Adrift in Packerland, Where Nothing Else Matters

By Rick Horowitz

MILWAUKEE -- Without further ado, I would like to tell you how my Green Bay Packers, having finished the regular season as the most thoroughly dominant football team in the known universe, and having on consecutive playoff weekends squashed like bugs on a windshield both the veteran San Francisco 49ers and the upstart Carolina Panthers, will on Sunday, January 26th, take the field for Super Bowl XXXI and do absolutely likewise to this year's designated victim from the American Football Conference, the soon-to-be-sorry-they-ever-showed-their-faces New England Patriots.

I would like to tell you that -- but I can't. Not because I don't believe it, but because they are not, strictly speaking, my Green Bay Packers. This makes all the difference.

Welcome to Packerland, the Land of Lambeau, the Land of Lombardi, the Land where Legends Loom Large, where --

Stop me before I alliterate again!

Sorry. The craziness has begun. Not just in tiny Green Bay -- a very nice town which has, God knows, little enough else to get worked up about during the rest of the year -- but all across my adopted Badger State. Even, I can assure you, here in Milwaukee, 100-some miles down the road and big enough to know better.

Not a chance. Milwaukee has gone every bit as loony as anyplace else in Wisconsin. (And come to think of it, who has more reason to? Until just recently, after all, the Packers used to play a couple of "home" games down here every year; they're practically local.) A big-city population simply means even more people willing to outfit themselves in Packer green and gold. Willing to dance the "Packerena." (Would I lie to you?) Willing to be seen in public wearing large plastic replicas of certain wedge-shaped dairy products.

In Milwaukee, in Wisconsin, there is no other news. Turn on a TV somewhere else and there's weather. There's crime. There's politics. There's scandal. (Or am I repeating myself?)

In Wisconsin, there are the Packers. And then there are the Packers. For variety, there are the Packers. Packer Update. Packer Insight. Packer Overview. Packer Underwear. (I made that last one up. I think.)

"World War III? Sure, sure -- but how about that Brett Favre?"

And the game itself is still days away; it's only going to get worse.

Packer Fever: We've -- they've -- got it bad. Me? I'm not sure what I've got. Work up too much enthusiasm for the home team, and someone is bound to point out that I'm a relatively recent arrival in this neck of the woods, and an even more recent arrival in the Packers' crowded corner. Someone might even feel compelled to mention that my own home town is the less-than-proud possessor of two(!) football teams, who somehow managed to collect fewer wins between them this season than the Packers did all by themselves.

"Suddenly rooting for the Packers, are you? We have a name for that kind of thing." (Does the word "front-runner" ring a bell?)

But the alternative isn't any better. Stay restrained, reserved, loyal to my own collection of long-gone losers, and I'll tick off every other Wisconsin resident I run into between now and the kickoff.

"Have to rain on our parade, do you? Have to poop our party? We have a name for that kind of thing." (Does the word "jerk" ring a bell?)

I have to decide. In the name of all that's wholly pigskin, I have to decide.

So I'll root -- discreetly, politely -- for somebody's Packers.

And I'll root -- fervently, desperately -- for January 27th.

1/14/97

©1997 Rick Horowitz. All rights reserved.