cover image Life After Favre: A Season of Change with the Green Bay Packers and Their Fans

Life After Favre: A Season of Change with the Green Bay Packers and Their Fans

Phil Hanrahan. Skyhorse Publishing, $24.95 (327pp) ISBN 978-1-60239-773-6

Hanrahan's chronicle of the 2008 Green Bay Packers-the Green and Gold's first season in 17 years without three-time MVP quarterback Brett Favre-has a bit in common with the team that limped to a depressing 6-10 season: namely, a lack of focus. A Wisconsin native, L.A. freelance writer Hanrahan temporarily relocated to a Green Bay hotel (which, decades earlier, had housed the Packers' offices) to cover the whirlwind aftermath of the summer 2008 decision by team management to trade the 38-year-old, freshly returned from retirement, to the New York Jets. While Hanrahan remains surprisingly objective regarding the most dramatic episode in Packers history, enthusiasm leads him to overstuff his narrative with unnecessary detail regarding individual games and peripheral players. Told primarily through game summaries and the voices of fans that Hanrahan meets in bars-including not just Green Bay's Stadium View Bar & Grille, but the Broke Spoke in Favre's hometown of Kiln, Miss.-this volume manages a colorful team history and a comprehensive career overview of Favre's replacement, Aaron Rodgers. Unfortunately, the book ends prior to Favre's second ""retirement,"" renounced in the summer of 2009 when he joined Green Bay's hated rivals, the Minnesota Vikings.