If I were an eight-year-old girl, and possibly a cheerleader (insert “What do you mean, if you were a girl?” joke here), one of my favorite chants would be “I’ll give you a dollar, and you can keep the change, because all I really want is a quarterback.”

Unfortunately for the world of competitive cheering, I am not an eight-year-old girl, and even if I were, that wouldn’t be a chant I would get too use often – at least not when I was cheering for the Packers.

See, for the past 16 years (and possibly more, because that Don Majkowski wasn’t bad), the Packers have been in good hands under center. Brett Favre won a bunch of games, broke a bunch of records and then broke a lot of hearts when he announced his retirement.

Why did he retire, you ask? Not because he wanted to play with the owner of an Inta Juice franchise, or because a grown man didn’t call him enough to tell him how much he needed him.

Favre just got old. That’s what people do, they get old and they retire. The only exception is Junior Seau, who gets old and graduates, and then goes back for his masters.

Since Favre is gone, but clearly not forgotten, let’s take a look at the quarterback position for the Packers – in the past, present and future.

Past: Despite reports from the Los Angeles Times, which, as everyone knows, is the number one source for Brett Favre news and everything else related to Green Bay, Wis., Brett Favre is in the past. He came, he saw, he conquered, he cried, he retired. That’s it.

He isn’t coming back, and if he does, it will only be to prove poor Skip Bayless right for once. To put it simply, Favre will play in as many games in 2008 as former Packer great Arnie Herber, who has the unfortunate handicap of being dead.

Present: Aaron Rodgers is the Packers quarterback. Repeat that 12 times to make sure you have it down. There might be a pop quiz on this.

The bottom line is yes, it will be weird not having Favre in there, but if it bothers you to see Rodgers starting games, just pretend he’s a rookie playing in mop-up duty as the Ravens are killing the Packers on Monday Night Football.

Meanwhile, Favre will not be in the present for any other team, either. Unless, that is, he comes out of retirement to play in his celebrity softball game this summer.

Future: In the Year Two Thousand … and Eight, the Packers will not select a quarterback in the first round of the NFL draft. There are other needs, notably at the aging cornerback and tackle positions, that Ted Thompson will address in the early rounds.

When teams draft a quarterback in the first round, they do so under the assumption that their “investment” will wait around for three years for a Hall-of-Fame quarterback to retire before eventually becoming their starter.

Clearly, that won’t be happening with a young Rodgers currently at the helm. Just as Rodgers is the present, he is also the future and will one day be the past. Get used to it.

It is very likely that they will select a quarterback later on, possibly as soon as round three, but said quarterback would be a backup and a backup only.

With apologies to the Ingle Martins of the world, the Packers are not looking for another starting quarterback.

Even Further into the Future: Rodgers retires; I chant: “I’ll give you a dollar, and you can keep the change, because all I really want is a quarterback.”

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