If Rick Reilly’s ESPN.com fever-dream column today is accurate, Brett Favre is considering a return from retirement. That seems an easy guess, and an instant punchline: Charles Barkley swings a golf club like Leatherface swings a chainsaw, Emmitt Smith assembles paragraphs like Charles Barkley swings a golf club, Manny Ramirez makes your average honey badger look monkishly introspective, and Brett Favre doesn’t know when to hang ’em up. Bah-dum.

So Reilly, who as a millionaire sportswriter for a gazillionaire media organization of course hops a plane to southern Mississippi and tracks down Favre for the skinny, right? After all, Reilly came up with a great return-to-the-game scoop in 2001 when he wrote that Michael Jordan was going to come out of retirement and do his best Michael Jordan impression for the Wizards. That information was based on, uh, interviews. The information in the current column is based on … well, there is no information in the current column. Reilly imagines a conversation with Brett Favre in which Favre stands in the driveway and waits for his phone to ring. And did you know Jack McKeon’s old? Oh, and that Tom Brady sure does like to impregnate supermodels. What was the one about the Cubs — what losers!

Problem is, when you’re Rick Reilly and you have a reputation for writing news, people think you might be serious when you write about a real person from a real place and mention actual NFL teams; the Invisible Talking Favre sees a chance to play in Minnesota, in Philadelphia and in Green Bay. Also, when your story is about how overplayed a subject is, you run the risk of being totally, offensively correct. The column booted up a flurry of NIMBYism on the Interwebs, and general Reilly-hating, and general Favre-hating, and if you’re a hater (I’m looking at you, plurality of registered users) then this is a great way to wind down your week.

@nealkhosla: alge crumpler, TO, randy moss, brett favre, and tiki barber are free agents. 49ers should sign em and field the best madden 06 team ever.

@WizzyWills: i swear if anyone even thinks about picking up brett favre, i will forever hate that team.

@hes_a_MONSTER: Favre… dont try coming back! Please!! Jus stay retired… PLEASE!!

@CanadianBraeden: ESPN having Brett Favre on the front page of the site makes me want to throw up and never go back. There’s nothing better right now? Really?

@anthonypero: Oh Look! Brett Favre is on the front page of ESPN.com for no reason whatsoever … again. #blamethemedianottheman

@19jms: ESPN homepage: a Brett Favre story from Rick Reilly. I’d be more apt to click if it was a pictorial of my grandparents doing it

@steelytrip: Truly too awful to read: a Rick Reilly column about Brett Favre coming out of retirement. Shoot me in the face please

@mwprentiss: Always on the cutting edge, overpaid hack Rick Reilly discovers that Brett Favre is a serial liar about retiring from football.

@colinneagle: at first, i thought my computer reached out and puched me in the face. then i realized it was brett favre on the front page of espn

@jakobkerr: I wonder if Rick Reilly used Fedex or UPS to mail in this column.

@mwprentiss: Reilly in uniquely qualified to write about Favre as they are both washed-up and awful.

@drewmagary: Dear Rick Reilly, CHOKE.

@FO_DougFarrar: Worst column ever? Worst column ever.