In Green Bay, ‘Packers’ Says It All It’s A Small Wisconsin Town, But Nfl Team’s A Big Deal
The Packers are not everything here, to paraphrase the old coach, they are the only thing. Green Bay is at once the smallest city in major-league professional sports and the largest theme park in the nation. This whole icy ledge of Wisconsin could be called Packer World, the football fantasy land. Along the highways leading into town, Christmas lights spell out in holiday cheer the official signs of welcome: “Go Pack!” and “Titletown USA.”
There is only one requirement for admittance to Packer World, it seems. You have to wear a Packers jacket. Drive past any playground at recess and the scene is aswirl in green and gold. Probably nine out of 10 kids wear Packers jackets. So do their parents.
There is something called the Packer Hall of Fame here, but the place is unnecessary. The entire town is a museum of Packers lore.
At the Downtowner Hotel, you can rent a room that once served as Vince Lombardi’s office, restored to replicate the Glory Days, which happens to be the name of the hotel bar, wall to wall with Packers stuff.
Follow the trail out to the white house where Paul Hornung and Max McGee partied as bachelors, across to the village of Allouez and St. Vince’s modest ranch house, around to the east side bar where Jim Taylor hung out, and back to Lambeau Field on Lombardi Avenue to join the throngs gathered to catch a glimpse of Brett Favre, Reggie White and other modern-day Packers easing out of their Benzes, Range Rovers and stretch limos and striding toward the locker room for practice.
The news here is all Packers all the time, especially since the team has clinched the NFC’s Central Division title with a 12-3 record.
The front-page banner headline in last Sunday’s Green Bay Press-Gazette detailed traffic and security preparations at the airport in anticipation of the team’s victorious return from Detroit.
Rare is the evening when a Packers story does not lead the local news. The weather reports concentrate on the frozen tundra forecasts for Lambeau Field.
The one story competing with the Packers for prime-time coverage is a revolt of the dairy farmers, who are so upset about plummeting cheese and milk prices that they are threatening to close off snowmobile trails through their northland farms.
Even the obituaries reflect the Packers obsession. When Norman Stanley Klarkowski was called to eternal rest at age 63 on Dec. 2, his death notice said he had worked at the Northern Paper Mill for 18 years before taking over the family dairy farm in the town of Eaton. He “rarely took time off from work,” it was noted, but when he did he “especially enjoyed getting together at the family farm with his 10 married children and 19 grandchildren for Packer Sundays.”
Most pro towns have a Monday night TV show with the coach. There are Packers highlight and interview shows here every day of the week.
Even obscure offensive linemen such as Aaron Taylor have their own air time, and it is virtually impossible to turn on the tube without seeing Antonio Freeman hawking a car or Robert Brooks selling leather furniture. Favre, the MVP quarterback, and White, the future Hall of Fame sacker and minister of defense, are in a realm of adoration all to themselves.
Whenever Favre walks into a restaurant, he receives a standing ovation. Thousands of fans stood in line for four hours last week to get his autograph at $70 a pop. The outfit of choice for middle-aged women Christmas shopping at the mall is an oversized green-and-gold jersey with No. 4 on the back.
White - who signed a contract for another five years in Packer World last week and in so doing announced that he would enter the Hall of Fame as a Packer (not an Eagle, his previous employer) - is perhaps even more beloved. More than 8,000 Reggie White acolytes queued up for signed copies of White’s autobiography, “In the Trenches.” When his church was among those burned to the ground in Tennessee, dozens of people from Green Bay traveled to Knoxville to help rebuild it, and Wisconsinites donated more than $200,000 for its restoration.
Restoration is a major theme in Packer World.
Desmond Howard, scorned in Washington, had to come here to rediscover his Heisman Trophy pose as the league’s top punt returner. Andre Rison, the talented wide receiver who developed a reputation at earlier stops as somewhat of a troublemaker, has been welcomed here as a model citizen as he patiently learns the intricate offensive schemes of coach Mike Holmgren. It stuns wide receiver Antonio Freeman every time he walks out of the locker room into the swarm of friendly fans. He calls Green Bay the Notre Dame of professional sports.
The symbol of this relationship between fan and player is the signature Lambeau Leap, when high-flying Packers jump into the grandstands for a round of fan pats after scoring touchdowns.
Winning was never really the only thing in Green Bay, despite what Vince Lombardi supposedly (but might not have) said. It was three decades ago that the old coach was carried off the field by his players here for the final time, after the legendary Ice Bowl when Bart Starr scored on a last-minute quarterback sneak to defeat Dallas. Thirty long years without a Super Bowl. Yet Lambeau Field always was a sellout.
Every day for 30 years of losing, the old timers who belong to Martha’s Coffee Club kept gathering. They have always thought of the Packers as their team in the deepest sense. Maury Robinson and Howie and Mike Blindauer, the sheet metal guys; John Ebert, who ran the office supply store; the brothers Bill and John Denoble, insurance and toolmaking; and all their pals. They still roll the dice to see who pays for coffee and swap rumors and tall tales. They knew Vince and they know Coach Mike and Brett and Reggie. Any member of the club who utters something about politics, religion or business is fined a quarter.
So they talk Packers, which is the only language you need to be fluent in here in Packer World.