EDITORIAL: Ready, set, hike, fade away

“Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.” Those words, delivered with stentorian flourish by Gen. Douglas MacArthur in his farewell address to Congress in 1951, would have relevance today with a couple of modifications.

Sports stars never die, but they should just fade away.

They live forever in the sense that the records of their athletic achievements, the glorious statistics generated in their playing years, are preserved in sports lore and never die. Yet some of them refuse to fade away after their athletic skills have faded as they grasp for renewed attention and adulation in other fields. Politics seems to be a popular choice.

Wisconsin has some experience with this phenomenon, courtesy of the two best quarterbacks to ever play here (or maybe anywhere), Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers. After making test runs on the political playing fields with their comments and endorsements, the former was considered as a potential candidate for governor of Wisconsin and the latter was mentioned as a candidate for U.S. vice president.

Absurd, but true. Google will confirm.

There are plenty of other examples that illustrate the falsity of the notion that brilliance in sports carries over into other endeavors. An outstanding one is the fabulous running back Herschel Walker, Heisman trophy winner, holder of the NFL rushing record of 2,411 yards in a single season, and a candidate for the U.S. Senate who “was like a plane crash into a train wreck that rolled into a dumpster fire.”

That colorful description came from a Republican party official in Georgia, where Walker falsely claimed he was a deputy sheriff and FBI agent, could not credibly deny salacious stories told by former girlfriends and exhibited breathtaking ignorance about any subject a senator would have to deal with. He lost the election despite the enthusiastic endorsement of Donald Trump, but to the embarrassment to the state of Georgia managed to get 1.7 million votes.

Another southern football hero, however, won election to the Senate, where a Republican colleague called him the most hated man in Washington and The New Republic magazine crowned him the “dumbest senator of the year.”

That would be Tommy Tuberville, who parlayed his legend as a masterful college coach (Auburn, Mississippi, Texas Tech, Cincinnati) into election as U.S. senator representing Alabama.

Tuberville earned the unkind comments above along with bipartisan contempt in both houses of Congress by blocking all promotions of senior officers of the U.S. military for 10 months in 2023 because he did not approve of abortions for service members. (There were no reports of any of the nearly 500 majors, colonels, generals, commanders and admirals whose promotions were blocked seeking an abortion.)

Brett Favre returned to the scene of his incredible athletic feats in October and campaigned for Donald Trump in Green Bay. He also suited up for the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, and in a podcast became the likely second richest celebrity supporting Brad Schimel (albeit a distant second to Elon Musk).

These dips into politics resulted in some Republican operatives floating the idea of Favre running for office in Wisconsin, perhaps for governor. A spokesman for Favre said he wasn’t interested.

That’s a good call, and Favre should stick with it. His post-playing résumé is replete with red meat for hungry writers of political attack ads, including a scandal in which Favre was sued by the state of Mississippi for recovery of $729,000 in interest connected to welfare funds paid to him for speaking services he didn’t provide.

Aaron Rodgers must have been ecstatic when his fellow vaccine conspiracist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced he was considering him as his vice presidential running mate. It was a major gift to Rodgers’ desperate campaign to cling to public attention as his athletic stardom dims.

Some of his efforts to that end have been mildly amusing. The drama he created as the anointed savior of the New York Jets was harmless enough, except to the Jets (who were stuck with an expensive but mediocre quarterback who thought he was the team’s coach and general manager), and the suspense he is now trying to gin up over his choice of the next team he will bless with his royal presence is worth a laugh.

But elsewhere, his relentless self-promotion often takes a creepy turn, as when he weighs in on various and sundry conspiracies with deranged claims that make him sound like a guest expert on a QAnon social media broadcast.

The sports heroes who think their past athletic prowess empowers them to find new stardom as political and social actors don’t seem to understand that they are disrespecting the very people who made them rich and famous—their legions of fans.

Those admirers want to remember Aaron Rodger as the supernaturally elegant athlete, the brilliant quarterback who delivered thrilling victories for the Green Bay Packers by outsmarting opponents, disabling their defenses with laser passes and when necessary administering a crushing defeat with an epic 65-yard, last-second Hail Mary throw to the end zone.

They don’t want to hear that the Aaron Rodgers they revered and cheered said in one of his reliably reported conspiracy revelations that the Sandy Hook massacre of 20 school children and six adults in 2012 was a inside job by government agents.

Please, Mr. Rodgers, just fade away.