You know you have a good Personal Brand when people want to pay you to stop competing. How would you feel if someone wanted to pay you $20M to stop doing what you love? Well, reportedly, that is what the Green Bay Packers have considered putting in the cards to keep Brett Favre off the field.

Now while Favre is a living legend quarterback, I can understand why the Packers are not interested. They have a future to consider. Favre on the other hand does not, at least not in the NFL. He is done. But is it worth $20M to keep him from competing against you? Seems to be a lot of stock put in to a single human being for a team sport.

And what does Favre have to consider? Sure he could come back for another season or two but the chances of winning a Super Bowl are pretty slim. So what is Favre in it for? It can’t be for the money, otherwise he would take the $20M. Does Favre have some  self-indulgent disease that requires he be in the limelight all the time? His move here is pretty selfish if you think about it. He isn’t thinking about the distraction he is causing the Packers’ organization here. Frankly, he is putting his own reputation on the line.

The Packers are doing what is in their best interest, as they should, but I don’t think offering to pay $20M to keep him from competing is the right way to achieve this. If Favre wants to play and you don’t want him then let him go do his thing and muck up some other organization. Offering money to keep him out sets the wrong precedent. The last thing we need are super star athletes thinking if they retire and then threaten to come back and compete they can collect. That just isn’t right.

So while Favre is putting his legendary reputation in jeopardy, Green Bay is squirming to have their cake and eat it too. It’s almost like divorce.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 2:53 pm and is filed under Brand Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.