Brett Favre Tells His Story of Faith, Family, and Football

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, a show where America is the star and the American people. And a very special welcome to the folks in Portland, listening on KEX. We’re proud to have you as a member of the Our American Stories family. A bunch of what’s known about legendary NFL quarterback Brett Favre has been kept between the goalposts. So, our own Greg Hengler took the three-and-a-half-hour long drive from right where we broadcast in Oxford, Mississippi, and he sat down with Brett Favre in his Hattiesburg, Mississippi, home. And by the way, Greg grew up a mere walking distance, almost spitting distance, from Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Here’s Brett with his story. Well, my mom and dad are both from the Gulf Coast. My dad’s from Gulfport.

My mother was from Pass Christian. That probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but right on the beach, and my dad grew up not far from the beach. Gulfport’s kind of right in the smack Dad in the middle of the Gulf Coast, Mississippi Gulf Coast. As you came down from Oxford, you eventually got on 49. If you’d take 49 all the way till you can’t take it no more, you would be in Gulfport.

So that’s where he grew up.

My mom and dad met at Mississippi Gulf Coast Junior College. My dad played baseball and football there, and then they dated, eventually got married.

I think they got married while…

They were at Southern Miss. So they left junior college, came here. My dad played baseball, then they started having kids. My older brother, Scott, is two and a half years older than me. We all were born in Gulfport, Gulfport Memorial Hospital. So there’s Scott, me, my younger brother, Jeff, and my our youngest is a Brandy, our sister. And I’m gonna f fast forward a little bit. My mom, h-her mother and father owned a restaurant bar in Pass Christian m, but we practically grew up there. My grandfather died in 1978, and I actually remember a lot about him.

I was seven or eight when I was born. In 1969, when he died.

My grandmother, she just kept them, and it was called Benny French’s Tavern after my grandfather. We practically grew up there because when he died, my mom and dad would help my grandmother tend bar, and we had the whole place to ourselves pretty much. There were pool tables and pinball, and people get in there getting drunk when we were drinking like little bottle Cokes, which were the best in all the sweets. And my grandmother was awesome; she was the best. Staying with her was the coolest thing. Mississippi Gulf Coast is a lot like New Orleans. It never closes. We grew up Catholic. Everyone on the Gulf Coast is Catholic. So there’s there’s parties for everything. There’s festivals, there’s rodeos, there’s, you know, cookoffs, parades. Growing up and out that lifestyle, we went to Mardi Gras parades.

My mom and dad would…

Drink, but I don’t. I don’t remember him like ever getting. Like, we always were with them, so like they didn’t like drop us off, and then they’d go. Ironically, throughout high school, I never drank. My older brother, I think he may have drunk a little bit, but we were in athletics. My dad’s mother and father lived in Gulfport, were polar opposite of my grand grandmother on my mom’s side. I stayed with them one time, and that was one too many. They said good night at 5:30, still daylight. One went to one bedroom, one went to the bedroom. And I loved my dad’s mother and father, but they were boring, you know. I knew Scott was up playing pool or doing whatever.

But at 18, my mom told me that she was adopted.

I played summer league baseball. My dad was a baseball and football coach, and I was actually 17 and I was driving. My dad was already at the. It was a summer league. It was like American Legion Baseball, and we were down on the coast. I was driving my mom. It was just us two, and she just felt the need to tell me that she was adopted. And she was all upset, worried that I wouldn’t — we called my grandmother Mem — she was worried that I wouldn’t look at her all the same, when actually I looked at her even more finally, like.

I just couldn’t believe she could be that great of a mom, and it wasn’t even her her daughter.

But I only bring that up because I don’t know a whole lot about my mom’s actual biological family.

But my mom’s…

Biological mother worked for my grandmother and grandfather at the bar restaurant because my grandfather was, believe it or not, 25 years older than my grandmother.

And this girl…

Was pregnant — mom’s mother — and didn’t want the baby, and they said they’d take it. So she had a baby, dropped it off, and was gone.

That was it.

And the only thing she knows about her father is that he played profess baseball. I don’t even know if she knows the name. She never said. So, kind of interesting. And my dad’s family, my grandfather was 100% Chocked all India, and his family worked from Oklahoma, like a big reservation up there. But yeah, growing up, my dad was a drivers’ that teacher and had football coach at Hancock North Central. Now it’s Hancock County High School. My mom was a special education teacher there; first through twelfth was right all together.

It was a real small school. Graduated…

100. So we all rode to school together, rode home together. I never thought we were rich, but we had a pool. I thought we got to be doing something right. But I think that combined and may four four thousand dollars. And I know people didn’t do that and get by, but it’s amazing how you can have four kids, and when they called us to the dinner table, how they eat twelve hot dollars if I could, and…

So with everyone else. So, you know, I say all that, they’re like, “How in the world did y’all make it?”

When we come back, more Brett Favre on Our American Stories. Folks, if you love the great American stories we tell and love America like we do, we’re asking you to become a part of the Our American Stories family. If you agree that America is a good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly gift of $17.76 is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to OurAmericanStories.com now and go to the donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming. That’s OurAmericanStories.com. And we continue here with Our American Stories and Brett Favre telling his story. And now, let’s continue with the story of…

Brett Favre, when we wrap up, and I’m gluten-free, so I make a gluten-free bread, a couple other things, almond milk or some yogurt or something, and it’s like $100. And every time I check out, I go, “How in the world did my mom and dad make it?” You know, I know it was a little cheaper back then, but still. So, anyway, I grew up playing baseball and football. Just my older brother did the same. My younger brother did the same. My older brother had a scholarship to Mississippi State as a quarterback. He played a year. He transferred it back to JUCO. They ran the Wishbone, and he’s a little scrawny white kid. He said, “You know, I need to go somewhere else,” and he ended up playing two years at JUCO. Wanted to Delta State on a scholarship, went through spring practice, was the starting quarterback, came home, said, “I’ve had enough. I just don’t want to play anymore.” And he came to Southern Miss and rolled it as just a student, which was my freshman year, so we were there at the same time. My younger brother, he played at Southern Miss as well. I actually played defensive back. And growing up down there was always something going on, you know, when people when I tell them it was…

When I was still…

Drinking, which I quit drinking in 1998. If you would have asked me in 1997, “Do you ever think you’ll stop drinking?” I just said, “No, that’s just the way we were raised.” And part of it was true. But I mean, you can get trouble anywhere, but the temptation to just go boil, you know, a pot of crawfish and drink a bunch of beer, and…

Not come home till 3 in the morning is always there.

And saying that, we moved from the coast up here. Now, my wife, she went to school here. My wife, we grew up together. She was a year ahead of me. But I knew her ever since first grade. The fact that — I don’t know if that was a door or what, she may be coming in — but yeah, so we’ve only other. She played basketball, she played softball. She was a good, really good athlete. And when we started dating, I was in the ninth grade, and…

We would throw the baseball together.

And now she couldn’t catch football like if I threw, but she could catch the baseball. I thought it was pretty cool because we could throw it back and forth. I could heat it up, she could catch it, and I was like, “This is pretty cool.” She went to Pearl River Junior College, played basketball, and then later came to Southern Miss. We have two daughters and we have three grandsons: nine, five, and two. Our oldest daughter’s 31. She got a law degree from Loyola. Doesn’t use it.

It is normal, you know. I was hoping to break that.

Our youngest is a junior playing volleyball at Southern Miss.

She quit indoor bea. She’s just doing beach, which is a lot more fun to watch. It really is. We hate it that she quit indoor, but…

I hate to because my dad was a coach, and I coached two years myself, so a lot of times people want to blame the coach. But ten girls quit the indoor me the the woman doesn’t coach. I mean, it’s just, it’s like she sits over there and she just, she’s like miserable. Never would like, “Let’s work on this today,” or spend give me. My daughter is one that, unlike me and unlike Deanna, really she needs someone to tell her…

I need your best.

Let’s give me 15 minutes after practice and let’s work on this. And you know, she needs someone to talk to her that way and encourage her. The more someone didn’t talk to me, the more I dug my heels in and just, “I’ll show them.”

She’s not like that.

My childhood, I mean, if I wasn’t playing baseball, I was playing football.

That’s all the only two I played.

And I was actually a better baseball player than I was in football.

I went to Southern Miss.

That, you know, they don’t really give. They give partial scholarships; they don’t give full scholarships. Fortunately, I got a full scholarship. The only offer I got was the Southern Miss, and…

I was gonna play both.

In fact, I really thought, if I had a — if you were to say which one do you think you have a better shot at playing professional — I’d just said baseball by far.

We never threw it in high school. We ran the Wishbone.

I mean, I could throw it further and harder than anyone, but that’s all I knew. So even though I was pretty confident in my ability, I didn’t foresee coming here and starting as a true freshman. And more luck than anything, a couple of guys got hurt. A couple of guys played bad. They had moved one of the guys to a receiver, and lo and behold…

I was next in line.

And I could have screwed it up very easily, could have screwed it up because I didn’t know the plays. It’s funny because I came in against Tulane in the second game of my true freshman year. We were down 17 to 3. We were looking awful, and I was nervous. I was a little bit unsure.

I, I…

Knew I could play, but putting everything together, calling and play.

And that was back when they signaled.

In, and you know, I, I hadn’t been on the team very long, and I wasn’t like getting all the reps.

I wasn’t getting any reps, so I didn’t. I. All the guys…

In the office, in the huddle, were like five-year seniors. And it’s funny, w-we end up coming back and winning broken plays. Yeah, maybe I called it wrong, maybe I took the wrong drop, whatever, and just made something happen. So when I fast forward to Green Bay, it was the third game. We played Minnesota, the first game, overtime loss. It was a hell of a game. Mkowski played great. The next week we go to Tampa. I think he stayed out. We went down two days at a time. He stayed out a couple of nights, and he…

Played like it.

He sucked, and I ended up getting in the game. We were down like 38 to 3, and so you can’t really put my stock into that game. The next game we played Cincinnati, and that’s the game he gets hurt. I think it was second-quarter, and so we’re still in this game. And much like the Tulane game, I knew this, really. I knew after the Tampa game that Mkowski would start again, but I knew that this was my chance to either make it or break it.

It’s very similar to Tulane. I went in with little to no reps. I played the week before, but…

A different setting. We were not gonna win that game the previous week. This one we had a chance to win, and a lot of it would hinge on how I played, if not all of it. And they blitzed me every snap, which was smart, except for the last drive. They played very cautious and allowed me to just kind of play. I didn’t have to worry about blitzes and odd stuff. I could just play. And I think after that game, my thought was…

It couldn’t have.

Gone any better, even though I knew there was a lot of things I had to clean up, but I really felt like I didn’t. I really felt like Mkowski, to be honest with you, was not as hurt as he let on. I — that was my gut — that he was playing by the crowd was booty, and it was a way to…

Kind of get away from that.

Let me play, and they find out that, “Hey, Don isn’t so bad,” because I was raw, and he had to believe, just like most people, “This guy’s, I mean, he can throw it hard, and…”

Far, but he doesn’t have a chance, and which would have been…

You know, yeah, but it didn’t work out that way.

No, it didn’t work out that way. When we come back, we continue with Brett Favre, one of the NFL’s greatest all-time quarterbacks, telling his story in his own words here on Our American Stories. And we returned to Our American Stories and Brett Favre’s story in his own words. Let’s pick up where we left off with Green Bay’s then-backup quarterback, Brett Favre, getting the win after replacing an injured Don Mkowski in Week 3 of the 1992 NFL season. Here’s Brett.

And really, kind of my career is kind of a reflection of that game. A lot of good, a lot of wins, but a lot of, you know, “What are you doing?” But fortunately, there was a lot more goods than there were bads. But yeah, you know, Aikman and I are big buddies. And he said, “You know, I guess is Wally Pipp, is that name?” So for me, I’ve had more people bring that name up to me than Mkowski as Wally Pipp got hurt, went out thinking, “I’ll be back. They’ll want me back before you know it.” And 20 years later, he’s still waiting. But I think, you know, like I tell people, one of the things I think that served me well early in my career…

Was being naive.

And I, I’m, I say that because the latter part of my career, say the last five, six years, I’d been around the block of more than half the team combined. But as a 15-year veteran or above, I knew what we were up against. I knew if this guy could play this, or when, when a play was called, they didn’t have a — I mean, they all have a chance.

But and I…

To be honest with you, just bring them on.

So not that the latter part of my career I didn’t play well, but I spent more time worrying about things I couldn’t control.

But I, you know, I say that because…

In 20 years, most professional athletes don’t play, whatever it is, for 20 years.

You know, I went…

From barely shaven to gray hair. I mean, complete gray, and at 30…

And the way I played and the…

Life that I lived throughout the things that we talked about earlier, the adversity, you know, just different. But I still played in the same game. And how quickly it went. My first year, I was in Atlanta, and I went out to eat. I was just trying to find my way. No one cared who I was. I was just another guy. What it’s like, I would have been not so much a Green Bay because I was traded for a first-round pick, so there was already kind of an air of, “Because they traded for a first-round pick,” is basically like being drafted in the fi…