Lambeau

Friday night the family made the pilgrimage to Lambeau field for “Family Night”. The tickets are sold locally in Green Bay for $8 each. We were able to score four nice seats for $180 on e-Bay. The stadium was packed, the weather was perfect and we were at Lambeau, it doesn’t get much better than that. The renovation of Lambeau was completed for the start of the ’03 season, and it is a thing of beauty. Besides the tickets we spent $5 to park at a church 5 blocks away, $70 or so, on food and drink, $180 for a hotel, $100 or so on souvenirs, and a few other sundry items around town. I mention this because I know that neither us or any of the 60 thousand fans there for a team scrimmage, nor any of the few hundred people at the Pro-Shop and Packer Hall of Fame Saturday had any positive impact on the local economy at all.

How do I know this? I’m no dummy, I listen to MPR, and every time they discuss the issue of stadiums they point out that there are NO STUDIES that show ANY positive impact of pro sports on the local community. Green Bay would be the same identical city without the Green Bay Packers, it has been economically proven. I’m not sure why we would have been over there spending money without the Packers, but MPR tells me it is so, so I would likely have traveled over to tour a paper plant or something. Life could be so confusing without MPR, I’m glad I have them to keep my mind right.

Having been born in Packerland is one of those blessings like being born in the USA that one would need to be a liberal to not be thankful for. If the Packers and the Packer story didn’t exist, they would be unbelievable as fiction. Even now, only a city of 100K people, it is the smallest town in the NFL. They have 12 NFL Championships, including 3 Super Bowl Trophies. Even more amazingly, the NFL Championship trophy is now the “Lombardi Trophy” in honor of Vince Lombardi, Coach of the Packers from 1959-1967.

Having lived in MN for 27 years, the first 14 of which the Packers stunk, the joy of the recent return to glory is especially sweet. The favorite Vikings fan approach during the era was “The Pack will NEVER be back !!!” … followed by some version of “ALL Green Bay has is history” … “and they ARE history” …”small market teams can’t compete any more” … “enough minorities will never play in Green Bay”… a team has to have an owner, a town can’t run a modern team” … and on and on. I’m sure that over those decades of abuse in the 29 years between titles, some few gave up, but the vast majority kept the faith. When the existence of your team is itself a miracle, it is very hard to lose faith in miracles.

Which brings me to my favorite Packer/Viking joke; The coach of the MN Vikings dies and goes to heaven (We’ll call him Mike Tice). Having been up there for a few weeks and settled in, he leaves his nice little house and goes out looking for the coach of the Green Bay Packers, who he also knows has died fairly recently (Mike Sherman), just to see how he is getting along. It doesn’t take him long to find that right in the middle of everything is this MONSTROUS place that is a replica of Lambeau field with huge spotlights shining the giant G, all decked out in garish green and gold, with a ton of Packer pennants, signs, and symbols all around.

It is more than Tice can take, so he goes to the administration building and looks up God. “God, I know I’m supposed to be happy here, but I can’t understand why I have the house I have, and Mike Sherman, who as far as I know, didn’t do anything at all that would justify that huge place that looks like Lambeau field that he has”.

God looks at him with a puzzled expression and says; “What do you mean Sherman’s house? That’s MY house!”.