Go, Pack, Go: What It Means to Root for the People’s Team

When it was ratified in 1970, the National Football League’s constitution and bylaws included an explicit mandate that each team have only a single owner, or at most a small group of owners, at least one of whom must hold a one-third stake in the team. The constitution also apparently mandated that said owner be a universally despised billionaire asshole like the Cowboys’ Jerry Jones or the Rams’ Stan Kroenke. Those rules don’t apply to the Green Bay Packers. Quite a few of the givens about today’s NFL don’t apply to the Packers.

Green Bay is a religious town. Step into most of the homes in the area, chances are good you’ll find a prominent shrine set up in a corner of the living room. However, instead of statuettes of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, rosaries, prayer cards and votive candles, you’ll find autographed footballs, rare rookie cards, pennants, team photos, bobbleheads and other Packers memorabilia. When I was growing up here, we had three such shrines in the house, and those relics that didn’t fit in the overcrowded shrines filled mantlepieces, bookcases and covered the walls. As a genetically contrary, unathletic kid, I wanted nothing to do with the Packers or football in general. But as an adult I can finally recognize how deeply important the team is to the community, and think I understand why. 

Sports fans in other cities may invest more emotional energy into their team of choice than they do into their careers or their own families, but in Green Bay, the Packers are the One True Religion. That’s neither hyperbole nor a metaphor. Packers fandom is an organized faith, with all the attendant sacraments, masses, rituals, apostles, saints and fallen angels. There’s even hallowed ground, as communicants are not allowed to step foot on the stadium’s famed and meticulously cultivated playing field (a.k.a. the Frozen Tundra). 

There’s a reason for this. There are actually a thousand reasons for this, which is why if you put your name on the waiting list for season tickets you can expect to wait at least 35 years before one becomes available, and why you can find Packer-themed bars in Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Dallas, Hawaii, London, Berlin, Tokyo and Australia. It also explains why football fans across the country place a pilgrimage to Lambeau Field at the top of their bucket lists. It’s their Mecca and their Vatican City. As generations of sportscasters have testified, “Lambeau Field is football, and football is Lambeau Field.” The mystique, the mythos, the sheer unlikeliness of the Packers is irresistible, even to a pro sports apostate like myself. The legend of a small, quaint Midwestern town (population 105,000) being home to the most storied team in the NFL is a romantic and charming one, but that’s only part of it. There’s something fundamentally American (in the best possible way) about a team and fan base that stubbornly thumbs its nose at the increasingly corrupt and corporate-controlled NFL. It’s a perception the people of Green Bay consider a point of pride. They know what they have and what it represents. The locals are so comfortable and assured in their faith they’ve earned a reputation as the friendliest fans in the league, warmly welcoming visiting fans of the opposing team (except those fucking Minnesota Vikings fans) as if they were parishioners greeting strangers visiting their church.

Players, coaches, good seasons and bad come and go, but the spirit of the team permeates the city year-round. In no small way it’s what holds the community and the local economy together, especially after most of the paper mills closed down. If Lambeau Field is football and vice versa, it can also be argued that the Packers are Green Bay and Green Bay is the Packers. 

I’m sure all this may seem a little too much, right? A little too idyllic, homespun and romanticized, just another facet of the mythology, but it’s not. It’s daily reality in Green Bay. At the heart of it, counterintuitive as it may seem, is the team’s business structure.

The Packers were founded in 1919. In 1923, they were established as a nonprofit corporation, and shares in team ownership were made publicly available. The same structure is in place today. In spite of the NFL bylaws, the Packers’ charter ensures there will never be a single wealthy asshole owner. Although there is a president, CEO and board of directors in place to make the day-to-day decisions about trades and player salaries, the Packers are officially owned by the people of Green Bay, and remain the only team in the NFL that can make that claim. Since the Packers’ nonprofit, community-owned status was firmly in place long before the league’s bylaws were ratified in 1970, they were granted an exemption and grandfathered in.

Here’s how it works. If a privately owned team wants a new stadium, they’ll approach city and state officials with their hand out and a pocketful of vague threats. If the Packers have a major project in mind, they’ll turn to the fans and hold a stock sale. From the time the team became a publicly owned corporation over a century ago, there have been only six stock sales, which took place in 1923, 1935, 1950, 1997, 2011 and 2021. Among other things, the funds raised by the sales have gone to pay for the 1957 construction of Lambeau Field, the renovation and expansion of the stadium in the ’90s, and most recently the development of the Titletown District, a 45-acre Packers-themed suburb surrounding the stadium.

In 1923, individual shares were sold for $5 a pop. In 2021, they cost $300. At present roughly 5.2 million shares are owned by 540,000 stockholders, so essentially the Packers have over half a million owners.

The stock certificates don’t pay equity interest or dividends, don’t grant traditional ownership rights or give shareholders privileged access to season tickets. What these holy icons do earn is an invitation to the annual shareholders meeting at Lambeau Field and the right to vote on major issues. The sense of ownership and civic pride they impart is much rarer, and more precious, than any ordinary cash dividends. Packers shareholders remain an extremely powerful lobby around here, and if anyone within the organization dared suggest the arrangement be changed, they would likely find themself working the overnight shift at a Citgo station, if not drawn and quartered.

Because of this, and Lord knows a few corporations have made offers, Lambeau Field will never be rechristened, the way every other professional sports stadium has been, after an insurance company, laxative or cryptocurrency exchange. And unlike the Rams, Raiders, Colts, Cardinals and a few other teams, the Packers will never pick up and move to a fancier city that can offer better tax breaks. What other corporate or political organization would allow the Great Unwashed that sort of sway?

Packers fans are, quite literally, invested in the team in ways that go far beyond win and loss records. Unlike the vast majority of duly elected public officials, the team board of directors fully understands and respects the symbiotic relationship between town and team. It’s estimated that over the course of every home game weekend — not counting money spent at the merch shop or concession stands within the stadium — visitors on their Lambeau pilgrimages pump an estimated $20 million into the local economy. The players, coaches and the organization also maintain prominent public profiles, donating tens of millions annually to local schools, charities and other community projects.

After being named the new president of the Packers’ board of directors this summer, Ed Policy released a statement that confirmed his commitment to the way things have always been done in Green Bay. “[E]nsuring a positive impact on our community will continue to be paramount in our decision-making,” it read. “We have the greatest fans in sports and will never take their commitment to the Packers for granted.”

As anybody and everybody in Green Bay will tell you, Mr. Policy had better be telling the truth.