When word broke that the Packers had offered Brett Favre a $20 million bribe marketing contract, I said, and I quote:

Mark Murphy was given the most daunting challenge any NFL owner or CEO has faced in regards to player personnel - and Murphy, very publicly, failed miserably.

Well, I can't tell you the amount of email I got about how I was blowing things way out of proportion, wondering if I would like to change my statement once it was reported that the deal had been on the table since March, etc.

No. Absolutely not. Mark Murphy is the President and CEO of the most historic, most prestigious franchise in the NFL. And he wanted to give Brett Favre $20-25 million to have a lifetime relationship with the organization, a relationship that would have existed with or without a contract. Absurd.

Meanwhile, the men who created the history and the prestige that the Packers organization uses when selling themselves to the football public (and make no mistake, that's what they're doing - selling) can't get a dime from the organization to help with life-long aliments they have as a result of playing in an era where coaches could force hurt players back on the field and before players had a collective bargaining agreement to protect them.

Paul Hornung recently pointed this out in an interview on Sirius, after learning that he will have to get a new knee to go along with his replaced hip. It's a joke that Paul Hornung can't get financial support for medical bills from a Green Bay Packers team that seemingly has $20 million dollars to throw at someone to do nothing. Someone who, I might add, never needs to earn another dollar in his life to cover the medical expenses he or his family will ever need.

The Packers should do right by ALL their ex-players, not just ones from the golden years of Lombardi, but ALL of the players that played before the dawning of the modern NFL by establishing some kind of fund that helps them in times of need. It would be a small step at repairing not only the teams relationship with said players, but it would help restore a small bit of integrity to a franchise that has tarnished its very legacy with the ridiculous offer it made to Favre.