A number of recent injuries to Brett Favre have led to questions about whether his streak of 294 consecutive starts will continue. Whether or not it ends this weekend, this will almost certainly be his last season, putting his record somewhere between 294 and 301 consecutive starts. The sports junkie is us is begging for comparisons and the obviously question to ask is: whose record is more impressive, Brett Favre’s 294 consecutive starts or Cal Ripken Jr’s 2,632 consecutive games played? Let the debate begin.
Spencer: I think the best measure for comparing records across sports is to look at the player right behind them. Cal Ripken played 23 percent more games than Lou Gerhig; Brett Favre only played 11 percent more games than former Vikings great Jim Marshall. But the debate doesn’t end there. Obviously football is a much more violent sport than baseball. You are much more likely to sustain a major injury playing football than you are playing baseball (although baseball still has concussions, shredded knees, and every variety of arm injury known to humankind). But what makes a consecutive start streak impressive is not the ability to avoid major injuries (which are mostly due to chance) but the ability to deal with the lingering, nagging injuries that are inevitable for any athlete in any sport. Maybe that type of injury is slightly more likely in football than baseball, but ask yourself: are they almost nine times as likely? Because Cal Ripken has played almost NINE times as many games as Brett Favre. Additionally, while Favre has six days in between each game to recover from any nagging injury, Ripken had to go back out there the next day and do it all over again (baseball players get about one day off for every nine games they play). Finally, because the football season is so short and the baseball season is so long, there is way more incentive to play every game in football. It is expected that Brett Favre plays every game he can; he never really had the choice so we don’t know if he would have (and judging by his love of missing training camp and preseason, his work ethic is questionable). Cal Ripken could have taken days but he never did. He had to play every day knowing that he could be on the bench resting. The mental toughness that takes sets Ripken apart in my mind.
Brad: I’m simply not willing to concede that mental toughness is the determinate factor here in what is an inherently physical competition – and that’s exactly why Favre’s record is more impressive. Favre is now at 294 consecutive starts, only three players in the history of football (not counting kickers) have even played that many games total. Just for arguments sake, 32 baseball players have appeared in more total games than Ripken’s streak. That’s not the point though, the point is that records are made to be broken and neither of these records likely will. Ripken’s however, will be due to indifference because there will be players physically capable of doing what he did, they just won’t put the same stock in missing what amounts to .06% of the season. Favre’s record won’t be broken because nobody will ever again have the luck of avoiding major injury through 19 years of the most athletic humans in the world throwing themselves at you full speed and because nobody will have the determination to play though broken thumbs, separated shoulders, battered knees, torn muscles and most recently a twice fractured ankle. What this comes down to is the question of which of these streaks are more impressive and I’m far more impressed by Favre’s ability to tough any injury that he is physically able to than by Ripkin’s ability to decide to just not sit one out.
