On the temporal parochialism of sports yakkers So Brett Favre retires and ESPN and sport radio is trying to figure out where he rates among the all time greats. That’s what they say. What the yappers mean is “where does Favre rate among the great quarterbacks I saw play.” The list seems to start in 1981 with Montana and go from there. They give short shrift to Bart Starr who won five championships (Montana “only” won four). They never mention Roger Staubach who won two and came close to winning two more. Was Favre “the toughest quarterback ever”? He was certainly durable. But he had the advantage of playing in an era when QBs were protected by the rules. Check out some of the old NFL footage of games in the 1960s or early 1970s. The QBs were pounded on almost every pass. Today the refs would call it roughing the passer. Heck, in SB X they’d have ejected half of the Dallas and Pittsburgh d-lines for repeated, flagrant fouls. In 1975 it was just football. For my money, Staubach gives Favre a run for his money on “toughness”. All those fourth quarter comebacks he engineered came after he was beaten and battered for the whole game. The defense was licking its chops knowing he had to pass. And yet, he calmly cut them to pieces time after time. To see Staubach operate with the game on the line is something you don’t forget. The milk-drinking church-going all-American boy turned into a heartless assassin, a stone-cold killer. Hit him. Knock him down. It did not matter. The ball was already on its way to Billy Joe DuPree, or Tony Hill, or Drew Pearson. You could force him out of the pocket, you could chase him all over the field, but you could not rattle him. It was toughness as cool calculation. It’s the sort of thing you can’t find in statistics like you can find 214 consecutive starts or 50 touchdowns or 4,500 yards passing. But it was the quintessence of playing quarterback.