCarthy, though, would talk about having "a plan" if Favre DID show up at camp.     Why Thompson was so hell-bent on keeping Green Bay a Favre-free zone is something only he can answer.     The mumbo-jumbo about Favre being a distraction was just so much balloon juice--Favre already WAS a distraction, and the longer the issue remained in limbo the more of a distraction he would stay.

       Worries about the team being split into Favre and Rodgers camps is crap--I've heard from those who know far more than me about football and one in particular who actually played the pro game that such "warm and fuzzy" worries are just that, with professional athletes tuned to play with whoever gives them the best chance of winning.    Or, whoever is left standing.       

       We now will get to see if the front office's faith in Rodgers was well-founded--is he truly a quarterback who is up to the task right now, or  if Favre really the team's best chance to win (as so many of Number Four's backers would claim during all those heated bar room discussions).       Let the competition begin.   

        It's win-win for Packers fans, and for Favre who ultimately got his way--he "un-retired" and got to return to Green Bay, albeit with lots of blood on the floor.    Can he and Thompson mend fences?      What is Favre's standing among those in Packers Nation?     To some, he remains the unblemished Lord God of Pigskin, the one and only hope of returning to the playoffs and perhaps making one more trip to the Super Bowl before finally calling it a career.     To others, he has feet of clay: a diva, a back-seat general manager who can't make grown-up decisions.       

       None of it will matter now, with the past few weeks of angst forgotten the moment Favre and Rodgers are alternating snaps at practice.     Fans can finally focus on what's happening on the field instead of whether or not Peter King received a new fax from down south.      And, this will all be a musty memory once the Vikings are on one side of Lambeau and the Packers on the other about a month from Friday.     

      The end of next season will be sad on several fronts.     It'll mean the true onset of winter.      And perhaps, the start of another season of Favre's discontent.       It'll take more than a 12 pack to get through another Favre midlife crisis.