Brett Favre, Green Bay and Losing Your Best Guy

July 15, 2008 · Filed Under Adventures in (Mis)Management, Stupid Employee Tricks 

If you haven’t been following the Brett Favre unretirement story, bless your heart. From the perspective of an HR person, it is a gut wrenching affair that I hope I never have the pleasure of dealing with. Here is the scenario from my demented HR side:

  • Your longest serving and best employee (and one of the best employees the industry has ever seen) is on contract with you.
  • He has been mulling retirement for several years.
  • He finally decides this year is it for him. You understand but you need to move on as a company.
  • Right before the busiest season of the year, your retired employee wants to come back to work for you and he wants all of his old accounts back.
  • You tell him that you’ve given them to the journeyman who replaced him in March.
  • He asks to be released from his contract so he can go work for your direct competitor.
  • You say “No, you can come back but you’re going to have to earn your accounts back.”
  • He doesn’t like that and goes to the biggest industry magazine and gives an interview saying that he doesn’t feel welcome back at his old company and that because of his years of service, he should simply be released.

What do you do as a manager?

Oh, and by the way, the stockholders are well informed of the entire situation and are closely watching your every move. No pressure.

Brett Favre is inarguably the best player on his team even at retirement age. He also has a legacy with Green Bay and the shareholder fans of Green Bay absolutely love him.

That being said, the Packers are a business and he needs to understand that it would be absolutely foolish to release him to a competitor without getting something back in return. As a contracted employee, Favre is in the inenviable spot of being subject to management’s discretion regarding him playing in the game, being traded or allowing him to be released unrestricted.

Now the Packers, to my understanding, have allowed Favre the opportunity to list teams that he would rather be traded for and they could easily get a high draft pick for Favre. And ultimately, they’d love to ship him out of their conference in order to lower the possibility they would be playing against him the next couple of years. It would be the equivalent of saying that in order to release you from the contract (which both parties mutually agreed to), you have to sign a non-compete agreement to not play in our division. I think that would be pretty reasonable.

I am glad the Packers have taken a stand even though I think they killed themselves on the PR side of this. They have to stand up for the employees and they can’t let one person (even if it is the best employee) dictate their entire operation. It has been 11 years since they have won a Superbowl and they aren’t going to do it in the next two years whether or not Favre is playing for them. If Green Bay shareholders can come to accept that, they should be able to see the logic in finding an amicable way to trade or release him without hurting themselves.

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Comments

10 Responses to “Brett Favre, Green Bay and Losing Your Best Guy”

  1. Alex Cantu on July 15th, 2008 9:50 am

    Vince Lombardi is rolling over in his grave. Green Bay need to get a clue.

    [Reply]

  2. Glenn Gutmacher on July 15th, 2008 12:05 pm

    Excellent application of an HR analogy to this situation in all respects. Agreed that sending him only to an AFC team sounds reasonable as the football equivalent of a non-compete. Of course, non-competes can be challenged in court, and the NFL is a unique business enjoying some anti-trust exemptions, and it’s a very public situation, as you said, so plenty of variables can skew it either way. Unfortunately, biases can creep in, too. I fear it may all come down to whether the final decision-maker is a Brett Favre fan or not.

    [Reply]

  3. laurie ruettimann on July 15th, 2008 2:48 pm

    The real winner is the local media market. In an otherwise slow news cycle, they can go back to doing what they know best: covering The Packers.

    [Reply]

  4. Lance Haun on July 15th, 2008 9:21 pm

    @Alex - Do you think Lombardi would have put up with Farve this long? I think he would have killed him.

    @Glenn - I generally hate non-competes so I thought it was awful brave of me to even suggest it. The NFL is in a unique spot though and I think you have to protect your team, especially when you’re doing the guy a favor to break his contract.

    @Laurie - Being loosely familiar with Green Bay media from family I married into, I am guessing you are 100% correct.

    [Reply]

  5. Stacy on July 16th, 2008 12:41 pm

    The journeyman, as you referred to him, is none other than Aaron Rodgers, former awesome quarterback from the University of California. Go Bears. (sorry, did I miss the point?)

    [Reply]

  6. Eugene Lee on July 16th, 2008 3:48 pm

    Lance, great article as always. I really like how you applied to HR analogy to the Favre situation. It portrays the situation in a whole new light.

    And thanks again for hitting me up with a comment at my blog.

    Until next time!

    Gene

    [Reply]

  7. Mary Lorenz on July 17th, 2008 7:00 am

    Love the analogy! Would love to see similar takes on other high profile head buttings…Obama vs. Rev. Jesse Jackson? Katherine Heigl vs. ABC?

    [Reply]

  8. CJ on July 19th, 2008 7:54 am

    Ah Lance-
    If only cooler heads (like yours) would prevail. The world of sports would be a better place.

    From WI-
    CJ

    [Reply]

  9. Lyn on July 22nd, 2008 9:00 am

    Earned Influence.
    Some employees earn the right to have extreme influence….Brett Farve is one of them. Leaving a career can be a very difficult decision for some employees–their life is defined by their work. The question remains, will a a company or organization reach their goals / vision faster with or without this employee?

    [Reply]

  10. What employees deserve (and don’t deserve)? | YourHRGuy.com on July 23rd, 2008 7:01 am

    [...] for me. I love sports, I love HR and I love analogies so those three things really work for me. My Brett Favre article along with Kris Dunn’s over at Fistful of Talent have slowly attracted the dreaded [...]

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