This has been a weird story, this whole Brett Favre and the Packers saga.

It’s a big story, for sure, but forgive us if we in the NFL-Free Zone known as greater Los Angeles aren’t hanging on every twist and turn in the tale.

It seemed fairly obvious from this end. The guy retired. He changed his mind. He wanted to go back to a team and a city (and a league) that loved him. And the problem is … where?

The problem was that the Packers didn’t want him back. They apparently liked the idea of him walking away from the last three years of the big contract they had given him … and they apparently were fine with the idea of Aaron Rodgers taking over as QB.

And then things got weird.

Through this, the obvious inclination here is to sympathize with Favre. He put the Packers franchise back on the map, and the man thought he could still play. He just had a heck of a season, that awful finish in OT vs. the New York Giants aside.

But now … Favre apparently is considering being bribed out of football by the Packers, who are offering something like $25 million to him if he will stay home.

If he takes the money … only then will he go from wholly sympathetic … to appallingly mercenary. Only then will he be in it for the money … and not to go out and do what he knows and what he loves.

Yeah, $25 million is a lot of money. And he would earn it without subjecting himself to the punishment that is the National Football League. The punishment that at one point had him addicted to prescription painkillers.

But the guy wanted to come back. He just wanted to play. For Green Bay. Seemed like the Packers owed him that, and the league would rejoice because he is by far the most popular player in the country.

When the Packers began acting weirdly (as it must have seemed to Favre, too), and made clear they Just Did Not Want Him Around he was forced to go for Plan B — playing for somebody. Anybody. Maybe even the Minnesota Vikings, a divisional rival of the Packers.

Favre forcing the issue was a little awkward. I wrote on this blog earlier that I anticipated, in that scenario, everyone would come out looking a little stained.

But then the Packers refused even to let that happen. And they looked small and stupid and even a little paranoid. Let the man play! Let him go! Let someone else love him!

And now, he’s thinking of letting them give him money not to come back? When he said all along he loved the game too much to quit a little too soon.

This is the first juncture where Favre could be in the wrong. If he takes the money, we can’t help but wonder if he was just savvy enough (or his agent was) to see this scenario coming, one that would allow him to wring millions more from the Packers without breaking a sweat.

If Favre takes the money, then he is, yes, a wishy-washy money-first guy.

If he turns it down, forces the Packers to reinstate him — and, presumably, trade him … well, that’s fine.

It will be strange, and it’s hard to imagine things working out well, at his age and a new franchise (think Joe Montana and the Chiefs) … but the man has a right to give it a whack.

Just don’t take the money. That would be cheesy. That would be wrong. That would be the only sure way that Brett Favre could wreck his legacy.