Life After Favre

A Wisconsin native returns to Green Bay to cover the Packers' tumultuous first season following the departure of legendary quarterback, Brett Favre. Includes a special chapter on Green Bay's victory at Super Bowl XLV.

The 2008 football season was one of transition for the Green Bay Packers and their legion of loyal fans. For the first time in seventeen years, the Packers were entering the season without three-time league MVP Brett Favre under center. After a whirlwind summer of rumor and controversy, Packers’ management decided traded the thirty-eight-year-old gunslinger to the New York Jets, leaving “Packer Backers” worldwide to cope with life after Favre. Wisconsin native Phil Hanrahan moved from Los Angeles to Green Bay for the 2008 season. He watched games at Lambeau Field and followed new starting quarterback Aaron Rodgers as he attempted to follow in the footsteps of Favre, a Green Bay immortal. Immersing himself in the worlds of team and town, Hanrahan is reborn a full-blown Cheesehead; living in a hotel that decades earlier had served as the Packers offices, observing training camp practices, interviewing players, attending the Packers’ annual shareholders meeting, tailgating in arctic cold, shoveling snow at Lambeau for $8 an hour, celebrating Packer great Fuzzy Thurston’s 75th birthday at Thurston’s bar, and, at every turn, befriending the scores of die-hard Packers fans he encounters along the way. Hanrahan also journeys far from Lambeau in his pursuit of adventures in Packer Land. He attends road games in Minneapolis and New Orleans and catches others on TV in small-town Wisconsin taverns. He watches one game in a bar and grill owned by rookie receiver Jordy Nelson’s parents in rural Kansas, another at Mabel Murphy’s, a year-round Packers bar located in Scottsdale, Arizona. He also visits Kiln, Mississippi, Favre’s hometown. With energy, insight, humor, and vivid color, Life After Favre tells the story of a singular team and town. Hanrahan reveals the incredible scope and breadth of Packer Nation, and in doing so demonstrates how, when you bleed Packer green, even a 6-10 season can be something special.

“Over two decades, Brett Favre was as compelling a figure as any in the National Football League. He alone was 'Must-See TV.' In Gunslinger, Jeff Pearlman provides an extraordinary look at every facet of the life of a man who performed on sport's grandest stage and who had one helluva time along the way.”—Al Michaels In Gunslinger, Jeff Pearlman tells Brett Favre’s story for the first time, charting his unparalleled journey from a rough rural childhood and lackluster high school football career to landing the last scholarship at Southern Mississippi, to a car accident that nearly took his life, and eventually to the NFL and Green Bay, where he restored the Packers to greatness and inspired a fan base as passionate as any in the game. Yet he struggled with demons: addiction, infidelity, the loss of his father, and a fraught, painfully prolonged exit from the game he loved, a game he couldn’t bear to leave. Gritty and revelatory, Gunslinger is a big sports biography of the highest order, a fascinating portrait of the man with the rocket arm whose life has been one of triumph, fame, tragedy, embarrassment, and—ultimately—redemption. “The compelling, complete story of his legend, and his faults.”—Chicago Tribune

With candor and class, the record-breaking quarterback of the Green Bay Packers updates his bestselling autobiography with the thrills and disappointments of the bittersweet 1997-1998 Super Bowl season. 16-page photo insert.

Knowledge and memory are an important part of the fabric of being a fan. So are experiences. 100 Things also includes things fans should actually see and do before they join their heroes at the Pearly Gates. This book contains numerous tips and suggestions for enjoying a team on a different, more involved, level.

A life of unanswered questions, broken relationships, and poor decisions disrupts a relationship with God and creates crisis. Deanna Favre, a breast cancer survivor and wife of NFL legend Brett Favre, and Shane Stanford, an HIV-positive minister, have both lived such a life. Chronic hopelessness was part of their everyday lives as it is for many people. But Deanna and Shane discovered the transforming grace and strength of a God who provides answers for questions and possibilities for uncertainties. The Cure for the Chronic Life is a guide for the journey out of hopelessness. In its pages, discover the power of redeeming love and the hope of living in Christ.