Kingsbury ’61 Schedule

Pretend it’s 1961, and you want to find out who the Packers play on a certain weekend. Well, you might happen upon this advertisement from Wisconsin’s Kingsbury Beer. They even sponsor the Green Bay radio broadcasts, so you can have the urge to pop open a cool Kingsbury while listening at home. To find out more about this beer, click here.

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Football is Back in Session

Everyone who is anyone, and those hoping to someday be “someone” are at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis (again) this week and weekend for the annual NFL Combine. For the unaware, this is where the league invites prospective college draftees to work out in the presence of coaches, general managers, and scouting personnel from all 32 teams. In other words, it is an event where they all perform in the same conditions, and at the same time so that all baseline judgements and data analysis is equal for everyone.

Here is Packers’ GM Ted Thompson at the media podium on Friday, making his usual entertaining non-specific statements and no revelations of any kind. Then again, why would he or any GM at this point in the year show their hand on anything?

Coach Mike McCarthy also takes his turn in front of the media on Friday for a formal press conference.

He also took a turn with Sirius XM satellite radio for a private interview. If anything else of note takes place that’s worth sharing, we’ll let you know.

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Early Curly

While perusing some online memorabilia auction sites, we came across this great old-fashioned portrait of Packers’ founder Earl “Curly” Lambeau. It is from the “1932 Walker's Cleaners Green Bay Packers Premium Photographs Complete Set.” If you’d like to read more or place a bid, you can go here.

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A Couple of Guys You Might Know

We were looking through some old stuff and while thumbing through the 1972 book NFL: The First 50 Years, we came across these fine illustrations of a couple of players you may have heard of. Above, a 1921-era Curly Lambeau in his finest ACME Packers uniform from the team’s first year in the new N.F.L. Below, we have a 1961 Paul Hornung, ready to don his helmet and get into the game in Lombardi’s first championship season.

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Coach Lombardi in Boys’ Life

Continuing our sparse off-season posts here in Packerville, U.S.A., we’re sharing this November 1968 article by then-GM-only Vince Lombardi in Boys’ Life magazine. Here he gives us a concise history of his “Life in Football” for the publication’s young Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts from coast to coast.

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Odds and Ends in Packerville

We’re continuing to look at all aspects and angles of the long-range future of what we do here at Packerville, U.S.A. We’re also continuing to post things as they come up at least once a week, sometimes more since the Packers were eliminated by the eventual champions, the New York Giants. One thing we are doing consistently in the offseason is posting bits of news to our Twitter feed (seen at right).

Speaking of Twitter, we’ve been posting the daily “This Date in Packers History” updates from the Packers Hall of Fame. Curiously, they completely overlooked the 20th anniversary of the trade for QB Brett Favre on February 10, 1992. We’ll not venture down a conspiracy rabbit hole and just chalk it up to an honest oversight. We here in Packerville have made peace with the entire Favre retirement-trade-revenge saga — ever since the Packers won Super Bowl XLV one year ago. We cannot (nor should all Packer fans) overlook the contributions and accomplishments that he made to the team, the entire organization, the city, and the Packers legacy. Lambeau Field, as it exists today in its renovated state, would in all likelihood never have happened without the success the Wolf-Holmgren-Favre era. We will, when the time seems right — and if we’ve not hung up our mouse by then — feature more memories and visual material from the Brett Favre era than you would ever imagine could exist in one collection.

When Favre was traded to Green Bay that February twenty years ago now, he was “the man” as far as Ron Wolf and Mike Holmgren were concerned, but the media and fans were hardly aware of who he was, let alone what lay ahead. In this photo (above) from the 1992 Green Bay Packers Yearbook, Favre is shown in spring workouts in the indoor practice facility which preceded the Don Hutson Center. He wore the obligatory tape on his helmet that all rookies and new players had with his name written in Sharpie for the coaches and other players to know who he was. The number “4” meant nothing to anyone then. At that time, Don Majkowski was the incumbent QB, along with other roster mates Mike Tomczak and Ty Detmer.

Also of interest in that 1992 yearbook is this photo of new General Manager Ron Wolf watching his team practice on the then-unnamed Oneida Street practice field with his young son Eliot. That same scrawny little kid is now likely going to head the Packers’ pro personnel department. He learned from one of the best, and learned on the inside.

Lastly, if you’re a Packers’ season ticket holder, you received (or will shortly receive) your 2012 invoice. We got ours today, and as we reported via our Twitter feed, the prices are going up $3 per ticket for our seat location. Is it too early to start thinking about the 2012 football season? Apparently not.

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Packers in the “NFL Timeline”

While you watched Super Bowl XLVI on Sunday, you undoubtedly saw the “NFL Timeline” commercial among all the other 30- and 60-second ads with talking babies, explosions, lewd women, and beer, Beer, BEER! We thought it was quite entertaining in it’s fictionally historic depiction of the evolution of the NFL and it’s equipment and players. What we enjoyed most were the two segments which showed our Green Bay Packers, starting with the scenes above and below of the team in the 1930s and 1940s. Tony Canadeo (No. 3) runs back a kickoff.

The Green Bay “City Stadium” crowd cheers on the team.

Canadeo’s helmet morphs from leather into the hard plastic shell.

A couple of good shots from this segment as Canadeo runs into some vintage Philadelphia players. Tony Canadeo, started his career in 1941. We do like the stadium setting in the background.

After a bit of the Rams in the “1950s,” we get transported back to Green Bay in the “1960’s” — very appropriately — for some classic action with the visiting Chicago Bears. “Gale Sayers” makes a long scoring run (unfortunately) against Lombardi’s Packers in Lambeau Field.

The only thing we’re wondering is how Jim Taylor (No. 31) is on the field to make an attempted tackle — with a flagrant face mask violation (below) thrown in for good measure.

Coach Lombardi isn’t too pleased with the Sayers run, which is so long that it goes on right into the “1970’s” (below).

This shot is only put up here to show how they went from the “1960’s” into the “1970’s” and “1980’s,” with the Lambeau Field background morphing into Denver’s Mile High Stadium.

We’re not sure why the commercial ends with Devin Hester finishing off the kickoff runback, since the Bears get two segments in a row. Anyway, we’re left at Chicago’s Soldier Field as the ad ends, encouraging us to visit NFL.com/Evolution.

Overall, we really liked the ad and it’s concept of celebrating the NFL’s history.

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Aaron Rodgers named NFL MVP!

As hoped, Packers’ QB Aaron Rodgers won the NFL Most Valuable Player award tonight at the first annual NFL Honors in Indianapolis. We congratulate him for his outstanding season, and hope that one year from now, we’re on the eve of another Green Bay Super Bowl victory. Read more about his award here.

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Super Bowl Preview

Well, things sure were more exciting a year ago when our Packers were preparing to meet the Steelers in Super Bowl XLV. The fact that neither of those two teams are in tomorrow’s game shows how tough it is to continue success from one season to another in today’s N.F.L. One thing is for sure: Super Bowl XLVI will be much less stressful on our hearts, and we hope all of our readers can enjoy the game even though we thought for six-plus months that the Packers would be going for a repeat. In preparation for the game, here is some pre-XLVI information in case anyone was interested:

• Giants-Patriots Game Preview

• Super Bowl XLVI Capsule

• New York Giants Roster

• New England Patriots Roster

• Super Bowl injury report

• Giants-Patriots matchups

• Profiles of key players

• New York Giants Game Recaps

• New England Patriots Game Recaps

• New York Giants Franchise

• New England Patriots Franchise

• Patriots-Giants Series History

• New York Giants Game Stats

• New England Game Stats

• Super Bowl Facts and Figures

• Past Super Bowl Winners

• Super Bowl Records

• Super Bowl MVPs

• Super Bowl Ad Rates

• Super Bowl Ticket Prices

• Super Bowl Player Shares

• Future Super Bowl Sites

• How Super Bowl Winners Fared

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• Goodell: 34 teams likely if LA included

• Nothing locks out fans from the NFL

• NFL's ratings, revenue, popularity grow and grow

Enjoy the game!

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