Should athletes come back from retirement?

Oh please not another one. Not so soon after the last one. Baseball playoffs are about to start. I don’t want to have to keep watching a Lance Armstrong saga almost right after the Brett Favre one.


That’s right, seven-time Tour de France winner and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong wants to come back. Although he hasn’t cited an itch to bike, like other athletes have an itch to play after retirement, it’s sure that that is the case. Armstrong said he wants to raise awareness for cancer. He plans on publicly announcing his plans on September 24.


Armstrong is not the only world famous superstar athlete to come out of retirement. Although he doesn’t seem to want as much money as others got (Roger Clemens signed a contract worth $28 million at age 43), he will generate the same hype that greats Favre, Clemens, and Michael Jordan generated when they came out of retirement in middle age.


If anybody watched ESPN over the summer, then they would remember Favre, Favre, and more Favre. They talked about Favre in between talking about Favre and even when they weren’t talking about Favre they were talking about Favre. Every little thing he said was analyzed and they showed the same clips of him passing to the same receivers. He stayed retired for an offseason, and then decided to come back. His old team, the Green Bay Packers didn’t want him, which led to the Pack trying to pay him $22 million to stay unretired (I wish I were that lucky). They traded him, ending the never ending coverage of the newly dubbed Brett the Jet.


Favre was always on the brink of actually retiring, before his brief retirement this spring. The speculation of if he would retire resembled the annoying prospect of Clemens coming out of retirement to sign a lucrative contract for mediocre pitching once again. Every fall, it seemed, The Rocket would retire. And then in the spring he would come back. He was the greatest back then, before the Mitchell Report came out saying The Rocket was juiced. Lance will have to prove he’s not doping, like many others in his sport. Either way he’s going to need a lot of luck and a good masseur.


But bring the coverage. I’ll just ignore it. because it’s not the first time and it won’t be the last.