I’m a Packer fan. No, not just because they’re on a roll and they have this little game on Sunday. I’ve been a fan for a decade and a half. But that hasn’t always been the case.
As most of you know, I was born and raised in New Jersey and grew up with the word “Giants” ringing through my ears 12 months of the year. My family were all fans of the New York Baseball Giants and the New York Football Giants. The Packers had the gall to beat my Giants in the NFL Championship game two years in a row during my most impressionable years, 1961 and 1962, by the counts of 37-0 and 16-7. They were just too good, and I’m sorry to say I rooted against the Packers for a long time, since I rooted against all the good teams that weren’t mine. I’m afraid to admit I even rooted for the Cowboys in the Ice Bowl. I will say I’ve since sought my forgiveness at a higher level.
I thought fans were pretty rabid growing up in the New York area, and I guess in relative terms they are. There are hundreds of thousands of football Giants fans (the baseball Giants headed west to San Francisco in 1958) but in a region with over 10 million people that’s not hard to accomplish. Here it’s borderline religion. Most of the people in the state are fans, a large percentage of them reaching some sort of frenetic level, where the Packers’ weekly performance and game result directly determine their mood for the rest of the week.
I’ve been a loyal and committed Packer fan since my first game at Lambeau Field in 1994, when, ironically, Brett and the Pack beat my Giants 14-7. My son Randy and I wore golf shirts emblazoned with “Giants” front and back to the game. Brilliant. It wasn’t too long after kickoff that a relatively inebriated Packer fan emptied his beer over the aforementioned logo. Luckily it was a warm October day. Before we could turn around to combat our would-be attacker, one of his buddies came to our defense and decked the perpetrator, after which he apologized to us. I was moved by that kind of class and have bled green and gold ever since.
The loyalty and devotion Packer fans have to the team is remarkable. On a typical Fall/Winter Sunday afternoon when the Packers are on TV, you can drive an army of tanks down any street in any city in Wisconsin and not hit a car.
And Packer-mania extends outside Wisconsin. In the 4th quarter at the Georgia Dome Saturday night, all you could hear out of the crowd that remained were alternating chants of “Go Pack Go” and “Koooooon”, the latter for Packers running back John Kuhn whenever he was involved in a play. The Falcons “fans” had all departed at that point, not wanting to be part of the hind end of the shellacking their team was being dealt.
The TV ratings in Milwaukee for the game against Atlanta confirm the fan frenzy, even relative to the usual numbers for Packer games and considering the fact that Saturday night has the lowest TV viewership of the week: The game had a 51.1 rating which means more than 460,400 households tuned to some portion of it. That’s over half the households in the Milwaukee area. And it got a 73 share, which means three-quarters of every TV that was on in the area Saturday night were tuned to the game. Amazing.
And now here we are, with Sunday’s renewal of the NFL’s oldest rivalry, 89 years, 181 games, and counting, for the right to go to the Super Bowl. Packers-Bears. Music to everyone’s ears. It’s being called the most anticipated NFL Championship Game ever, and based on the insanity level of the Packer fans 5 days before the game, I think they’re right. I can’t wait to see the ratings. But really, I just hope it lives up to the hype.
