Go, Pack, Go!

In honor of last weekend's win and Brett Favre's breaking the all-time passing yards record, I bring you..... my long-awaited post about the Green Bay Packers. (What, you haven't been eagerly awaiting it? Obviously your life is far too interesting).

(Alternate post title: "Have Yourself a Very Packers Christmas.")

The thing about the Packers is that they're pretty central to understanding Wisconsinites. They're kind of the life-force of the state, particularly here in Oshkosh, just 45 minutes away from the sainted grounds of Lambeau Field. In this way, Packers fans are a lot like Red Sox Nation: fanatic, kind of kooky, steeped in history, and prone to traveling to away games. Perhaps cold, snowy climates fuel sports fever? Interestingly, just as the BoSox won the first World Series (1903) and lay claim to names like Cy Young and, yes, Babe Ruth, the Packers won SuperBowl I (and SuperBowl II), and lay claim to names like Vince Lombardi and, well, Brett Favre.

And, unlike the BoSox, the Packers are publicly-owned.... the only publicly-owned major sports franchise in the U.S. Score one for the Pack.

The fan base (aka Cheeseheads) is nothing if not devoted. On Sundays, everywhere you go, you see people dressed in the green and gold. Bars are packed; stores are empty. One Sunday I went into the cavernous Best Buy up in Appleton to find it echoing and bare of customers... except for the small group gathered around the game on a widescreen t.v. Even when I went over to the Fox Valley Mall, which was filled with shoppers (mostly women and girls.... football widows), in every store, the workers asked me if I knew the score. When Favre went down with an injury in a big Thursday night game against the Cowboys earlier this season, I swear, I heard a rending of clothing throughout the state (this provided excellent fodder for my lesson on the Book of Job the next day. You can't make this stuff up). Before the last home game, the local papers reported a call for anyone with a shovel to go up to Green Bay and help shovel out Lambeau Field for $8 an hour. That, I think, is the Midwest at its finest--- the image of hordes of folks convering to collectively dig out their stadium--- and I mean that with all due seriousness.

Prior to living in Wisconsin, we were really a one-sport household: if it wasn't baseball, it didn't matter. Upon moving here, we were told that our baseball teams (Red Sox, Mets) would be ok "as long as we didn't mess with the Packers." Since we had no major football loyalties, this wasn't really a problem. I had at times nominally rooted for the Jets, in honor of my dad's heritage, or, while in New England, for the Patriots, but really, I never "got" football. Compared with the finesse and nuance of baseball, it really did just look like a bunch of guys in tight pants crashing into one another. Homoerotic delights aside, it just made no sense, and I could never figure out where the damn first down line was.

Now I've gotten pretty thoroughly swept up in the Pack, and, to a slightly lesser extent, so has M., although the ironies of a vegetarian rooting for a team named after meat packers abound. The fact that they now show you both the direction of the drive and the first down line on t.v. really helps. I'm starting to get the difference between a passing game and a running game (Lesson Number One: the Packers lack the latter, although Ryan Grant (RB) has been doing well lately), to understand why you often punt for a field goal if you haven't converted on the third down; and I've also learned, during the exciting color commentary on last week's game, that Atari Bigby (S) hasn't had a haircut in 11 years (a fact M. took in with great respect). Football can be really exciting, even if I/we still find the penalty system obtuse and at times bizarre.

So, the signs are in.... we really live in the Midwest now. We watch football.

(In any event, it will get us through until about a week before pitchers and catchers report...)

Below, scenes of Packerphilia from around Wisconsin this fall..... the stuff came out in early August and has only multiplied since....



(Seen in Festival Foods when Favre broke the touchdown pass record in September)