Former NFL quarterback Brett Favre has been mired for months in a welfare-funds controversy in his home state of Mississippi. Whether the situation has received sufficient attention elsewhere is a matter for fair debate; we’ve covered it extensively here. And we will continue to do so.
Here’s an interesting development. A former teammate of Favre’s has taken at clear shot at Favre’s behavior.
“Since retirement, I have been lucky to avoid stealing millions of dollars from the poorest people in my state,” Sage Rosenfels said Thursday on Twitter.
Rosenfels played for the Vikings in 2009, Favre’s first year in Minnesota. Rosenfels, to his credit, felt no compulsion to look the other way on a story that has stunk to high heaven since we first saw the report of Favre getting $1.1 million for alleged no-show work from the federally-funded welfare program.
Favre denied wrongdoing, but then he paid back the money. He has since been sued for unpaid interest on the funds he received and surrendered.
More recently, the situation has focused on Favre’s role in shaking $5 million in fruit from the federally-funded welfare tree for construction of a volleyball stadium at his alma mater, the University of Southern Mississippi. Damning text messages were released last week, including one in which Favre asks whether the media will learn about payments being made.
We have learned about it. Everyone has. But we can’t control how others have covered the story. Maybe they regard Favre, who hasn’t played in more than a decade, as irrelevant. Maybe they’ll feel differently if/when he’s eventually doing a perp walk.
And if he broke the law, he absolutely should be prosecuted. And incarcerated. It’s one thing to rob from the rich to give to the poor. Favre was involved in a scam that entailed stealing from the poor to give to the rich. Stupid bitch.