Brett Favre is jacking with a gator. It's a big one, a 10-footer, lolling on the edge of a bayou near the 14th hole of the Grand Bear Golf Course in southern Mississippi, and Favre, who's in the midst of playing a round here, just can't help himself. He wants to see that big mofo move. He tosses a small stick at it; The gator merely blinks. Then another stick, this one larger. The gator seems unimpressed with Favre's throwing arm. Finally Favre lands a pinecone just behind the gator's eyes, and gets what he's been after: Whipping its tail and angrily rearing back its head, the gator snaps its jaws at the quarterback, who scrambles backward, boyishly pleased. He's no stranger to gators, mind you: His family lost a 140-pound Saint Bernard to an alligator when he was a kid -- the dog's name was Whiskey, and it was one of four that the gators of Rotten Bayou snatched from the Favres. Still, he's as captivated by the sight of the tough-skinned, 10-foot beast as a Wisconsin Rotarian on an airboat swamp tour. "Man," he says. "Wouldn't you hate to be a fish living in that water? With that big ol' thing always around? That's no way to live."

For much of the past decade and a half, however, Brett Favre has been that gator: the biggest ol' thing in the NFL's quarterback pool, dominating the league with his preternaturally strong arm, his laser-hot focus, his gunslinging style, and his roughneck toughness. As he enters his 15th NFL season, with a Super Bowl title and an unprecedented three most-valuable-player awards behind him, his name is floating in the top tiers of the record books, alongside Dan Marino, Fran Tarkenton, John Elway -- firmly ensconced in that rarefied upper strata of NFL legends, a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

The shoo-in role, however, is new to Brett Favre. Every yard he's gained -- on the field and off -- has left bruises. He was raised in a scruffy Gulf Coast town in Mississippi -- officially called Kiln but known locally, and phonetically, as "the Kill" -- where the lights downtown are limited to a single stoplight and the neon glow from the White Lightnin' Car Wash and Lee'Sure Time Video. Only one 1-A college, the University of Southern Mississippi just up the road in Hattiesburg, offered him a scholarship -- and that was to play defensive back. Before his senior season, and after a boozy night out on Ship Island, he fell asleep at the wheel of his car and flipped into a ditch, snapping a vertebra and requiring nearly three feet of his large intestine to be removed. A month later he led USM to a now-legendary 27-24 upset of Alabama. Still, his mercurial playing style and bad-boy edge darkened his chances for NFL stardom. Atlanta drafted him, but after Favre showed up drunk for practice a few times, head coach Jerry Glanville wouldn't let him near the field.

The bruises didn't fade after Favre was traded to Green Bay. He entered drug rehab for an addiction to the painkiller Vicodin. His brother Scott was convicted of felony DUI after a car-train wreck that left his passenger dead. His sister Brandi was involved in a drive-by shooting. He battled a long and fearsome chain of injuries. Each of those, taken individually, might have been enough to sink a player, but Favre slogged through them. Slogged, of course, being an understatement: He led the Packers to two Super Bowls and left a string of smashed records in his rearview mirror. It wasn't always fancy. And it was hardly ever pretty. But the beer-killing country boy that Jerry Glanville once dismissed as a "car wreck" matured into one of pro football's most consistent and endearing icons: the shining model, for years to come, of what a quarterback can -- nah, should -- be.

For a moment, set aside the breathless, how'd-he-do-that plays, the frostbitten crowds, the gobs of money, the shredded record booksŠset aside all that, and Brett Favre emerges not as the ultimate player but, rather, as the ultimate worker, a 35-year-old hardhat whose loyalty, tenaciousness, passion, leadership, and down-home work ethic make him an HR manager's walking, talking dream. With 225 consecutive starts, he's seven games away from doubling -- doubling, man -- Ron Jaworski's second-place record of 116 starts. He's played games with a separated shoulder, a deep thigh bruise, a bruised left hip, tendinitis, a sprained foot, a sprained ligament, a broken thumb. After 15 years of Sunday pummelings he wakes up a little creaky in the mornings, but Favre -- the working stiff's working stiff -- ain't backing down. Gridiron pundits have been speculating that this season will be Favre's last -- that if he can bow out strong, after last year's mangled season, bow out he will. Yet Favre is hinting otherwise, with an eye cocked toward 2006.

This is partly because, for all his blue-collar mettle, Favre has never considered what he does "work." Years ago, midway through a cold, dirty slamfest, he exclaimed in a huddle: "Can you believe they pay us for this?" Because, for him, it's "not a job," he says. Not in the clock-punching, time-to-make-the-doughnuts sense. "It's a dream -- a dream come true," he says. "Being able to play in Green Bay, at Lambeau Field, and to throw touchdown passes -- it's hard to explain how much fun that is. And to have your name called out, to run out in Lambeau Field in front of 70,000 people, and to do that week in and week out. I know there's a lot of people who would kill to do what I do."

Kill, possibly. At the very least, just to be able to talk about their job the way Favre talks about his, a large sector of the population might seriously entertain maiming someone. But, gentlemen, set aside your weapons. Over the course of breakfast, 18 holes, and one gator-baiting, Favre sketched out a step-by-step plan for landing and holding onto your own dream job, boiling down the hard-won lessons of 15 years on the field to an ironclad code of 10 rules. Whether you're hankering for a corner office or a Super Bowl ring, the Favre Method, consistently and muscularly applied, should yield it.

1. FOLLOW YOUR PASSION...
Let's step back for this one. The year is 1980 and three boys with a football are busting one another up in a muddy wallow they've made by soaking the yard with a hose. It's autumn in southern Mississippi, a gray chill just starting to creep into the air, and the boys -- the Favre brothers, Scott, Jeff, and Brett -- are knocking one another around with their pads on, splashing in the brown mud, shoving, smashing, savaging...and loving every second of it. Even by this time, when most boys are wavering between futures as firemen, cops, or interstellar smugglers, Brett knows: This is what he's going to do forever. "Ultimately you have to want something," he says, "and I did. People always ask kids what they want to be when they grow up, and I would've given you the same answer at five years old as I would have at 15, or 25. As far back as I can remember, I was driven to accomplish it, and was willing to do whatever it would take. It all starts with the right dream."

2. ...BUT BE REALISTIC
There's a difference, Favre cautions, between chasing a dream and following your passion. Dreams are influenced by outside sources: movies, TV shows, parents, that sort of thing. Passion comes from within. They may overlap -- as in this QB's case -- but a dream without passion, or hard-eyed realism, is just an empty jersey. "As a child," he says, "you have dreams and aspirations -- everybody does. But you have to be realistic. If I had wanted to be a professional gymnast -- look, that shit wasn't gonna happen. I just didn't have the skills to do that, just like a 5'5" 21-year-old is probably not going to make a good pro quarterback. He can dream of it, but you have to have the goods to do it, and you have to be driven. You have to be fully committed to doing whatever it takes to get there. If it falls away, it falls away, and if it doesn't, it doesn't -- but you always go down swinging."

3. LISTEN TO YOUR COACH
Brett Favre got his first football uniform, helmet and pads included, when he was three years old. But he received his first coach three years before that: Irv Favre, his father. The elder Favre, who died in 2003, coached his son not only at Hancock North Central High School, where he kept Brett running the ball in spite of that Hall-of-Fame-bound arm, but throughout Brett's childhood. By all accounts he was a tough taskmaster, a hard-ass disciplinarian who demanded -- and got -- respect and obedience.

"I think the way I've always dealt with coaches is due to my dad having been a coach himself," he says. "Sons and dads always have their differences, of course, but there was still respect. You have to learn to respect your coach whether you agree with him or not. The coach is not always right, just as the players aren't always right. But there has to be a certain chain of command, and I'd argue that in every good business that's the way it works. You have to be coached. And whether you believe in what the coach is saying or not, sometimes the other guys around you have to see that respect. As soon as you start questioning the coach, especially in front of your teammates, you break down that chain of command."

4. FIND A GOOD MENTOR
In 1992, in a game against Philadelphia, Brett Favre got sacked from the side by what felt like a Lincoln Continental. The hit was so hard, in fact, that it separated his left shoulder. But that was no hot rod Lincoln: It was the late Reggie White, the Eagles' defensive end, known as the "Minister of Defense" and famed for telling offensive linemen that Jesus loved them as he was bouncing them on the turf. Favre didn't want to get hit that hard ever again, so he helped recruit White to Green Bay. Preventative measures aside, teaming with White was one of Brett Favre's best plays. He found a mentor.

"Reggie definitely shaped me as a player," he says, "even though he was defensive lineman and I'm a quarterback, and you wouldn't think the two would relate. I learned a lot from him." Favre apprenticed under his coaches -- the Packers' Mike Holmgren, most importantly -- but Reggie White taught him something much deeper than X's and O's: He taught him how to live as a player, how to endure the tedium and the pressure, and gave him a role model. "He really loved the game. Look, practice sometimes is a bore, meetings are sometimes a bore, and it's tough getting on the bus and doing it over and over again. But he enjoyed doing it all. Hell, I learned a lot from him in that regard -- that you can make it as fun as you want, or as miserable as you want. And he chose to make it fun. To see a guy like Reggie, who'd been around a long time, was a shoo-in for Hall of Fame, and had achieved so many things -- to see him act like a big kid made you realize that you could be in your 14th or 15th year and still have a lot of fun. I try to relay that message to the guys -- that this can only last for so long, so make the most of it while you can."

5. SHOW UP. EVERY DAMN TIME
"You're only as good as the last game," Favre says. "I don't give a shit what you've done in the past. You're only as good as the last game." If you didn't play in the last game, then, you're nothing. You can't do good work, drop out, come back with good work, and drop out again. You have to approach each game or project as if it's your first and your last. This is, according to Favre, not only the key to winning, but also to being a good teammate. "If you're asked to block, block," he says. "If you're asked to tackle, tackle. You know, all the times that I was injured, it was always uncertain whether or not I would play. For me, it was never, 'I want to do this.' It was like, 'I gotta do this.' " And he has: 225 times and counting.

6. LEAD THE WAY
Some guys lead via the power of their voice, via their ability to impel others with words, inspiration, oratorical thunder. Reggie White was such a leader. Brett Favre is not. "The best way to lead, to me," he says, "is to do things the right way. That means showing up for practice, and practicing a certain way. It means giving a great effort, even if you don't complete every pass. It means paying attention in meetings, or at least acting like you're paying attention. Those types of things. I want guys to say, 'Hey, he'll do whatever it takes to help me and our teammates,' because I want them to do the same thing.

"I get asked about my legacy a lot," he says. "I want people to remember me as a great teammate -- to me, that's the best compliment you can get. The only reason they keep statistics or records is so they can be broken, so whatever my statistics are, what do they matter? I want people to say that I played the game the way they would want to play it. Not that I had a strong arm, or could do this, or do that...there's always going to be someone like that, who can throw, who's got a strong arm, who can lift weights. But there's only so many guys who would lay it on the line for you. You know, I think about it all the time. I want the people sitting in the stands -- whether they're from Detroit or Chicago or somewhere else -- to say, 'You know, even though he plays for the enemy, I like the way he plays.' "

7. DON'T CHASE SUCCESS. LET IT CHASE YOU
Brett Favre is the world's most famous quarterback; yet he plays for the smallest-market team in the NFL. By choice. He could have gone to a team on one of America's glitter-strewn coasts, toward more cameras, brighter lights, deeper pockets. Yet he planted himself, for good, in Green Bay, buoyed by its tradition and fans, and let the bright lights come to him. His philosophy on that is simple: "If you do what you're asked to do, and you're good at what you do, success will come. You won't have to go find it. It'll come to you."

8. WATCH YOUR BACK ('CAUSE STAYING AT THE TOP IS HARDER THAN GETTING THERE)
It was 1992, during a game against Cincinnati. Brett Favre, fresh from his "car wreck" days in Atlanta, was the number two quarterback behind Don Majkowski. Majkowski went down with a sprained ankle midway through the first quarter, and in went Favre, who led the Packers to a 24-23 comeback victory against the Bengals. Majkowski never started for the Packers again. Favre has never forgotten that he scrambled over a wounded Majkowski to secure the starter slot; even now, it weighs heavily on his mind. "Don hurt his ankle and he never got to play again," he says. "Never got on the field. He probably figured that he was hurt, all right -- I'll take a week or two off, Brett will stake it up."

Brett did stake it up -- for the next 13 seasons. "There's always someone to take your place, and it's usually someone new who they're paying a lot less money," he says. No degree of success, no accomplishment, secures your position forever. So the top of the hill, according to Favre, is precisely where the real climbing begins. "Once you get on top, it's time to really put your nose to the grindstone," he says. "I see so many guys get there, and then all of sudden they relax because now they're the starter and they think they're gonna stay there.

"That's why success is probably the biggest reason guys fail. You see it every year: Someone has a little bit of success, and it leads them down the wrong path. They think, 'Man, this is awesome,' and then forget what got them there -- working out, preparing physically and mentally. You fight and scratch to get up there, but once you're up there, it's just the beginning. It's tough to get there -- but it's even tougher to stay there."

9. GIVE A LITTLE BACK
That gator Favre was baiting? That was for charity. The Brett Favre Fourward Foundation, established in 1996, hosts a celebrity golf tournament every year in Gulfport, Mississippi, just down the road from Favre's hometown. This year Justin Timberlake and Matthew McConaughey, among others, teed off to raise money for disabled and disadvantaged children in Mississippi and Wisconsin. "I don't think it's an obligation," Favre says of his charity work. "But we all have an opportunity to do something in life. Just because one person makes X amount of dollars, and another person doesn't, that doesn't mean one has to give back and the other one doesn't.

"But you have to do it for the right reasons," he stresses. "Don't do it because you want people to think you're a good guy. I'm sure there's people out there doing that, and maybe thinking I'm doing that. But I've gotten to the point where I couldn't give a shit what people think about me. That's not what I'm here for."

10. WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU MAKES YOU STRONGER
On the afternoon of December 21, 2003, Brett Favre answered the worst phone call of his life: His father was dead, felled by a heart attack while driving a lonely stretch of blacktop back home. Green Bay was slated to play Oakland the next night, a Monday night game with the NFC North title on the line. Favre had every reason to skip the game, to fly back home to comfort his mother and siblings. But he felt he had another family, too, requiring his loyalty: his teammates.

And he was spectacular that night, throwing for 399 yards -- three yards short of his career high -- and four touchdowns, leading Green Bay to a 41­7 rout of the Raiders, their worst loss in eight years.

This is one of the curiosities of Brett Favre: He plays best when the whole world is crumbling around him. He's been called a "crunch-time genius" for his ability to pull out a game in the fourth quarter, to recover from a first-half pounding and seemingly yank comebacks from the thinnest of air, but it's not only a scoreboard deficit that sends Favre into one of his spiral-throwing spirals. The 1996 season saw him emerge from 46 days in a substance-abuse clinic and the arrests of his brother Scott and sister Brandi; that was the season he led the Packers to a Super Bowl victory in New Orleans. It's a curiosity even to Favre. "I don't know why I play so well when I'm under terrible stress, but I do," he says. "Not that I ever want terrible stress again. A game isn't worth all that." For Favre, crawling up under the house to die is never an option. Shit happens. You keep going.