The last we checked the list of things we know about Brett Favre, he had not done anything criminal, borderline criminal or even moderately seedy. He isn’t Ben Roethlisberger. He isn’t Michael Vick. He isn’t even Tiger Woods. He hasn’t been found to be importing questionable doctors from Canada. He hasn’t humiliated a devoted sports city. O.K., not since 2008, anyway.

So, how has he managed to become sports enemy No. 1, in the non-LeBron division? Why is he getting pounded from all sides, based solely on reports Tuesday that he sent text messages to some Minnesota Vikings teammates saying he is retiring for the umpteenth time?

It is clear there is a Favre nerve out there and he keeps hitting it with a giant hammer. His brand of retirement melodrama hijacks whole teams’ training camps, which is whatprompts CBSSports.com’s Pete Prisco to call him selfish and what drives fans batty, which is why The Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s Jim Souhan writes that Vikings fans were given fair warning by previously toyed-with Packers fans. Favre gives general managers, even the ones he doesn’t play for anymore, heartburn — although Wednesday’s report in The Star-Tribune says the Vikings’ brain trust is so desperate that it is trying to throw more money at Favre to return — and provides ESPN with fodder for hours upon hours of breathless reporting and analysis.

(Hmmm. The Worldwide Leader was co-opted by James for “The Decision.” Could it be hatching a whole “Decision” series, with Favre starring in the first 13 episodes? Just a theory …)

Ray Ratto of CBSSports.com comes closest to explaining why Favre is so infuriating, writing that it feels as if he is messing with people just because he can. He is the mold that James poured himself into to disastrous effect. Michael Rosenberg of SI.com believes Favre tipped the annoyance scale by doing this one too many times. Both Michael Silver of Yahoo.com and Peter King of SI.com believe he will play this season, no matter what the text messages say. That’s a theme in this roundup of top 10 quotations about Favre.

The annoyance factor plays a large role in a lot of Wednesday’s news. You can just imagine the sighing and eye-rolling at the prospect of nightclub-shooting Plaxico Burress getting out of prison soon and potentially rejoining the Giants, as George Willis writes in the New York Post. There is a nauseating tinge to the official closing of Mannywood,writes Bill Plaschke of The Los Angeles Times, as the Dodgers finally move away from their drug- and melodrama-tainted star. The serial annoyer Alex Rodriguez is now dragging the Yankees into his current funk with him, writes Tim Smith in The Daily News.

And it would not be a true roundup of annoyance without James, who kicked a bit more sand in Cleveland’s face by ignoring it while taking out an ad in the Akron newspaper.

For good measure, the N.C.A.A. throws in this doozy: its recruiting rules forbid Boise State from offering condolences to the family of one of its recruits who was killed in a recent car accident. Really.

Perhaps you will be a bit cheered by the thought of Shaquille O’Neal — who seems genetically unable to annoy people no matter how much they might want to be annoyed — reportedly joining the Celtics and landing himself in a giant green uniform. The Big Shamrock is the early leader in the race for his new nickname.

Favre’s nicknames are far less colorful. Or, at this point, printable.

MANKATO — Brett Favre’s wavering nature makes it impossible to call anything official — even when it seems to be that way — but NFL sources said the quarterback began informing Vikings personnel late Monday night that he has decided to retire for a third time.

Favre’s agent, Bus Cook, did not immediately respond to text messages.

Coach Brad Childress said he had no information to share at a press conference late this morning.

“I’m not a big hearsay person,” Childress said. “I’ve got to hear it from the horse’s mouth.”

Childress would not speculate on what would happen if Favre really doesn’t come back. “You know, those are all if-then hypotheses,” Childress said. “We’re day-to-day right here.”

At one point during the five-minute session with the media, which was broadcast by ESPN and KFAN, Childress said: “I feel like this is Watergate. Have I done something wrong?”

The Vikings’ ownership group, in town for two days of meetings, huddled on the playing field with vice presidents Rob Brzezinski and Rick Spielman earlier in the morning.

“If he’s in we move forward,” Childress said. “If not, we’ve only been in camp for four days.”

Favre has been unwilling to commit to playing a 20th NFL season, in large part because he has felt his left ankle has not responded the way he hoped after undergoing surgery in late May. However, many assumed Favre was simply buying time, as he appeared to a year ago.

In that case, Favre told coach Brad Childress he was retiring days before training camp opened but then changed his mind on Aug. 18 and joined the Vikings after one preseason game.

Nonetheless, Favre’s decision will come as a shock to the many who fully expected he would join the team once the Mankato portion of training camp ended. There still will be many who won’t be convinced Favre will stay retired until he doesn’t play a full season.

Favre, who will turn 41 on Oct. 10, had one of the best seasons of his career in 2009, throwing for 4,202 yards (his best total since 1998), 33 touchdowns (his best total since 1997) and a career-low seven interceptions in 2009.

He led the Vikings to a 12-4 record, a second consecutive NFC title and the conference championship game. Favre signed a two-year, $25 million contract last summer that would have paid him $13 million this season

This was the third time Favre had undergone surgery on his left ankle. He also had procedures performed in 1995 and 2007 when he was with the Packers. He had spent recent weeks throwing to receivers at Oak Grove High School near his home in Hattiesburg, Miss., in what had become his annual attempt to get in shape.

But Favre had expressed doubt about how the ankle felt, just as he expressed concern about his physical well being a year ago after having surgery to repair a partially torn biceps in his throwing arm.

“After almost nine weeks, [the ankle is] not where I would like it to be, but I’m working at it,” Favre was quoted as saying last month. “Maybe it never gets to where I want it to be. Forty years old … three surgeries … that’s all you need to know.”

Childress, who many believed already knew that Favre was going to be back in 2010, had been careful to not set a deadline for the quarterback to make a decision, hoping that by giving him all the time he needed it would make the decision easier. Childress visited Favre twice this offseason at his home in Mississippi but never applied any pressure.

This means the Vikings starting quarterback — if Favre holds true to his word and doesn’t change his mind in a couple of weeks — likely will be Tarvaris Jackson.

Jackson has taken the majority of the reps with the first team in the opening six training camp practices and coach Brad Childress has made it clear that the fifth-year veteran out of Alabama State is his starter.

Sage Rosenfels and Joe Webb are the other two quarterbacks in camp. Jackson and Rosenfels began camp last season battling for the starting job before Favre arrived. Jackson did win the competition because he spent the entire season as the No. 2 quarterback behind Favre.

Jackson is 10-10 in his career as a starting and 10-9 in the regular season. Last year he saw action in eight games in relief of Favre and completed 14 of 21 passes for 201 yards with one touchdown.

Favre has waffled on retiring every summer since 2006. It led to an ugly parting with the Packers that got him traded from Green Bay to the Jets in 2008. After a so-so season in New York, he announced his retirement in early 2009 for the second time, then reconsidered and signed with the Vikings.

Favre is under contract for $13 million this season, but only if he plays.

Nearly everyone had assumed Favre would return and he did nothing to discourage that. He threw passes for a second straight summer with high school students in Hattiesburg, Miss., joked about playing until he’s 50 and said playing another year wouldn’t worsen his already-damaged ankle.

Lane Kiffin.

Vilified. Controversial. Funny?

“My 5-year-old daughter, Landry, for some reason, tries to get under my skin all the time,” said the new coach for USC, who along with other Pac-10 coaches visited ESPN’s campus in Connecticut on Wednesday. “She likes to run around and say her favorite person in the NFL is … Al Davis. I don’t know where she got that idea from.”

“Davis” would be the Oakland Raiders owner who hired Kiffin in 2007 — making him the youngest head coach in modern NFL history — and then, a year later, fired him and then went on national TV to rake him over the coals.

“It wasn’t me who told her that!” said Kiffin’s wife, Layla.

Kiffin quipped: “Hey, I don’t think she’s part of the interview. She’s eating.”

Is this the new Lane Kiffin, the coach who has stepped in it a little too much and talked about it a little too much?

“It doesn’t fit my personality to be quiet,” said Kiffin, who has come under fire at every stop in his coaching career. “I don’t want to keep saying ‘no comment’ to everyone. So I’m very open and to a fault. It’s really hurt me over time.”

You think?

The son of legendary NFL defensive coach Monte Kiffin, Lane parlayed spending five years with USC as an assistant coach into 20 games as Oakland Raiders coach, one year at the University of Tennessee and now at one of the most storied programs in the nation. And he left those previous two coaching jobs under acrimonious circumstances.

Hank Nuwer has written four books on hazing and spent more than three decades analyzing cases in which it has been taken to sometimes criminal and tragic extremes. He does not take lightly the current issue involving Dallas Cowboys rookieDez Bryant and his refusal to carry a veteran’s shoulder pads off the practice field.

“It’s non-criminal, but what you’re dealing with is the idea of humiliation,” says Nuwer, an associate professor of journalism at Franklin College in Indiana.

Nuwer has seen the opinions expressed by media members, including former coaches and players, that Bryant should simply have gone along with what they say is a routine rite of passage for NFL rookies. He doesn’t buy that.

“It’s wrong to humiliate people, and we’re in an age of sexting and harassment and so forth. To allow this kind of behavior among adults is wrong,” he says.

Cowboys coach Wade Phillips has said he will not tolerate hazing on his team. But Nuwer says professional athletes carry extra responsibility.

“They are role models form high school students who are being arrested … getting felony charges for hazing and who don’t know how to hold it within boundaries.”

In a posting on his blog on HankNuwer.com, Nuwer calls on the commissioners of the major pro sports leagues to institute policies defining and prohibiting hazing. He writes:

“Call it entitlement. Call it what you will, commissioners, but you must call players on it. When it comes to passing the buck on hazing, no one passes it better than the likes ofBud Selig, Roger Goodell and David Stern — and their respective predecessors as commissioners.”

The NFL says such matters as whether rookies have to carry the shoulders pads of veteran is a “club matter,” up to the discretion of individual teams.

“None of this is an adult thing to do,” says Nuwer. “It is just another black mark on sports.”

Nuwer says the NCAA and the National Federation of State High School Associations have taken stands against hazing.

“We’re in an age of extremes, but we’re also in an age when players have gone through lecture after lecture at the high school and college level to say that you don’t have to put up with hazing,” he says. “And then you suddenly get into the NFL, and it’s ‘OK.’ But it isn’t.”

Maurice Clarett came back to finish his career at Ohio St recently, too bad its only his academic career. Clarett was the future of football back in 2002 after leading the Buckeyes to the 2002 National Championship. But now eight years later he is a washed up, ashamed man with only his education to finish at Ohio St.

With the agent mess that is running through the SEC and the ACC, Clarett should be exhibit A for the NCAA about how agents and media can make a player believe he is bigger than the game. As a freshman, he was treated as a god, now 8 years later his life has been ruined by people telling him that he was a god. He wanted to test the NFL because people told him that millions awaited, and then when he actually tried out for the NFL he was embarrassingly slow with no chance of anything.

Now he is a convicted felon and one can look no further than the agents and “friends” advising him to fight the NFL rather than play out his days at Ohio St. and become a legend.