I'm Like Brett Favre...

... except without the multi-million dollar contract, the good looks, the rocket arm, the millions of fans, the endorsement deals.... well, just about everything else - except I do play quarterback, and I have the option to retire this offseason. So yeah, I'm nothing like Favre. I just wanted an excuse to get his name in the blog, and see if that gives me a traffic spike for the day.

( not that it matters, cuz I haven't hardly posted shit this last month )

Anyways - I informed the team this past week that I would not be returning. Those close knew that the decision had already been made. Those that know me well, know that I'm a 'what-if' guy... and once I make a decision, I'll go with it... but making the decision weighs pretty heavy sometimes.

With that, there was the small thought of 'what-if things change next year?' What if the short one doesn't come back?' And a host of other thoughts. But I stayed in a bad situation WAY too long before, and went ahead and pulled the plug on this one.

What ever doubts I had when I let them know, were immediately removed after the first phone call. I called someone on the coaching staff, and the conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi. I just wanted you to hear it from me, and not secondhand, but I'm not going to return to the team next year. I gave it alot of thought, and I know the team wanted decisions from everyone as early as possible... so after thinking it over, and not really having a change of heart after the last few weeks, I've made my decision.
Coaching staff: Oh. Okay. Well, best of luck to you then.
Me: Ummmm..... okay. Thanks.

Not really how I thought that would go. The 5% of doubt I had about not returning was pretty much wiped from the board on that call. At least my call to the owners went a little better. They understood why I made the decision, and tried to talk me out of it. So I've got that going for me.

And that all leads to what happens next. I can still play. I'm not quite 30 yet ( but almost. Will beat me to it by eight months, so Know What I Mean would like to give Will a big birthday shout out. From the looks of it, he drank enough for the both of us on his birthday, but hopefully he had a good time. At least till the next morning. ) - so it would be a different story if I didn't have any skills left. I don't want to hang them up.

Which leaves me with two other choices. Join a different team, or start a new one from scratch. I've already switched teams once in the last two years. A new team means learning a new offense, and timing routes with new players. But no paperwork headaches. And that last point is a pretty big one.

A new team, however, is an interesting choice. There's some discussion as to the viability of me playing quarterback on a team that I would be an owner of... but with all the discussions I've had... I can't find a reason why it WOULDN'T work. Anyone I've talked to about being in on the administrative side all have good heads about them. Several of them already have good ideas, and the ball isn't really even rolling yet. I could hopefully install my own offense ( one from a few years ago that we ran ) - so it wouldn't be learning a new offense, but rather teaching an offense. I could give Tiny total control over the defense. I have people that are willing to step into coaching roles.

It all would work.

And that's the scary part. I can't really come up with a scenario where it wouldn't work, if the people that are interested come on board.

Or I could just say 'fuck it', and go play for the Evil Empire. They're STILL looking for a serviceable quarterback. They would pay gas money to practice, and meal money on the road.

It changes a little from day-to-day, but I'm leaning towards a new team. Kiki is even putting together some logo mockups for me. If I could figure out how to JavaScript voting on the blog, maybe we'll vote for the new logo.

Or, maybe I'll just retire.