Brett Favre and former University of Southern Mississippi president Rodney Bennett gave differing accounts of promises made to fund a USM volleyball arena in their depositions as part of the Mississippi Department of Human Services civil case over misspent federal welfare funds.

The construction project received $5 million in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds, an impermissible use of money that is supposed to assist families living well below the poverty line. Text messages released in the case show Favre’s involvement in securing funding for a project that MDHS lawyers alleged was initially promised by the quarterback personally.

“My understanding, from my early January [2017] meeting with Brett was that Brett was going to pay, personally, for whatever the cost of the facility was,” Bennett testified during his October 2023 deposition. “… The agreement was, between Brett and me in my office, that he would pay for the entire amount, in an effort to have that facility able to move along the continuum faster than it would if it were a state capital project.”