World needs gamblers like Favre

Another sports sex scandal has hit the news. This time the offender is purple-clad, Minnesota Viqueens’ quarterback Brett Favre.

It’s really the “Vikings” but I am a life-long Green Bay Packer fan so I miss no opportunity to insult Minnesota. Real men don’t wear purple.

In these times of grave distress and disappointment in heroes, it’s good to relieve the anxiety with a little humour.

A woman down the street with 11 and eight-year-old daughters was checking the Internet to check out the voicemails - and photos - the quarterback sent to TV personality Jenn Sterger.

The mom’s older daughter was looking over her shoulder when mom flipped to the second screen, which allegedly showed the old gunslinger Brett fondling his penis.

“My God, I didn’t expected that,” she said. “I put my hands over the screen and told her to go upstairs.

“I went up and told her how sorry I was she saw that."

“She said: ‘It looked different than Dad’s.’”

To which the younger sister chirped in: “Well, was it bigger?”

We move on to a serious discussion of this grave matter.

Favre is one of the best and most exciting players in the history of the National Football League. He is a gambler. He is also a prima-donna who has kept his teams and fans guessing about whether he will retire. Favre has been an annoying, one-man soap opera for years.

The Favre incident occurred when he with the New York Jets. As with Tiger Woods, one awaits further claims from more women. Two female masseuses on the team’s payroll have already said Favre was out of bounds.

Favre is 41, a grandfather. His wife is a breast cancer survivor. Favre was known as a party animal who drank too much and took too many Percodan pain pills. He has allegedly quit both. Rumours around Green Bay said he had a room reserved 24/7. It’s not known whether he liased with mistresses there or needed a place to stay whenever his wife kicked him out of the house. Or both.

First Brett, let me give you some advice. Sending a picture of your penis to a woman you have never met is not the best way to get a woman, even one who might otherwise have been eager.

Sterger described Favre as “creepy.”

The prevailing thought is that these star athletes risk such indiscretions because they feel above the rest of us, invulnerable.

I think that’s backward. Star athletes obtain the pinnacles of their professions because they are natural-born risk-takers to start with, not as a result of their notoriety.

Risk-taking is an hereditary trait.

Studies that compare identical and fraternal twins have shown that as much as 55 per cent of risk-taking is genetic.

Risk-takers are born with more dopamine receptors in their brains, as well as more testosterone, both of which are associated with the tendency to take the fast lane.

The advancement of civilization has depended on risk-takers, not much unlike Favre or Woods.

The risk-takers of yore were vital to humankind’s survival, reports Psychology Today.

While the play-it-safers stuck close to their berry patches, their more adventurous counterparts hunted dangerous animals.

As psychologist Michael Aptor puts it: “It’s better for one person to eat a poisonous fruit than for everybody. It was because of these early risk-takers that our species was able to survive.”

The risk-takers have since advanced business, science and technology.

Today’s society is trying to put a damper on risk-taking.

Our nanny-state makes us wear helmets, seatbelts, and an ever-increasing number of laws that make everything except knitting illegal.

Michael Alvear, in an article titled Risky Business, wrote: “You can’t swing a helmeted cat without hitting a mandated safety precaution.”

A few hundred years from now we may have bred risk-taking out of the human psyche.

That’s if our timid society makes it that long.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.