thedrifter
09-11-05, 06:40 AM
Raised on grit
Favre was toughened by brothers, dad
By GARY D'AMATO
gdamato@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Sept. 10, 2005
Borrowed from Mark aka The Fontman
Fenton Miss. - Every legend has a beginning, and the legend of Brett Favre began right here, in the backwoods of southern Mississippi, on 52 1/2 acres of pine trees and meadows tucked between Mill Creek and the Rotten Bayou.
Ravaged two weeks ago by Hurricane Katrina, the Favre homestead was, in the 1970s and '80s, the ideal place for three rough-and-tumble sons of a high school football coach to play their games.
Scott, Brett and Jeff Favre, inseparable by blood and isolated by geography, could fish and swim in the bayou, hunt in the woods and play football and baseball on makeshift fields between barns and outbuildings.
"We didn't grow up in a subdivision or a populated area, where you have neighbors right next to you," said Jeff Favre, the youngest brother and the third of Irvin and Bonita's four children. "We couldn't call buddies and meet up in a park or field and in 15 minutes you've got some game. That was not available to us, so we played with each other."
They were always throwing something, those Favre boys. Rocks, potatoes, balls made from rolled-up wads of duct tape, whatever else was handy. They were always competing, too, their spirited games sometimes ending with one brother wrestling in the mud with another.
"There wasn't no sissies around here," said David Peterson, a cousin whom the Favres treated like a fourth brother. "We used to go in that old barn and everybody would hide and we'd throw rocks at each other and see if we could knock each other out. I tell you what, I don't know how Aunt Bonita and them made it with us. Whew! We was wild.
"It's probably a good thing we didn't live in the city because we would have tore things up."
In the evenings, they'd come tumbling into the modest ranch house, dirty and bleeding from this cut or that scrape, laughing and bragging and needling each other about home runs and touchdowns and game-saving tackles.
Bonita invariably had a pot of something going on the stove.
"God, did they eat," she said. "You put it there, buddy, they ate it."
They were good athletes, too; strong, raw-boned boys who always threw harder, swung harder, tackled harder and played harder than the other kids in Pee Wee football and Little League baseball.
"We were always better than everybody else," said Scott Favre, not so much bragging as stating a fact.
Born to play
Brett, the middle son, weighed 9 pounds 15 ounces when he was born on Oct. 10, 1969.
"The doctor said he was ready for a hamburger," Bonita said.
He was preordained by genetics to grow into a strapping 6-foot-2, 230-pound man. He was nurtured in an environment of intense competition with his brothers and extended family members. He soaked up the lessons taught by his late father, a widely admired and hard-nosed coach.
But could anyone around Kiln, the one-stoplight town nearby, have predicted that Brett Favre would one day rank among the greatest quarterbacks in National Football League history?
Could anyone have predicted that he would be a three-time league MVP who would lead the Green Bay Packers to victory in Super Bowl XXXI?
Could anyone have predicted that he would rack up 225 consecutive starts, an NFL record for quarterbacks that he will extend today, when he takes the field against the Detroit Lions to begin his 15th professional season?
"No way," said Rocky Gaudin, who coached Brett from the fifth grade on and was an assistant coach under Irv at Hancock North Central High School. "I told him when he came through that he was the best quarterback we ever had at that time as far as being a competitor and a good leader.
"But he was not necessarily the best quarterback we'd had in terms of his accuracy. Even though we didn't throw much, he was pretty erratic."
Not even his brothers pegged him as a future NFL quarterback, let alone a surefire first-ballot Hall of Famer.
"It wasn't that early that I could sit here and say, 'He's going to be a professional football player,' " said Scott Favre, who was regarded by some as the better quarterback prospect of the two.
The truth was, Brett probably was a better high school baseball player than he was a football player. He started for Hancock North Central as an eighth-grader and earned five varsity letters.
"When he was in the eighth grade, he was probably the second-best player on the team behind me," Scott Favre said. "I was a junior at the time."
Once, in an American Legion baseball game, Favre doubled in his first at-bat, homered in his second and came to the plate a third time with the bases loaded. The manager called for an intentional walk.
"They threw three pitches outside," said Mike Ross, the home-plate umpire that day. "Before the fourth pitch, Brett turned to me and said, 'Do you think I'm going to let them walk me?' I said, 'You don't have much choice.'
"They threw the fourth pitch outside and he reached out and hit it for a ground-rule double over the right-field fence."
In football, Brett was big and strong and loved the physical part of the game. He might have made an outstanding high school linebacker or safety but rarely got the chance to show what he could do on that side of the ball.
That's because all three Favre boys were quarterbacks at Hancock, not so much because they were indispensable athletes (though that was largely true) but because Irvin knew he could depend on them to show up for practice.
"Back then, there were days you'd have 18 or 20 kids to practice with," Gaudin said. "If one of them missing is your quarterback, you can't hardly do much. So Scott was a quarterback when he came through and it was obvious Brett was going to be a quarterback.
"Irvin got flak about that. People said, 'He's the head coach. He's just making his kids the quarterbacks.' He'd talk to me about it and say, 'You know, the reason I do this is because I know they're going to be at practice. They ain't got no choice.' There was a lot of logic to that."
Big Irv, as he was known, was a good athlete himself, a former star baseball player at the University of Southern Mississippi. As a coach, he was no-nonsense, a man whose authority was unquestioned. He told Bonita, in no uncertain terms, that if one of their sons was ever hurt, she'd better not run down on his gull-dang football field.
"I always thought he was straight out of the Marines," said Stevie Haas, who owns the Broke Spoke bar in Kiln and knew the Favres because Haas' parents owned a grocery store. "He reminded me of a drill sergeant. He had that deep voice and wore a flat-top (hair cut)."
Haas went out for football at Hancock. He lasted just one day.
"It was 95 degrees and we ran and ran and ran," he said. "I asked Irv if we were going to run less the next day. He said, 'We'll probably run more.' That was all I needed to hear.
"I didn't show up for practice the next day and he came looking for me in my parents' store. I was stocking shelves and he came back there yelling, 'Candy! Where's Candy?' "
Said Jeff Favre: "Dad was hard on everybody. Old school. He'd run a lot of people off the team. He didn't put up with much (expletive), that's for sure."
Big Irv's toughness was legendary and undoubtedly rubbed off on his impressionable sons.
"Irv was up on the roof one day doing some stuff at the house," said Clark Henegan, one of Brett's best friends. "He fell off the roof and landed on his head on the concrete. He got up, dazed, blood running down his face, and wouldn't go to the hospital. I saw it happen myself.
"Brett thinks when you get hurt, put some ice on it, you'll be all right. That was Irv's patented move right there. Broken leg? Put some ice on it, you'll be all right. Get back out there."
In the early 1970s, just after he took over the football program at Hancock North Central, Big Irv attended a coaching clinic conducted by Alabama legend Paul "Bear" Bryant. He came back to Hancock and installed Bryant's version of the wishbone offense.
Like the Bear, Big Irv did not believe in throwing the football unless it was absolutely necessary. Though his sons had exceptional arms, he wasn't going to change his offense just to accommodate them.
"People always say, 'Man, y'all could throw. Why didn't you throw the ball?' " Scott Favre said. "Dad wasn't going to do it. He believed in his offense and he wasn't going to showcase his sons."
Brett, in fact, rarely attempted more than five passes in a high school game. After Irv begged his alma mater to take a look at his son, Southern Miss dispatched offensive line coach Mark McHale, who sat in the stands as Brett led his team to victory but threw only a handful of passes.
continued....
Favre was toughened by brothers, dad
By GARY D'AMATO
gdamato@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Sept. 10, 2005
Borrowed from Mark aka The Fontman
Fenton Miss. - Every legend has a beginning, and the legend of Brett Favre began right here, in the backwoods of southern Mississippi, on 52 1/2 acres of pine trees and meadows tucked between Mill Creek and the Rotten Bayou.
Ravaged two weeks ago by Hurricane Katrina, the Favre homestead was, in the 1970s and '80s, the ideal place for three rough-and-tumble sons of a high school football coach to play their games.
Scott, Brett and Jeff Favre, inseparable by blood and isolated by geography, could fish and swim in the bayou, hunt in the woods and play football and baseball on makeshift fields between barns and outbuildings.
"We didn't grow up in a subdivision or a populated area, where you have neighbors right next to you," said Jeff Favre, the youngest brother and the third of Irvin and Bonita's four children. "We couldn't call buddies and meet up in a park or field and in 15 minutes you've got some game. That was not available to us, so we played with each other."
They were always throwing something, those Favre boys. Rocks, potatoes, balls made from rolled-up wads of duct tape, whatever else was handy. They were always competing, too, their spirited games sometimes ending with one brother wrestling in the mud with another.
"There wasn't no sissies around here," said David Peterson, a cousin whom the Favres treated like a fourth brother. "We used to go in that old barn and everybody would hide and we'd throw rocks at each other and see if we could knock each other out. I tell you what, I don't know how Aunt Bonita and them made it with us. Whew! We was wild.
"It's probably a good thing we didn't live in the city because we would have tore things up."
In the evenings, they'd come tumbling into the modest ranch house, dirty and bleeding from this cut or that scrape, laughing and bragging and needling each other about home runs and touchdowns and game-saving tackles.
Bonita invariably had a pot of something going on the stove.
"God, did they eat," she said. "You put it there, buddy, they ate it."
They were good athletes, too; strong, raw-boned boys who always threw harder, swung harder, tackled harder and played harder than the other kids in Pee Wee football and Little League baseball.
"We were always better than everybody else," said Scott Favre, not so much bragging as stating a fact.
Born to play
Brett, the middle son, weighed 9 pounds 15 ounces when he was born on Oct. 10, 1969.
"The doctor said he was ready for a hamburger," Bonita said.
He was preordained by genetics to grow into a strapping 6-foot-2, 230-pound man. He was nurtured in an environment of intense competition with his brothers and extended family members. He soaked up the lessons taught by his late father, a widely admired and hard-nosed coach.
But could anyone around Kiln, the one-stoplight town nearby, have predicted that Brett Favre would one day rank among the greatest quarterbacks in National Football League history?
Could anyone have predicted that he would be a three-time league MVP who would lead the Green Bay Packers to victory in Super Bowl XXXI?
Could anyone have predicted that he would rack up 225 consecutive starts, an NFL record for quarterbacks that he will extend today, when he takes the field against the Detroit Lions to begin his 15th professional season?
"No way," said Rocky Gaudin, who coached Brett from the fifth grade on and was an assistant coach under Irv at Hancock North Central High School. "I told him when he came through that he was the best quarterback we ever had at that time as far as being a competitor and a good leader.
"But he was not necessarily the best quarterback we'd had in terms of his accuracy. Even though we didn't throw much, he was pretty erratic."
Not even his brothers pegged him as a future NFL quarterback, let alone a surefire first-ballot Hall of Famer.
"It wasn't that early that I could sit here and say, 'He's going to be a professional football player,' " said Scott Favre, who was regarded by some as the better quarterback prospect of the two.
The truth was, Brett probably was a better high school baseball player than he was a football player. He started for Hancock North Central as an eighth-grader and earned five varsity letters.
"When he was in the eighth grade, he was probably the second-best player on the team behind me," Scott Favre said. "I was a junior at the time."
Once, in an American Legion baseball game, Favre doubled in his first at-bat, homered in his second and came to the plate a third time with the bases loaded. The manager called for an intentional walk.
"They threw three pitches outside," said Mike Ross, the home-plate umpire that day. "Before the fourth pitch, Brett turned to me and said, 'Do you think I'm going to let them walk me?' I said, 'You don't have much choice.'
"They threw the fourth pitch outside and he reached out and hit it for a ground-rule double over the right-field fence."
In football, Brett was big and strong and loved the physical part of the game. He might have made an outstanding high school linebacker or safety but rarely got the chance to show what he could do on that side of the ball.
That's because all three Favre boys were quarterbacks at Hancock, not so much because they were indispensable athletes (though that was largely true) but because Irvin knew he could depend on them to show up for practice.
"Back then, there were days you'd have 18 or 20 kids to practice with," Gaudin said. "If one of them missing is your quarterback, you can't hardly do much. So Scott was a quarterback when he came through and it was obvious Brett was going to be a quarterback.
"Irvin got flak about that. People said, 'He's the head coach. He's just making his kids the quarterbacks.' He'd talk to me about it and say, 'You know, the reason I do this is because I know they're going to be at practice. They ain't got no choice.' There was a lot of logic to that."
Big Irv, as he was known, was a good athlete himself, a former star baseball player at the University of Southern Mississippi. As a coach, he was no-nonsense, a man whose authority was unquestioned. He told Bonita, in no uncertain terms, that if one of their sons was ever hurt, she'd better not run down on his gull-dang football field.
"I always thought he was straight out of the Marines," said Stevie Haas, who owns the Broke Spoke bar in Kiln and knew the Favres because Haas' parents owned a grocery store. "He reminded me of a drill sergeant. He had that deep voice and wore a flat-top (hair cut)."
Haas went out for football at Hancock. He lasted just one day.
"It was 95 degrees and we ran and ran and ran," he said. "I asked Irv if we were going to run less the next day. He said, 'We'll probably run more.' That was all I needed to hear.
"I didn't show up for practice the next day and he came looking for me in my parents' store. I was stocking shelves and he came back there yelling, 'Candy! Where's Candy?' "
Said Jeff Favre: "Dad was hard on everybody. Old school. He'd run a lot of people off the team. He didn't put up with much (expletive), that's for sure."
Big Irv's toughness was legendary and undoubtedly rubbed off on his impressionable sons.
"Irv was up on the roof one day doing some stuff at the house," said Clark Henegan, one of Brett's best friends. "He fell off the roof and landed on his head on the concrete. He got up, dazed, blood running down his face, and wouldn't go to the hospital. I saw it happen myself.
"Brett thinks when you get hurt, put some ice on it, you'll be all right. That was Irv's patented move right there. Broken leg? Put some ice on it, you'll be all right. Get back out there."
In the early 1970s, just after he took over the football program at Hancock North Central, Big Irv attended a coaching clinic conducted by Alabama legend Paul "Bear" Bryant. He came back to Hancock and installed Bryant's version of the wishbone offense.
Like the Bear, Big Irv did not believe in throwing the football unless it was absolutely necessary. Though his sons had exceptional arms, he wasn't going to change his offense just to accommodate them.
"People always say, 'Man, y'all could throw. Why didn't you throw the ball?' " Scott Favre said. "Dad wasn't going to do it. He believed in his offense and he wasn't going to showcase his sons."
Brett, in fact, rarely attempted more than five passes in a high school game. After Irv begged his alma mater to take a look at his son, Southern Miss dispatched offensive line coach Mark McHale, who sat in the stands as Brett led his team to victory but threw only a handful of passes.
continued....