At his new Culture11 sports blog, Michael surveys the debacle that was Favre’s return as the Jets’ starting quarterback. Favre’s self-regard is almost as great as the undue praise heaped on him for his ability as a quarterback, and his return to the league this year was the ultimate expression of this. The Jets had a perfectly good quarterback in Pennington, whom they had been trying to marginalize and undermine for years, and had no reason to waste resources and time on Favre, and so long as Pennington was there the Jets were the one AFC East team that I did not completely despise. They threw all that away and suffered the consequences in what must be among the most immediate and perfect examples in sport of karmic justice during the last year. I was particularly annoyed by the shabby way the Jets treated Pennington, because it was all too reminiscent of how my Titans had foolishly mistreated McNair. Having run him off and then drafted the woefully out-of-his-depth Vince Young, the Titans’ owner and management suffered a mediocre season for their mistake and were spared another wasted year only thanks to the mental meltdown of their star rookie. It was impressive to see how Pennington helped to transform an improving Miami team from an interesting turnaround story to one of the two great comeback teams of the year, and it was doubly sweet that their playoff spot came at the expense of the wretched Patriots.