As the only highly paid sports reporter on this site, I am proud to announce the following extra special, earth-scattering sports news, perhaps the greatest single sports happening of the 21st Century to date, and it is a YouGab exclusive:

Brett, it is official, you have been voted as the greatest athlete that has ever graced the screen at ESPN.  Babe Ruth, hell he was dead and buried almost 30 years before ESPN first hit the cable channels.  Michael Jordan, Kobe has stated many times that you couldn't fill his jock and we believe him.  Wayne Gretzky, that game you mastered was only hockey.  Wilt Chamberlain, your womanizing record was easily toppled by the pick-up lines of Tiger Woods.  Tiger, you are a mere sand trap of your former self. 

Brilliant Rocket Scientist Lew Troop put it the most succinctly, "The odds are 50/50 that we will discover other alien life-forms within the next 25 years.  To find a better athlete, teammate, and all-around good guy that Brett Favre in that time-frame would be more like a billion to one".

All this excitement was, of course, generated by Favre's marvelous back-peddling in those four magnificent plays that he was involved in in last evening's Vikings and 49er's exhibition game.  It was obvious that 49er coach Mike Singletary had put a bounty on Favre's carcass for the game.  It was more obvious that Brett's happy feet were a result of his memory of his last play in last season's NFC Championship game, where Brett was sandwiched by the Saints' defense like a triple-decker deluxe BLT  (minus the cheese, he left that in Green Bay). 

Terelle Owens had 12 million reasons not to kill himself a couple of years ago, Brett has 8 million more reasons than that just to play this season.  Of course, he isn't in it for the money.  Look at it this way, when he lands on the disabled list in a New York minute just as soon as the regular season starts, he can double his pay while announcing babble, dribble, and dreck as a color man for Sunday Night Football.  What a guy, what an athlete, what a teammate,  what a country.

P.S. Brett...you are not even close to being the oldest quarterback to play in the NFL, George Blanda was 46.  Sachel Page pitched in the major leagues when he was 58.