Brett Favre Will Reportedly Appear in Green Bay Today [UPDATE]

Brett Favre will return to Green Bay before tonight’s Packers game against the Falcons, according to ESPN Wisconsin’s Jason Wilde and TMJ’s Lance Allan. Favre was supposed to head back to Green Bay earlier this season in tandem with Bart Starr, but those plans were altered as Starr battled health issues. Wilde says that Starr’s son, Bart Jr., is on the flight up to Green Bay with Favre, but it’s not currently known if Bart Sr. is making the trip.

This past July, I wrote a post about my feelings of Favre’s jersey retirement, which remains relevant for his return to Lambeau this evening:

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Brett Favre is eligible for entry to the NFL Hall of Fame in early 2016, and the Packers have been on the record about wanting to retire his jersey before he’s enshrined. But, right now, team President Mark Murphy indicated that the ceremony won’t happen this season. “He wouldn’t want to come back to be booed,”he said.

It’s unclear whether, and to what proportion, the decision rests with Favre versus the organization, but I’m pretty confident that Favre would return to fervent applause even this season. There are obviously some holdouts in the lunatic fringe, but I think most of us die hard Packers fans came to peace with the idea of Favre as a Viking relatively soon after Aaron Rodgers led the team to a Super Bowl.

Around this time last year, I wrote in-depth about this topic for The Classical:

Looking at the Packers’ calendar for this season, the two best candidates for Favre’s jersey retirement would be a Sunday Night game Week 10 against the Bears, or Monday Night in Week 14 versus the Falcons, who drafted him. If it were announced with reasonable notice, there would be substantial ticket demand from die hards who have forgiven Favre. The resale value on those tickets, right before the holiday season, would be a strong enough incentive to deter a vast majority of those still inclined to boo.

Nevertheless, my sense is that most Green Bay fans have gotten over the horror of seeing Favre in a Vikings uniform — an instinct largely confirmed by comments solicited by the Packers blog Cheesehead TV — and are eager to welcome the Gunslinger back into the organization’s good graces.