Brett Favre’s next book should be titled, “How to tarnish a legacy.” On the front of the book should be an image of Favre playing battleship with Peter King, along an image of the former Packers’ QB posing in front of an ESPN headquarters sign in Bristol.

First, King. The longtime cozy relationship between Favre and King was finally exposed to all non-blog sports fans this week. (We say “non-blog” because if you’ve been reading blogs for the last few years, this has been painfully obvious.) Sunday night, King told a puny national audience on NBC that Favre had texted him prior to the Oakland game to say that the story about him chatting with the Lions was “total BS.” This morning, Favre admitted he did talk to the Lions. (If anyone presses him on the lie, he’ll flash that aw-shucks grin and spin something that the media will lap up like Pavlov’s dog.)

King’s response? “At this point, what I have is a vehement Favre denial as well as one from a top Lions official. What we also have is an admission from Favre that a phone call did take place. Beyond that, there seems to be an oceanic gulf between what Glazer reported and what Favre admitted today.” Also, don’t forget King implying that Glazer should have called Favre before going live with the report. Riiiiiiight. As Glazer told a NY radio station today, “[Favre] was on the phone with ESPN every hour of everyday this summer, talking to Werder or Mortensen or Rachel Nichols, and on Sunday, they go live an hour before I do.”

As for ESPN.com – and we’re singling out the .com because Van Pelt and Tirico spoke about the topic Tuesday afternoon on the radio – a few hours after we mentioned that ESPN was ignoring the Favre story, Pro Football Talk produced one of the single greatest posts we’ve seen in our two-and-a-half years at this blogging thing: A memo in Bristol that implored the .com to ignore the story.

Again, most blog readers were not surprised in the least by this maneuver. All summer, ESPN reported Favre’s side of the story during his saga, and in the end, looked to be carrying water for the beleaguered QB, who wound up getting traded to the Jets. In the weeks leading up to the landmark deal, ESPN reporters repeatedly referred to Minnesota and Tampa Bay as potential spots for Favre – but only because that’s where he wanted to end up. (The St. Pete Times fell hard for this one, too.) But everyone knows neither of those deals were ever remotely close to happening because Green Bay wasn’t going to trade Favre to a team it would have to face in the regular season.

So why should anyone be surprised that Favre and his agent got ESPN to bury this story? ESPN has been setting the sports agenda for the last few years, and if its two largest two – the .com and the TV channel – weren’t talking about the story, well, it might as well have been happening in Siberia.

What’s next? Sooner, rather than later, we predict that somebody’s going to compare Favre to Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Bill Belichick. They’re all cheaters (to an extent) and in what will be a reach of a column, someone will equate Favre’s shady talks with the Lions (the week they were playing the Packers!) to cheating. We won’t do that here, but we’re almost certain somebody’s going to write it.

Now, the real fun begins. How badly will the notoriously-difficult NY media handle all of this? There are a few reasons to believe they won’t be kind to Favre:

- He’s only 3-3 and coming off a loss to the lowly Raiders
- Why is he texting Peter King prior to the Oakland game?
- he got caught in a lie with King
- this drama is a distraction to the Jets, who are kind of a mess right now

It’ll really become a shitshow if the Jets can’t beat their former coach, Herman Edwards, this weekend.