Can't get enough of the Packers? Discover a unique and fascinating historical survey of Green Bay's early town football teams. Colorful accounts of individual team members, descriptions of significant games, fan and community reactions, and snippets of actual newspaper stories will take you on the a journey from 1895 to the day in 1921 when the Packers became founding members of the National Football League. Included are photographs of Green Bay town teams and some of their earliest opponents.
On the field, legends like Don Hutson, Ray Nitschke, and Brett Favre made the Green Bay Packers into a professional football powerhouse. But the history of the NFL’s only small-town franchise is as much a story of business creativity as gridiron supremacy. Behind every Packer who became a legend on the field, there was an Andrew Turnbull, Dominic Olejniczak, or Bob Harlan, leaders whose dedication and creativity in preserving the franchise were unwavering. Green Bay Packers: Trials, Triumphs, and Traditions tells the improbable story of professional football’s most iconic team, and along the way gives a unique window into the rise of modern professional sports. As the NFL has evolved into a financial juggernaut, the Green Bay Packers, with more than 112,158 stockholders, stand alone as the only professional sports franchise owned by fans, thus providing the only public record of how a sports team is run. Featuring more than 300 photographs, some never before seen, Green Bay Packers illustrates how the most creative team in sports is also one of the most successful, with names like Lambeau, Canadeo, Lombardi, Hornung, Holmgren, and White leading the way to a league-best thirteen NFL titles and twenty-one Hall of Fame inductees. This comprehensive, up-to-date history of the Packers includes the 2011 season.
The Packers the only fan-owned team in any of North America's major pro sports leagues-- and Green Bay (population 104,057) is the smallest city with a big-time franchise. They're unlikely candidates to be pro football's preeminent team-- yet nobody in the NFL has won more championships. In honor of the team's 100th anniversary, Beech paints compelling pictures of a franchise, a town, and a fan base-- from the days of the French fur traders who settled on the shores of La Baie in the seventeenth century, to the team's pursuit of its fourteenth NFL championship. -- adapted from jacket
By the time he died of cancer in 1970, after one season in Washington during which he transformed the Redskins into winners, Lombardi had become a mythic character who transcended sport, and his legend has only grown in the decades since. Many now turn to Lombardi in search of characteristics that they fear have been irretrievably lost, the oldfashioned virtues of discipline, obedience, loyalty, character, and teamwork. To others he symbolizes something less romantic: modern society's obsession with winning and superficial success. In When Pride Still Mattered, Maraniss renders Lombardi as flawed and driven yet ultimately misunderstood, a heroic figure who was more complex and authentic than the stereotypical images of him propounded by admirers and critics.
In 1967, when Jerry Kramer was a thirty-one-year-old Green Bay Packers offensive lineman, in his tenth year with the team, he decided to keep a diary of the season. “Perhaps, by setting down my daily thoughts and observations,” he wrote, “I’ll be able to understand precisely what it is that draws me back to professional football.” Working with the renowned journalist Dick Schaap, Kramer recorded his day-to-day experiences as a player with perception, honesty, humor, and startling sensitivity. Little did Kramer know that the 1967 season would be one of the most remarkable in the history of pro football, culminating with the legendary championship game against Dallas now known as the “Ice Bowl,” in which Kramer would play a central role. Nor could he have anticipated that his diary would evolve into a book titled Instant Replay, first published in 1968, that would become a multimillion-copy bestseller and be celebrated by reviewers everywhere, including the Washington Post’s Jonathan Yardley, who calls it “to this day, the best inside account of pro football, indeed the best book ever written about that sport and that league.” This groundbreaking look inside the world of professional football is one of the first books ever to take readers into the locker room and reveal the inner workings of a professional sports franchise. From training camp, through the historic Ice Bowl, then into the locker room of Super Bowl II, Kramer provides a captivating player’s perspective on pro football when the game was all blood, grit, and tears. He also offers a rare and insightful view of the team’s storied leader, Coach Vince Lombardi. Bringing the book back into print for the first time in more than a decade, this new edition of Instant Replay retains the classic look of the original and includes a foreword by Jonathan Yardley and additional rarely seen photos from the celebrated “Lombardi era.” As vivid and engaging as it was when it was first published, Instant Replay is an irreplaceable reminder of the glory days of pro football.
THE STORY: Sport produces great human drama and there is no greater sports icon to bring to theatrical life than Hall of Fame football coach Vince Lombardi, unquestionably one of the most inspirational and quotable personalities of all time. Though
DIVSince its establishment in 1919, the Green Bay Packers football organization has stood proudly as the United States’ only community-owned professional sports team. Its fans are renowned for their unrivaled die-hard dedication, with Lambeau Field season tickets sold out since 1960 and a waiting list stretching decades into the future—tickets so coveted, they are often bequeathed in family wills. These are not quiet fans. Fortunately, The Packers Experience is not a quiet book./divDIV/divDIVThe ultimate guide to the Green Bay Packers, The Packers Experience takes readers year by year through every single season of the franchise’s storied history. Award-winning sportswriter Lew Freedman describes each season’s key moments, and his stories are accompanied by detailed stats and glorious images. Additional feature articles highlight the legendary players and coaches who have made the Packers one of the most successful organizations in the NFL: Curley Lambeau, Don Hutson, Paul Hornung, Bart Starr, Ray Nitschke, Vince Lombardi, Willie Davis, Herb Adderley, James Lofton, LeRoy Butler, Reggie White, Brett Favre, Donald Driver, Aaron Rodgers, Clay Matthews, and many others./divDIV/divPhotos from the team’s history are accompanied by rare memorabilia and mementos. This premier-quality book is the perfect keepsake for Packers fans of all generations—an essential addition to the Packers library and as timeless as that indomitable Packer pride.
For more than 90 years, the Green Bay Packers have been the model of excellence across the National Football League. Now, LeRoy Butler—a 12-year veteran and one of the most popular Packers ever to don the uniform—teams up with Rob Reischel to tell the stories of the Packers’ most memorable players and coaches, including Bart Starr, Paul Hornung, Forrest Gregg, Jim Taylor, Herb Adderly, Willie Wood, James Lofton, Sterling Sharpe, Brett Favre, Aaron Rodgers, and Donald Driver to name but a few. Packers Pride looks at the favorite games, favorite moments, and behind-the-scenes stories of the men who played and coached for the team with 13 World Championships, more than any other team in football.
