Redemption is for the young.

• Position: Edge of Sports - Brett Favre

This off season, I stood in front of every last National Basketball Association rookie at an event called the Rookie Transitional Program, a private gathering put on by the NBA and the NBA Players Association aimed at preparing the future stars for life in the pros.

I certainly wasn't there to give tips on how to box out rebounders. I was there in a much more limited capacity: trying to drop some meager wisdom on how to deal with the dreaded sports media. There was really only one piece of advice that came to mind: Feed the beast or the beast will feed on you. The beast is a sports-entertainment leviathan that crams 1,440 minutes a day--every day--with highlights, chatter, and sometimes even actual games.

There is nothing that makes the beast salivate more than scandal. It's the US Weekly -ification of sports. If the beast had to choose between discussing a transcendent contest between rival teams or a Tiger Woods sex tape, they would go for the gutter every time. The only guard that the modern athlete has against the junk food cravings of the beast, I told the young players, is to take steps to feed its ceaseless appetite themselves. Open up about your personal biography. Let the cameras into your home. Speak out about something you care about. Even dare to talk about a political issue. You have this hyperexalted brought-to-you-by-Nike platform, I said. You might as well use it. If you offer the beast enough protein, you can keep it at bay.

It's the oldest issue in politics grafted onto sports: Control your own story. But sometimes it doesn't matter how much protein you offer the beast. Not when you slip up and serve a double bacon cheeseburger.

This is the reality for the Minnesota Viking future Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre. Favre's stats are legendary. He holds practically every NFL quarterback record in the book. In my mind, his most impressive mark is the nearly 300 games he has played without sitting out an opening drive with an injury. After a two-decade career where he assiduously fed the beast and made many a top sportswriter swoon, Favre is playing out perhaps his last season amidst a scandal with too much juice for the beast to ignore.

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