Last year, I trained with several friends to run the Chicago Marathon. We spent almost six months getting in peak shape, including several hot 20 mile runs on Saturday mornings in the summer. The work was hard, but the reward was going to be the ability to run and complete the race.

On the drive to the starting line of the race from our hotel in Chicago, a wife of one of the my friends (who had run a marathon before), started talking about how she wished she could run in the marathon too. My friend quickly reminded her about all of those Saturday mornings she was in bed while he was up at 4:30 AM to run with us. And running the race was a reward for completing all of the workouts.

And now, look who's in the news. There are rumors that Brett Favre might want to come back and play next year. Is anyone really shocked? I don't think so.

After hearing it talked about endlessly on sports talk radio and on the internet (I mean really this time of year is so slow it might make someone blog about track or women's basketball), I'm shocked that I haven't heard the angle that I'm about to take.

Instead, everyone is talking about his need to be on center stage, or his need for competition, or the fact that he's a selfish teammate.

When he retired, didn't he say that he could still play the games, but he couldn't put his body through the offseason workouts required to get in shape to play the games?

Guess what, the intense workout time is almost over. Oh, sure, he's probably continued to go to the gym and workout, but do you think he's worked out as hard as he would in previous seasons? And if he hasn't, even he said that he wouldn't be able to compete on a high level if he didn't train at 100%.

And check out his quotes from an April 25th article:

"First of all, I won't keep myself in shape. I'm sure after training camp is over and all that hard work is done, it might be 'OK, now.' It might be nice to dream about it, but no."

So sure he wants to come back now. Just like my friends wife, who wouldn't want to come back and compete without having put in all of the hard work to get there?

And if you don't think the offseason work is important, check out Jamal Lewis's stats the year after he spent several months in jail during the offseason.

Oh, and one other small reason you don't want him to come back, he's going to be on the cover of Madden '09.......