Lambeau Field can hold more than 80,000 people - the entire population of Green Bay is only about 105,000 - and you could fill the stadium with folks on the epic waiting list. Season tickets have been sold out since 1960. Owning a share of the Packers gets you into an annual meeting and a few other perks, but it doesn’t promise any access to the most sacred of Packers swag: the season ticket. Green Bay’s situation was grandfathered in. There’s no other team like it, because now there can’t be: NFL rules now mandate that teams may have no more than 32 owners, at least one of whom must hold at least 30 percent. On one side of the matchup Sunday you had Jerry Jones, the very Monty Burnsian archetype of the über-owner, and on the other you had 360,000 Packers shareholders, a good many of them raving, loving, lunatic fans. The Packers’ unique ownership structure is the stuff of legend, and for good reason. The gregarious owner, Mike Weir, who, besides running the restaurant also sits on the Packers’ 45-person board of directors, likes to come hang with his patrons and show off his goods. (“Get the butter burger and cheese curds!” has to be the most Wisconsin sentence imaginable, and it’s also great advice.) On Friday, I had stopped in for lunch after a press conference at Lambeau and within about 10 minutes was trying on two Green Bay Super Bowl rings. “And I turn him down every time.”Ī few hundred feet away, a big crowd was gathered inside and out at Kroll’s, one of those places where everyone tells you to go when they find out you’re heading to Green Bay. “That gentleman comes by every game and offers me club seats every game,” he said when he left. (Gay noted that he was able to make that drive to Dallas in 20 straight hours, but that “chunks of my tire broke apart” in the conditions.) Gay, who watches all Packers games from inside his camper, paused to chat with a man who had poked his head into the bus. “We’ve been at every home game for 22 years,” said Stephen Gay, Big G’s owner, as his 14-year-old golden retriever Blayde snoozed nearby. On Sunday, the enormous vehicle seemed much more at home parked outside the arena beside two other fan vans, one a big yellow school bus called “Das Büs” and another a retro 1966 Dodge Camper, “Big G,” that Benning cited as his inspiration. Still, they made it in time to see the Packers beat the Steelers 31-25. A snowstorm dumped 20 inches across Oklahoma, and “GB Brat,” as the men’s big gold-and-green party RV is called, wasn’t exactly optimized to handle the conditions.
It took three days for Tom Benning, alias Fan Man, and his buddy Chuck Miesfeld to drive from Green Bay to Dallas to watch the Packers play in Super Bowl XLV. A subsequent field goal made the score 14-13 instead. (Not an insurmountable deficit, but an injured Aaron Rodgers had been visibly laboring all game, wincing and sailing throws and at one point having to skip rather than walk.) But Packers defensive end Julius Peppers dove at Murray, dislodging the ball from his grip, and Green Bay recovered. There seemed little doubt he’d break 59 yards down the field for a touchdown to give Dallas a 21-10 lead.
Murray noticed a gaping hole in the coverage and sprinted toward it. “It’s not like he’s coming from the Bahamas.”īy the beginning of the second half, when Romo handed off the ball to star running back DeMarco Murray, Green Bay looked more like the team getting stuck. 1 And even if it had been, the idea that the Packers would have a major up-north advantage didn’t quite get it right: “Tony Romo’s from Wisconsin,” Green Bay’s A.J. But then again, much of the buildup leading into Sunday’s matchup had been a little bit off.īilled as an Ice Bowl II - a reference to the last time the Cowboys played a postseason game in Green Bay, a 1967 contest so cold that it froze Dan Reeves’s blood - the game was never all that frigid. “Because we’re gonna stick it to the Cowboys!”Ī few hours later, that prediction wasn’t looking so good. “Look, it’s cow on a stick!” the man said.
He proudly thrust a Tupperware full of marinating kebabs at us. Between all the big, burly bodies idling around and the Packers’ color scheme, the tailgates outside Lambeau Field had the look of a John Deere dealership.Īs we discussed the finer points of Munger’s green-and-gold garment, we were interrupted by his godfather.
“It’s a custom onesie.” Everywhere around us, smoke and steam rose: from tiny portable grills, from truck exhaust pipes, from the paper mills and factories in the middle distance.
“It’s not a Snuggie,” longtime Green Bay Packers fan Zach Munger corrected me when I approached him on Sunday morning in a parking lot to tell him I admired his fleecy outfit.