Y’all remember the controversy Brett Favre was embroiled in a year ago? If you don’t recall, text messages with former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant showed that the Hall of Fame QB did his best to redirect public money toward a new athletic facility at the University of Southern Mississippi, his alma mater. The problem is that public money was originally intended for welfare recipients.
That would be a problem anywhere, but it’s highlighted by the fact that Mississippi is the poorest state in the country, with a poverty rate of 18.1 percent, according to the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
Specifically, Black people in Mississippi have the second highest poverty rate in the country at nearly 31 percent. So Brett Favre was essentially trying to take money from the poorest state where the second-most poorest Black people per capita reside.
To no surprise, many people in the sports world had some thoughts about it, most notably Shannon Sharpe, who made some heated comments about the situation while he was a co-host on the popular FS1 TV show Skip and Shannon: Undisputed.
As a result, Favre filed a defamation suit against Sharpe in February, alleging that he defamed him when referred to him as a “sorry mofo to steal from the lowest of the low” and that he “stole money from people that really needed that money.”
It didn’t work out for Favre.
On Monday, a federal judge dismissed his lawsuit, ruling that Sharpe used “rhetorical hyperbole” when he said that the Hall of Fame QB stole money from the underserved community, according to NBC News.
It was going to be a hard lawsuit for Favre to win, considering there are literal screenshots of you trying to direct nearly $5 million in welfare funds to build a new volleyball stadium for your daughter, who plays on the women’s volleyball team at Southern Mississippi.
Furthermore, the federal judge also wrote that Sharpe’s words were examples of “colorful speech” that is protected by the First Amendment, according to NBC News.