Green Bay Packers
Packers are the Steelers’ opponents in the Super Bowl XLV. They were also old adversaries of the Cowboys, whose stadium where the Super Bowl match-up will be held. The Packers do capture the attention of many NFL fans around the nation, because great people with great spirits characterize the Packers.
Three individuals mark the Green Bay Packers’ history: Curly Lambeau, Vince Lombardi and Mike Holmgren.
Lambeau – Great Pioneer
Lambeau was a founder of the Packers. Lambeau is born and raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He played for the famous Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne for a year before dropping out and returning home for the sophomore year. He then worked for the Indian Packing Company, who sponsored the Packers and gave the team their name. He played for the team from 1919 to 1929, and first official pass, first official touchdown pass, and kicked the Packers' first official field goal. He also coached the team, and continued coaching until 1949.
Lambeau was a winner for the Packers. He led the Packers to 6 NFL championships within the first 30 years of his leadership of the team, including 3 in a row from 1929-31. He is a pioneer of many firsts in the NFL and professional football as a whole. He introduced the practices of daily practices, the forward pass in the NFL, implementing pass patterns and flying to road games. All these enable the Packers to concentrate better and focus their energies to pass the ball more accurately, to score more points to win games and championships, and to be more competitive.
He also pioneered the use of a training facility, which unfortunately turns out to be his downfall as the team’s undisputed leader.
Lambeau’s departure from the Packers had been a sad chapter in the team’s long history. He left the Packers is not because of retirement, like maybe Chuck Noll of the Steelers did; he left, more so because of the Packers’ board of directors (made up of Packers fans, to be explained later) did not like the idea of Lambeau building the first self-contained training facility in professional football, known as Rockwood Lodge. When the Lodge burned down in a fire in January 24 1950, Lambeau resigned as coach about a week later. Perhaps this unfortunate incident, in my view, could be seen as a result of disagreements of the usage of funds to spend on such a facility, with the rest of the management, who may not understand the Packers’ on-field needs to remain competitive.
After Lambeau left, although there had been a change in uniform colors, from blue to green, perhaps to emphasize the color ‘Green’ in the Packers. The transition period from Lambeau to the next great coach had not been smooth. The team had to keep up with the times. The Packers were subject to macromanagement, as they did not meet Lambeau’s demands of new training schemes and grounds, which led to the departure of a fine coach like him in the first place. Also, the Packers have little to offer to contend with the Canadian Football League and the military service. They are too small and too unattractive, to NFL players, who prefer to go to teams with larger audiences and more lifestyle options. Especially for the 1958 NFL season, the Packers finished its worst season up to that point, as they lost 10, tied one and won only one game. And the Packers had to raise funds to build a new stadium. It is eventually built, and is still used as the Packers’ home ground.
The savior of the Packers turned out to be Vince Lombardi.
Vince Lombardi – Effectively motivational
When Lombardi was hired as head coach of the Packers, he was the offensive coordinator of the New York Giants, serving the Giants alongside Tom Landry, the defensive coordinator (and later, Dallas Cowboys coach). The Giants were the NFL champions for 1956, vindicating the effectiveness of both coordinators’ and future coaches’ guidance of the team, before they were better known as the head coaches of their teams.
Lombardi is known to combine spiritual inspiration with military-like execution. He studied at the Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception for two years, before transferring to St. Francis Prep and thereafter Fordham University, where he became part of the famed ‘Seven Blocks of Granite’. He also had a stint with the U.S. Military Academy, as assistant offensive backfield coach. His influences by both the Catholic Church and the military really shaped his teams on the field.
Lombardi immediately made an impact to the Packers, after his arrival as head coach and his proclamation, ‘as of now, I am in charge’. In his first year of coaching, in 1959, the Packers improved to 7-5 and Lombardi was voted as the NFL Coach of the Year. In 1960, the Packers won the Western Conference title, only to lose to the Philadelphia Eagles. And in 1961, Lombardi won the first of the five titles he would later win with the Packers, defeating the Giants in the Packers’ home ground. In 1962, the Packers won the Eagles in Philadelphia, which they would not repeat again until 2010. They would travel to the Giants’ Yankee Stadium, and win there.
However, the Packers had two sub-par seasons finishing 2nd at their division thereafter. The Packers began to rebuild and win the next three NFL championships, consecutively, from 1965-7. The 1967 NFL championship game was the ‘Ice Bowl’, which the Packers won at home against the Cowboys at home, 21-17. The game included 11 football Hall of Fame players, Tex Schramm, Tom Landry and Vince Lombardi himself.
Regarding Super Bowls, there was a tremendous amount of pressure for the Packers to not just win, but to win big. And they did win convincingly in these two match-ups. They won the Chiefs 35-10 in the first NFL-AFL match-up and a 33-14 victory against the Raiders, in the second such match.
Lombardi later retired from the Packers in 1967. After serving a year as the Packer’s team manager, Lombardi took up the head coaching position for the Washington Redskins for the 1969 NFL season, and broke a string of 14 consecutive losing seasons. Then Lombardi died of colon cancer, dying at the age of 57.
From Lombardi’s retirement in 1967 to Mike Holmgren’s appointment as Green Bay Packers head coach, the Packers had only won one division title, in 1972, and also having just one paltry winning season along the way In addition, poor draft picks eluded the Packers, as they missed out the chance to choose players such as Barry Sanders, Franco Harris and Howie Long in various NFL drafts. It was not until Mike Holmgren’s appointment, in the 1992 NFL season that things began to change.
Mike Holmgren – Spurring the Packers renaissance
Holmgren is the leading catalyst to the Packers’ current success.
Under Holmgren’s watch, the Packers acquired rookie Atlanta Falcons quarterback Brett Favre, who had earlier won broken significant statistical records, as quarterback of Southern Mississippi. Holmgren also signed free agent and defensive end Reggie White, in 1993. The Packers were able to reach playoffs from 1993-5, but for these three consecutive years the Packers did not manage to get through the Dallas Cowboys in playoffs, resulting in their fierce rivalry.
However, the Cowboys lost to the Carolina Panthers in 1996, while the Packers won their wildcard game against the San Francisco 49ers at the same season. This resulted in a NFC Championship Game match-up between both teams. The Packers prevailed, and reached Super Bowl XXXI, to play the New England Patriots. The Packers won the championship game. The Packers did attempt to defend the Super bowl title the next season, while they play against the Denver Broncos, who had 4 record Super Bowls earlier. The Broncos finally won a Super Bowl in Super Bowl XXXII. The following season, the Packers lost to the San Francisco 49ers in a wildcard playoff game, and Holmgren decided to leave the Packers as head coach.
In total, the Packers clinched consecutive playoff berths for 6 consecutive seasons, in Holmgren’s tenure as head coach.
Holmgren’s Packers did find continual renewed success on the field, based on the team he built in the 1990’s.
Great spirit off the field
The Packers are characterized by a strong fan culture. It is attributed to the Packers’ periods of ‘dark ages’, in the 1950’s as well as in the 1970’s and 1980’s, but it is still nevertheless mostly great for the team.
The Packers are the only team in the NFL to be owned by its fans. Its unique ownership structure allows only fans to buy, at most, 200,000 shares. And all proceeds of the sale of the Packers are supposed to go towards the Green Bay Packers Foundation, the recipient of any remaining asset involved in the sale of the Packers. The Foundation works with a wide variety of activities and programs that benefit education, civic affairs, health services, human services and youth-related programs. The Packers are also the only major-league sports team to release a balance sheet every year.
Probably because of its dispersed ownership structure, it is safe to say that there is no dominant owner that characterizes the affairs of other teams (especially the Rooney family of the Steelers or Jerry Jones of the Cowboys, etc). As fans often are involved in stock sale, Packers fans directly own a team. However, this is not replicated in other NFL teams – NFL ownership policies currently prohibit all other teams to have more than 32 owners, and amongst these 32 owners, only one is allowed to have more than 30% shares in the team.
The Packers had two stock sales in 1950 and 1997, to raise capital to re-develop their stadium, in which the fans vigorously and strongly supported, by buying the team’s stocks.
However, because capital is only raised and approved in major occasions, as well as the Packers’ own unique voting structure that decides management decision making; these have resulted in past shortage of funds, as well as extremely close scrutiny by the fans, in the Packers.
They could not afford, in 1950, a new team training ground for the team. They were not able to continue Lombardi’s coaching system intact, as there was no coherent system to ensure good replacements to continue succession to Lombardi’s teams. In addition, the whole team is rudderless – there had been no vision, and only searches, for a coherent Packer team idea, at least until 1992 when Holmgren is hired.
Fortunately, the Packers community learnt from their glory eras, by having the luck of installing Holmgren as the head coach, and entrusting and even standing to the team’s decisions. From 1992 onwards, the Packers found their rhythm, and they began to build a natural team structure that ensues till today. This has enabled the Packers to move on from the succession of Rodgers as quarterback. Although Holmgren did not draft Rodgers, he was considered to be the successor to Favre, for the system that is set since Holmgren’s helm.
So far, this arrangement worked quite well – Rodgers played for a 2 postseasons out of his 3 seasons starting at quarterback, played in the 2010 Pro Bowl and also will play Super Bowl XLV (though he hasn’t won a division title yet), whereas Favre had won one division title in 2010, reaching the conference championship in the process, but not progressing further to reach Super Bowl.
But i think, at least, in the long run, the Packers management, at least as seen in the quarterback issue, will sustain the Packers momentum longer.
With the fans’ (and hence, in this case, the management’s) patience and common vision for the team, with their unquestioned loyalty to buy team ownership shares as well as packing Lambeau Field to create a 100-year wait list for season ticket.
I expect the Packers to have continued success, in time to come, as their fans had been exceptionally sharp and supportive of their team all these while.
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