Green Bay Packers

• 1. Introduction

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  The Green Bay Packers hold more victories than any other team in NFL history, and they do it from a city of just over 107,000 people. Green Bay, Wisconsin is the smallest major league professional sports market in North America by a wide margin. Its television market reaches only about 600,000 viewers, a fraction of the average NFL city. Yet a share of Packers stock cannot be sold on any exchange, cannot pay you a dividend, and carries no equity interest whatsoever. People wait decades for one anyway. The season ticket waiting list runs to roughly 140,000 names, more than the entire seating capacity of Lambeau Field. At the current rate of roughly 90 tickets turned over each year, the math puts the newest name on that list at a wait of about 955 years. How does a franchise like this survive, let alone dominate? The answer begins not with a billionaire owner but with a meat packing company, a $500 check, and a man named Curly Lambeau.

• 2. A Peculiar Ownership

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  On the 11th of August 1919, Earl "Curly" Lambeau and George Whitney Calhoun founded the Green Bay Packers. Lambeau needed money for uniforms. He went to his employer, the Indian Packing Company, and came away with $500 for uniforms and equipment. The condition was simple: name the team after the sponsor. That deal set the tone for a franchise that would always depend on collective backing rather than a single benefactor. By 1923, backers known as "The Hungry Five" had formed the Green Bay Football Corporation. That same year, the corporation's Articles of Incorporation included a striking clause: if the franchise were ever sold, any money remaining after expenses would go to the Sullivan-Wallen Post of the American Legion to build a soldiers memorial. The purpose was to remove any financial incentive to move the club. At the November 1997 annual meeting, shareholders voted to redirect that residual to the Green Bay Packers Foundation, which supports education, civic affairs, and health services across Wisconsin. Today the team has more than 537,000 shareholders, but no one may hold more than 200,000 shares. No shareholder receives dividends, an equity stake, or season ticket privileges. What they get is a vote, an invitation to the annual meeting, and access to shareholder-only merchandise. Shares can only be resold back to the team, at a fraction of the purchase price. The NFL's current ownership rules require a maximum of 32 owners per team, with one holding at least a 30% stake. The Packers fit neither requirement. Their structure was grandfathered when the league established those rules in the 1980s, making them a permanent exception in North American professional sports.

• 3. The Lambeau Dynasty

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  In 1921, the franchise joined what was then called the American Professional Football Association, the forerunner of the NFL. Financial trouble struck almost immediately, and the franchise was forfeited within the year before Lambeau secured new backing and reclaimed it. From that shaky start, the team built something improbable. The 1929 squad went 12-0-1, winning the Packers' first NFL title behind eight shutouts. Green Bay repeated as champions in 1930 and 1931, relying on Hall of Famers Mike Michalske, Johnny (Blood) McNally, Cal Hubbard, and Green Bay native Arnie Herber. One benchmark from those years has never been matched: a streak of 29 consecutive home games without defeat, still an NFL record. Then came Don Hutson, an end who arrived from Alabama in 1935. Credited with inventing pass patterns, Hutson led the league in receptions in eight separate seasons and drove the Packers to championships in 1936, 1939, and 1944. He also led the league in interceptions as a safety in 1940, playing both ways. When he retired in 1945, he held 18 NFL records, many of which still stood long after. His number 14 was the first number the Packers ever retired, in 1951, and he became a charter member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963. After Hutson left, the slide was steep. By the 1958 season under coach Ray "Scooter" McLean, the team went 1-10-1, the worst record in franchise history.

• 4. Lombardi and the 1960s

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  Vince Lombardi arrived on the 2nd of February 1959, hired as both head coach and general manager, a former New York Giants assistant who was largely unknown to the Packers faithful. His first regular-season game, on the 27th of September 1959, was a 9-6 win over the Chicago Bears. The Packers finished that year 7-5, the franchise's first winning record since 1947, and Lombardi was named NFL Coach of the Year in his rookie season. What followed was one of the most concentrated stretches of success in American sports history. Over seven seasons, Lombardi's teams won five championships. The offense featured Bart Starr, Jim Taylor, Paul Hornung, Forrest Gregg, and Jerry Kramer. The defense included Willie Davis, Henry Jordan, Ray Nitschke, and Herb Adderley. In 1961, Green Bay defeated the New York Giants 37-0 in the first NFL Championship game played in Green Bay, with Paul Hornung scoring a championship-record 19 points in the second quarter alone. Time magazine put the Packers on its cover on the 21st of December 1962, as part of a story on "The Sport of the '60s". The 1966 season brought the first Super Bowl, a 35-10 victory over the AFL champion Kansas City Chiefs. Then came 1967 and what was simply called the Ice Bowl: the NFL Championship rematch against Dallas at Lambeau Field in temperatures so severe that it remains the coldest NFL game ever played. With 16 seconds left, Bart Starr scored on a quarterback sneak to give Green Bay a 21-17 win and an unprecedented third straight championship. The Packers followed that with a 33-14 win over the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl II. After Lombardi died of cancer on the 3rd of September 1970, the NFL renamed the championship trophy the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

• 5. The Wilderness Years

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  The 24 seasons following Lombardi's departure produced only five winning records, and the Packers reached the playoffs twice. Five different head coaches tried and failed to recapture earlier form, including two of Lombardi's own stars: Bart Starr and Forrest Gregg. Each left the team with a worse record than his predecessor. The personnel failures became legendary. In 1974, acting general manager Dan Devine traded five draft picks, including two first-rounders and two second-rounders, to the Los Angeles Rams for quarterback John Hadl, who would spend only one season in Green Bay. Then, in the 1989 NFL draft, the Packers selected offensive lineman Tony Mandarich with the second overall pick, passing on Barry Sanders, Derrick Thomas, and Deion Sanders, all of whom were later inducted into the Hall of Fame. Mandarich's performance fell so far short of expectations that ESPN later ranked him the third-biggest sports flop of the previous 25 years. The solution came when Ron Wolf was hired as general manager before the 1991 season and given full control of football operations.

• 6. Favre, Wolf, and the 1990s

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  Wolf's first major move was to hire San Francisco 49ers offensive coordinator Mike Holmgren as head coach in 1992, then to acquire quarterback Brett Favre from the Atlanta Falcons for a first-round pick. Favre stepped in for injured starter Don Majkowski during the 1992 season, led a comeback over the Cincinnati Bengals, and never missed another start for Green Bay through the end of the 2007 season. He would eventually break the NFL record for consecutive starts by a quarterback, reaching 297 in a row including later stints elsewhere. In 1993, Wolf signed Reggie White, widely described as perhaps the most prized free agent in NFL history at the time. White later said he believed Wolf, Holmgren, and Favre had the team heading in the right direction with "a total commitment to winning". The 1996 season brought it all together. The Packers went 13-3, ranking first in offense, first in defense, and first in special teams. Former Heisman Trophy winner Desmond Howard returned punts and kickoffs for touchdowns, and was named Super Bowl XXXI MVP after Green Bay defeated the New England Patriots 35-21 to win their 12th championship. A 2007 panel of football experts ranked those 1996 Packers the sixth-greatest team ever to play in a Super Bowl. The following season they returned to the championship game before losing to John Elway and the Denver Broncos 31-24 in Super Bowl XXXII. When the 49ers eliminated Green Bay in a controversial 1998 playoff game, Holmgren left days later to take over the Seattle Seahawks, taking much of his coaching staff with him.

• 7. The Rodgers Era

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  Aaron Rodgers was drafted in 2005 and did not start until 2008, after Favre was traded to the New York Jets for a conditional draft pick. In his first season, Rodgers threw for over 4,000 yards and 28 touchdowns. By 2009, he became the first quarterback in NFL history to throw for at least 4,000 yards in each of his first two seasons as a starter. The 2010 season arrived with 16 Packers on injured reserve by year's end, including seven starters. Despite that, the team entered the playoffs as the sixth seed in the NFC. They beat Philadelphia, then top-seeded Atlanta 48-21, then the Bears in the NFC Championship Game. On the 6th of February 2011, they defeated the AFC champion Pittsburgh Steelers 31-25 in Super Bowl XLV, becoming the first sixth seed from the NFC to win a Super Bowl. Rodgers was named MVP. The 2011 regular season produced a franchise-record 15-1 record, second-most regular-season wins in NFL history at the time, behind only the 2007 Patriots at 16-0. Rodgers won his first NFL MVP award that year after throwing for 4,643 yards and 45 touchdowns. He would win a second MVP award after the 2014 season. Under head coach Matt LaFleur, who arrived in 2019, Rodgers won his third and fourth MVP awards in 2020 and 2021 respectively. His fourth made him second only to Peyton Manning, who holds five, among all quarterbacks. LaFleur became the first coach in NFL history to record three straight 13-win regular seasons, though none of those ended in a Super Bowl trip. Rodgers was traded to the New York Jets before the 2023 season, making way for Jordan Love, the team's 2020 draft pick, who led Green Bay to a 48-32 Wild Card victory over the Dallas Cowboys in January 2024.

• 8. Lambeau Field and Fan Culture

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  The original Lambeau Field opened in 1957 as a 32,150-seat venue, the first stadium built exclusively for an NFL team. It was renamed in 1965 to honor Curly Lambeau, who had died earlier that year. Expanded seven times before the end of the 1990s, the field reached a capacity of 60,890. After extensive renovations in 2003, current seating stands at 72,928. Every game in Green Bay, preseason through playoffs, has been sold out since 1960. The waiting list for season tickets sits at roughly 140,000 names, and tickets are willed to next of kin, with newborns placed optimistically on the list. During summer training camp, held outside the Don Hutson Center, a tradition dating to around the time the stadium was built in 1957 allows young fans to bring their bikes and have players ride them from the locker room to practice at Ray Nitschke Field. Gary Knafelc, a Packers end at the time, recalled: "I think it was just that kids wanted us to ride their bikes. I can remember kids saying, 'Hey, ride my bike.'" The word "cheesehead," now synonymous with Packers fans, started as an insult at a 1987 baseball game between the Chicago White Sox and Milwaukee Brewers. By 1994 it had been embraced as a badge of identity. Bright orange triangular cheesehead hats appear wherever the team plays. Forbes ranked the Packers as the 27th-most-valuable sports franchise in the world in 2019, with a value of $2.63 billion, a figure belonging not to any individual owner but to more than half a million stockholders spread across Wisconsin and beyond.