Technology is not your friend

Alright, it’s starting to get a little ridiculous.

A matter involving Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre is currently being investigated by the NFL.

The issue stems from a report filed by Deadspin.com, a sports blog that is notorious for its off-the-field reporting on both athletes and sports media.

While it seems to burn quite a few bridges, the site has also proven to be pretty accurate.

In breaking the Favre story, Deadspin said that when he played his one season with the New York Jets in 2008, Favre was leaving voicemails and online messages for a female contracted by the team as a glorified sideline reporter.

When his initial advances were apparently rebuffed, Favre — a married man — decided that the next logical step was to text her photos of himself.

Well, not his whole self.

I’m not going to get into the details of what he allegedly sent to her, but the images are readily available on the internet if you choose to explore.

After all, you can’t spell Google without “ogle.”

Not getting into the morality of such an act, the thing that I find most amazing is that Favre, like Tiger Woods before him, seems to be completely unaware that sending incriminating messages to another person via electronic device just might come back to bite him later on.

Tiger’s failure to keep from sending private text messages on his daily Blackberry seems to have been the tipping point for his downfall in both his personal and professional life.

Now Favre may have done the same thing, while adding a level of intimacy — perhaps idiocy — that even Tiger dared not dream.

If the allegations had come from just voicemails, Favre could have explained it away by saying that another person was playing a joke and had impersonated his voice. His monotone, southern drawl isn’t the most difficult style in the world to imitate.

However, in sending images of himself to a third party, while he may be able to still deny, deny, deny to the general public, his wife is going to be infinitely more difficult to convince.

That would be a pretty impressive impersonation.

If the NFL’s investigation ends up confirming the story as it stands right now, then commissioner Roger Goodell will have a difficult job on his hands.

This time, the commish will no longer be the taskmaster for young players who may not know any better. He will be staring at all the league has propped up as “good” for nearly 20 years in the form of Brett Favre.

The information is also coming out at a very interesting time as it pertains to the 2010 NFL season. There likely had to have been Jets employees who confirmed at least part of the story to Deadspin.

What is the Monday Night Football game this week?

Jets vs. Vikings.

It also will be the first game that wide receiver Randy Moss will be in a Vikings uniform since 2004, after being traded from the Patriots to Minnesota earlier in the week.

I’m sure this was not the tenor he was expecting to accompany his arrival.

The Vikings come off a bye week with a 1-2 record and face a brutal month with Dallas, Green Bay and New England following the Jets, the final two on the road.

It appears to be now or never time for a team that was one play from the Super Bowl earlier this calendar year.

This scandal and the possibility of a losing season could make it very convenient for Favre, already nursing an ankle injury, to just say “uncle” in the next few weeks and limp off into retirement.

It would be a much different vision than the one he created last year, when he compiled career numbers and gained unprecedented respect.

But if things continue to go south, it could get really ugly, really quickly in Minnesota.

At least they now have the affable Moss to mend a broken locker room.

So to all the other professional athletes out there, while buying the newest gadgets and uploading constant Twitpics is part of the fun of celebrity life, it might not be a linebacker but the send button that knocks you out.