Before They Were the Packers


Book Description

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.







That First Season


Book Description

The untold story of Vince Lombardi's first season as coach of the 1959 Green Bay Packers.




The People's Team


Book Description

The definitive, lavishly illustrated history of the Green Bay Packers, commemorating the team's 100-year anniversary Not only are the Packers the only fan-owned team in any of North America's major pro sports leagues, but Green Bay -- population 104,057 -- is also the smallest city with a big-time franchise. The Packers are, in other words, unlikely candidates to be pro football's preeminent team. And yet nobody in the NFL has won more championships. The story of Titletown, USA, is the greatest story in sports. Through extensive archival research and unmatched insider access to players and team officials, past and present, Mark Beech tells the first complete rags-to-riches history of the Green Bay Packers, a full chronicle of the most illustrious team in NFL history. The People's Team paints compelling pictures of a franchise, a town, and a fan base. No other team in pro sports is so bound to the place that gave birth to it. Here is the story of the Packers and of Green Bay -- 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. Featuring essays by Peter King, Chuck Mercein, Austin Murphy, and David S. Neft, The People's Team is a must-have for fans, old and new, and the definitive illustrated history of the most important team in the NFL.




After They Were Packers


Book Description

Where do the heroes go when the cheering ends? In his follow-up to the best-selling Downfield!, Jerry Poling reveals the lives of the 1997 Super Bowl champions after they left the Packers. Also included are former greats Lynn Dickey, Don Majkowski, and others from before the ?New Glory Years.?




Green Bay Packers


Book Description

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 History of the Green Bay Packers


Book Description

The myth: Curly Lambeau quit the Packers because certain members of the executive committee were jealous of him. The truth: Lambeau quit the Packers because the executive committee put restraints on him that prevented him from abusing the authority that he had misused and misappropriated in the past. The History of the Green Bay Packers: The Lambeau Years, Part 3 finally gets the story straight about those turbulent years in professional football immediately following World War II. In this controversial narrative about the Green Bay Packers, Larry Names has captured the essence of the team and its riveting history. The numerous real-life stories contained herein reveal how The Green Bay Packers, Inc., fought overwhelming odds from forces outside - and inside - the corporation to stay alive and in Green Bay. The National Football League engaged in a struggle for its very existence in the years after World War II. The upstart All-America Conference made a real challenge to the NFL's supremacy in the professional football world, raiding the established league for players and causing an inflationary spiral in salaries that nearly bankrupted a majority of teams in both leagues. The two organizations appeared to be headed for total destruction before a merger could be accomplished in 1949. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were lost during this war, and several franchises went by the wayside. The Green Bay Packers came within an eyelash of being one of those teams that was shifted to another city or went belly-up during the conflict. Several powerful men in the NFL - including one very prominent man in Green Bay - wanted the Packers moved to another city, preferably San Francisco where they could compete with the AAC's 49ers or to Dallas or New Orleans in order to get a foothold in Texas or the South before the AAC moved in. For the first time the real story has been told of how the Packers managed to stay in Green Bay despite the overt acts of football moguls all around the country and the subversive tactics of the man who was credited with founding the team.




Instant Replay


Book Description

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.




Game of My Life Green Bay Packers


Book Description

In this newly revised edition of Chuck Carlson’s Game of My Life Green Bay Packers, the greatest men to don that green and yellow uniform talk about the best, the most important, and the most entertaining game they ever played. Was it during the immortal “Ice Bowl” of 1967, when Bart Starr snuck across the goal line in the withering cold of Lambeau Field to beat the Dallas Cowboys? Or was it the NFC championship win over the Carolina Panthers in 1997 that sent the Packers back to the Super Bowl for the first time in thirty years? Maybe it was that mind-bending 48–47 Monday night win over the Washington Redskins in 1983, or perhaps it was one of Green Bay’s four Super Bowl championship victories. For a franchise with such a long and lyrical history as the Packers, there were thousands of opportunities to play a game that really mattered. Now over twenty of the greatest Packers men open up about that singular moment when it all came together. With contributions from such Packers legends as Brett Favre, Jim Taylor, Chester Marcol, and more, Game of My Life Green Bay Packers is a must-have for any Wisconsin fan.




The Packers Experience


Book Description

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.