Friday, December 23, 2011

Before the Renaissance

Since we’ve had some extra time this week, it is time to post a more lengthy presentation from the archives. This article is from the August 1991 issue of Smithsonian magazine, and the interesting aspect of it is that the Packers were awful at the time, with few prospects of getting better. In fact, they finished with a stellar 4-12 record that year, which was also the first season that we had season tickets to all Milwaukee games. As with many things of that era, the attention is turned to the Packers’ past because the present and future looked bleak. What no one knew at that time was that team president Bob Harlan would fire GM Tom Braatz before the end of the season, hire Ron Wolf, who would hire Mike Holmgren and trade for Brett Favre — and the renaissance that continues to this day was begun.

If anyone is interested, this is the cover for that issue. Looking back, we’re not sure how we became aware of this article in the days before the internet, but we’re glad we did. In those days, anything related to the Packers was hard to come by — especially merchandise. My, how things have changed.