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I drove up from Milwaukee Tuesday evening and arrived at Lambeau Field around 6:30 PM; with a prediction of 20,000 people showing up for the 2006 Packers Shareholder meeting, I figured it was going to be difficult allowing everyone an opportunity to take the tour of the players locker room, one of the highlights for attending the meeting this year. The meeting was inside Lambeau Field itself and tickets were issued; the tickets would determine when you could take the tour on Wednesday. I received tickets for one of the last tours but since they were running the tours on Tuesday to allow more opportunity to take the tour, it seemed like a good idea to do the tour the day before.

I figured it would be a light crowd Tuesday evening but the amount of cars parked around the stadium was a little mind boggling. It also proved to be a long wait for the tour once I got inside. There were probably one to two thousand people waiting in line and they were apparently allowing everyone to take as much time as they wanted instead of herding them through quickly.

I stopped to talk to someone who worked in the Packers Security department and he said it was a 2.5 hour wait to get through. I wanted to know if there was anything different about the tour as compared to the tour offered during Packers Fan Fest and he said it was virtually the same thing so I opted to pass on waiting in line to take the tour as I had already been through during Fan Fest.

I've been considering the possibility of changing careers and doing something "fun" so I asked the security guy what the starting salary I could expect for working in his department. The reply was around $29K-$30K but with overtime you could make $40K or more. He lamented some that it could be a mindless job from January through May but it was a whole lot of fun interacting with the fans during the remaining part of the year when various events and the season started. Just the looks of the faces of fans when they came through here was a unique part of the job, something that gave him great pride for what he was doing.

It was also exciting to be a "behind the scenes" guy, people like Brett Favre would just show up in their area looking for coffee and hang out and talk. Brett was "just a regular guy," popping in a "chaw" and talking about anything. They of course worked the games and I said there must be a difference working the games and not being able to SEE the games. It didn't matter much to him, watching the games weren't that big of a deal for him. I couldn't help but think what it took for people to get tickets to a game; if you could get an "in," wouldn't you want to be able to have some access to seeing the game? But it was more than enough for him to be able to interact with everyone internally on a level that most people do not have access to.

The security guy also alluded to how many people within the organization are related to each other. "You might see something that doesn't look right but you don't say anything because they may be related to someone important." This was in reference to comments we were making about a possible career change, any job you have will have its down sides and politics.

I asked the security person what the weirdest thing he ever saw was and he related an incident where a man purposely had a bowel movement next to Lambeau Field and then picked up the feces so that he could rub it onto one of the "G" logos attached to the building. It was all captured on video; I didn't ask what happened to this person but I assume he was ticketed and fined. When you follow sports I think everyone has their teams that they love to hate but this is... well... weird.

Wednesday morning, Mom and I headed to Lambeau Field to attend the formal business meeting for the shareholders.

You couldn't have asked for better weather, it was just about as good as it gets for July. For anyone who reads my trip reports, they will know that it is a common theme for me to contrast Green Bay to any other NFL market, the drive here taking you through dairy country with farms spread across the landscape surrounded by woods, corn, hay, and cows. The rain this year has been good and timely, so the corn is standing proud and radiating a healthy shade of green.

The meeting starts at 9:00 AM and we arrive going on 8:30; things are fairly well organized so the traffic is not bad and there are no lines to get into Lambeau Field. The parking lot around Lambeau is very full but it takes only a couple minutes to get a parking space. The license plates on the cars are from throughout the Midwest; a lot of people came from a long way just to be here for this.

Before the meeting started they played a video on the jumbotron which showed highlights from the past season (yes, you can find highlight from a 4-12 season; this is the PACKERS, you know!) and with emphasis on the new coach and Reggie White who will be inducted into the Packer and NFL Hall of Fames this year.

The Meeting itself:

The way it works is the various committees give reports; I don't take detailed notes on this. I'm sure a word-for-word transcript would be interesting for Packer fans but that just ain't my style. The meeting was short this year, running only an hour, probably to give more time for the shareholders to go through the locker room tour. But there are always a few highlights from the meeting, so let's talk about those for a bit.

They always start with a formal notation of the number of shares of stock being represented either by shareholders who are present or by proxy. There is always a quorum. The crowd, every year, will always cheer because there is a quorum. But does it really matter? Proposals and business matters are not voted upon at the meeting so does it matter if there is a quorum?

Football Operations is the first department to give a report and this was presented by Ted Thompson. He went through the roster, glossing over the things that looked good and those that were a concern. He said it was his strategy to "create competition at every position." You can see that going into training camp, virtually every position is going to have to be earned. Thompson also discussed the current business environment when dealing with players, they try to not become involved emotionally with specific situations, they try to maintain a "steady keel" and do what is best for the organization as each situation arises when dealing with personnel and player contracts.

The Packers financial report was very positive, lots of numbers and figures being tossed out. I think people related to the presentation best when the report was concluded with "Financially, the Packers are ready to rumble!"

One of the report presenters thanked Bob Harlan for his years of service in which the shareholders gave Harlan a standing ovation.

One committee report dealt with Lambeau Field being a source of revenue and gave an example of the Wisconsin Badgers hockey game that was played here last winter. I thought it was an interesting factoid to learn that the game was the 4th largest ever in attaendance for a hockey game, the 2nd largest ever in the United States. It is estimated that the game brought in $2.7 million dollars into the local economy.

I needed to stretch my legs so around this time during the meeting I got out of my seat and walked around the aisle that separates the "old" seats from the "new" seats that were added during the renovation. I was in the corner of the south end zone and walked around to the other corner. The point I'm making here has to do with the sound system; there are speakers only in the north end zone and after the renovation a number of people complained about the sound system. As I walked around I noticed that the sound directly from the speakers hit me at a certain point in time and as you changed your position the sound that bounced off the sides of the stadium could be greatly amplified and arriving at a different time compared to the direct-sound. It was very bad and annoying in specific locations depending on how the sound waves traveled from the different directions.

The Marketing department, in an effort to emphasize the demand of their product, mentioned that there are now over 70,000 people on the waiting list for Season Tickets. $1,000,000 was brought in from Brett Favre related merchandise alone.

A formal part of the meeting is to announce the results of the election of nominees to the board. This process, truthfully, is pretty much rigged, but the power is there for the shareholders to change this but that would probably only happen if there was an organized mutiny. One shareholder did follow the process to nominate a Thomas Cook to the board but these third party nominations never succeed.

The meeting was then adjourned. The process for the locker room tour was you could come and go as you please and they would announce when the next tour would start. The first tour was to begin after they played a tribute to Reggie White on the jumbotron.

It was a moving tribute, most people half-smiling and half-sad at the same time. The woman sitting next to me, and I'm not making this up, had to wipe the tears from her eyes, she was crying. When the video completed the shareholders gave Reggie a standing ovation.

Since I was in tour number 7 I figured it would be a while before we were called so I took Mom up the street to the shopping mall. My parents are retired now and live in a rural area and don't go to town often, at least, not Green Bay. They usually go to the mall in Manitowoc so it's a treat for her to go to a different mall.

We do the mall and head back to Lambeau. Out in the bowl area of the stadium people are lined up in the aisles to go on the tour and we ask one of the ushers which tour was lined up. It was tour number 2. Tour number 2 is lined up, standing there, waiting, which means they haven't even started yet. It's been 2.5 hours since we left and obvious that it will be a long time before they will ever get to tour number 7. Mom wasn't interested in doing the tour and I've been fortunate to have done it before so it wasn't that big of a deal for us but I know people are going to be upset over the wait; I am writing this fresh so it remains to be seen if people are turned away.

In the atrium, there are huge lines for people waiting to have a moment with Bob Harlan and Ted Thompson. People mostly get an autograph and then have their picture taken with them.

We eat lunch at Brett Favre's Steakhouse and then head for home.

One of the funny things about Brett Favre's Steakhouse is it doesn't have much in the way of steak. It's a great restaurant with very good food but I wouldn't go there for a steak.

That's it, just another shareholder meeting.

Just another shareholder meeting?

On the way home the corn fields stand tall and proud, painting the landscape with Packer Green. Fields of hay cover the ground with Gold. When you say "Packer Country" you can see it, literally, the very ground itself representing the spirit of the Green Bay Packers. That very spirit evokes a stirring within, this thing called "Packers Football" creating a reason for us to be here, a reason for us to live. We are reminded about what it means to live when the likes of Reggie White no longer live. Whatever this "Packers Football" thing is, I won't try to describe it because while I can see it and I know what it is, I still can't put it into words. It's a living and breathing thing and it changes with the moment; it inspires us, we grow when we lose, we revel when we win, and it makes grown people cry because of whatever it is inside of them that makes them care so much.