Brett Favre on Humility, Aging, and Faith

On this episode of Our American Stories, much of what’s known about legendary NFL quarterback Brett Favre has stayed between the goalposts. So, Greg Hengler sat down with him at his home in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where Brett shared stories about humility, aging, and faith—part four of a five-part series.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American stories, and we tell stories of
all kinds here, folks, as you've come to love and know.
And we're always trying to get stories in the voice
of the person telling them. We try and get out
of the way, step as far back as possible, and
we love to get stories behind stories. And Brett Farb's
life we've been digging in deep. And this is the

(00:30):
fourth part of a five part series, Brett Farb's life
outside of the Goalposts, which is what we're interested in
here on this show. Not Brett Farv the football star.
That's interesting, but who's the man? What's life like before
and after? Who were his parents? Where did he grow up?
How did he deal with fame and everything after? Here's

(00:54):
Brett Farv getting personal about his faith, about humility and
about aging.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
And I can't speak for other people, but we we
we and I s I say we more me.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
But we tend to lean on God when we need.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Him, going to rehab, spending time by myself like open
a Bible. God, I need some help. I can't do
this alone. And I remember asking people not I, and
we s we We still are active in the Catholic Church.
In fact, my father Tommy. Our priest is one of

(01:30):
our m We we take him on vacations and do
all kinds of stuff. But but I like leaning on someone.
And I I've had enough adversity to walk me through
the Bible. If you go to rehab three times, you
lose your dad. M being lost her brother out here

(01:53):
on a four wheel er accident. Yeah he was nineteen
years old. Yeah, on my four wheeler. Oh he's killed
a helicopter. Tam out of here to the h H hospital.
But I mean it's bad. Oh you know. So there's
enough things that you know, you go, God, I need

(02:17):
some help here. And and you do well for a while,
and then you slip, and you do well and you slip.
But I think as I I've gotten older, I tend
to slip maybe less, I y, I look at things differently.

(02:40):
I think at at fifty, I'm a lot wiser than
I was at forty. But I'm sure if I make
it to sixty, I'll be saying you were a freaking idiot.
At fifty you didn't know nothing, M. And I'm sure
that's the cycle that will always be. And I've been
talking about just life in general. Uh, what what we

(03:01):
thought was important at eighteen, At thirty, we thought that
what you know, what were you thinking? And then at
forty you thought, what were you thinking at thirty? And
but you I feel.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Like you you narrow down as you get older what matters.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
And what it takes, you know, to achieve whatever happiness.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
And so I think that.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
My faith has gotten gotten better and stronger, but it
needs a lot of work.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
I'm not going to sit here and and brag, but
I do.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
I do know that that humility is uh.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
I had to look it up. You know.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
I'm thinking, I'm thinking one thing, and actually what I
was thinking, I didn't know how to put it in words,
and humility was the word I was looking for. There
was a time I thought that it was all about me.
But it's like the Oakland Game or my career. And

(04:18):
you could say the Oakland Game is like my career.
I was just driving the car, you know. God was
telling me where to go, when to stop, when to pass,
when the.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
Park, and.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
That took a while. I think that I goes back
to playing twenty years. At twenty one, I thought once
I got into play, I thought I can be pretty
damn good. And at nineteen twenty years. You know, I'm like,
that doesn't matter really, y. You need to be thankful

(05:04):
that God gave you the opportunity. And and also, you know,
the one thing that I I f I feel really
good about is that I made the most of it.
You know, I I let him down in a lot
of ways. That was one of 'em. I didn't let
him down. He's like, alright, I gave you a gift.

(05:25):
What are you gonna do with it? And I I
actually told my daughter that today. I said, you got
a chance. Cause she didn't play very good last week.
They played Friday and Saturday. She played pretty good Friday,
not so good Saturday. She was really down and she
was beating herself up today and uh, I gotta do
this my weight so I'm overweight. And I said, look,

(05:49):
here's the reality. And I said, this is the truth.
You got a chance next week to redeem yourself. And
it starts out, what are you gonna do with it?
There's gonna come time when it's over, and then what
do you do? So? And that's life in general. You know,

(06:15):
we sh we have chances to In fact, I say
we you know, you never know when it ends. My
dad died at fifty six, and that was I was
thirty two or three, and I thought I was I

(06:39):
thought I was really young. Now I I now that.
I mean, I'm almost my dad's age. And uh, it's
kind of like, buddy, you know, I do the physicals
and do all the things I need to do. And
he didn't, in spite of me trying to said Dad,

(07:05):
you need to get a physical. He didn't take really
good care of himself. He just thought he was gonna
live forever.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
You know that m that mentality like that. You know,
his age are definitely before.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
Him other generations. I'm sure he say you need to
go see a doctor. Oh, I ain't gonna see no doctor.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
I mean you.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
That.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
I don't care how tough you are when it's your time.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
But he had apparently had had two other heart attacks
that no one knew.

Speaker 3 (07:40):
Uh. The autopsy showed that there was a massive heart attack.
He was driving down the road again.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
He was fifty six, which you know, I'm fifty now,
fifty six don't seem that O. I look, uh, you
know there was a time in fifty he was like
he's fifty sold. Now I'm like fifty six, ain't that
you know? But you know, it's really unfair. I look

(08:09):
at it as when people are like that, like my
dad was, it's really unfair to everyone else that you
would be that selfish that you wouldn't take care of yourself,
you know, for do it for the kids, your wife
or whatever. If you think about me, you with the kids,

(08:34):
if you just neglected, you'd feel terrible. Well, that's what
you do when you don't take care of yourself, if
you just walk away from them. That's really kind of
the same thing. So I mean, when it's your time,
it's your time. But I'm gonna try to hang on

(08:56):
as long as i can.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
And you've been listening to Brett Farv part four of
our five part series about So Much and My Goodness,
him talking about humility, having to look up the word
so that those words could approximate what he was thinking about.
Am I good looking back at our lives we can
all do that. If we're not, we're really not living
right how we looked and did things ten years ago.

Speaker 3 (09:19):
Hopefully we're doing better now.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
We have this five part series from Brett fav and
no one has anything like it, and that's what we
do here on this show. And whether it's the life
of Brett or Henry Ford, where we talked to great
historians about him, or the Steinway family, or my goodness,
our dread Scott on Spike's story by George will about
Kurt Flood.

Speaker 3 (09:41):
It's just a beautiful story

Speaker 1 (09:44):
Brett Favre's story here on our American Stories.