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PROLOGUE


While this will be a “from the seats” story of what it was like to be at Lambeau Field for the playoff game against the Seattle Seahawks, the story really begins two weeks ago with the death of Brett Favre’s dad, Irvin Favre. The Packers soundly beat the Oakland Raiders the next day on Monday Night Football. While that really wasn't a surprise (anyone can beat the Oakland Raiders this year), but it was how; the Packers pitched a perfect game, at least just about as perfect as you can get for football. Then the last game of the season with the Denver Broncos; the tiebreaking scenarios came up with the worst possible combination, putting the Packers out of contention for the playoffs.

Then the miracle of miracles came, the Minnesota Vikings, claiming first place in the division from day one loses on the last play of the season to a team whose season ended a long time ago, the Arizona Cardinals, and even then the Cardinals played about as poorly as a team can play except for Divine Intervention from ol’ Irv himself.

People are calling it Divine Intervention, and why not? It makes for a good story. Still, you have to look up in the sky and really wonder. No way. Way? The Packers aren’t good enough to make it to the Superbowl let alone win it but the season is not yet over as I write this. I, for one, will not call it Divine Intervention, but the Legend of Lambeau Field grows, the Lore of the Packers has reached a new plateau in their storied history with recent events, so please allow me to tell you what it was like for this Packer fan to be there.


MY STORY


It’s a gray January morning when Paul (my girlfriend’s brother) and I leave Milwaukee a little after 6:00 AM for the drive up to Green Bay. A winter storm is coming but it won’t be here until later in the day. We park the car in Green Bay at about 9:15 after an uneventful drive.

It’s cold. Well, the temperatures are in the low 20’s so it’s not frozen tundra weather but the wind is hard and biting. We head over to the Packer Ticket Office because I want to see if tickets are available. Tickets are always in demand for Packer games and sometimes a few pop up at the Ticket Office at the last minute for various reasons. We, of course, already have tickets but I want to conduct an experiment to see if we could get tickets.

It’s early and Green Bay is still waking up so as we go by the Packer Pro Shop there’s no line and we decide to browse through it a bit. Usually there’s a long line to get in so we take advantage of the no-wait. I look around and find a Packer wind sock for a price that’s not too extravagant. I buy it for my girlfriend’s grandmother. She’s 78 years old, she’s a big Packer fan, and she wants a Packer wind sock. We’ve been looking for a wind sock for her for a long time and they’re hard to find and way over-priced when we do find one. Divine intervention?

The Ticket Office does have tickets, but only Club Seats. Those tickets are something like $300 each face value for the playoffs and you can buy scalped tickets in the bowl for less than that. I’ve tried a number of times with this experiment with previous games and have yet to find tickets.

Next stop is a visit with Linda, a friend I met over the internet who frequents one of the Packer fan web sites. Her family has Season Tickets and she’s almost always at the game. However, her mother forgot and didn’t send in for playoff tickets but they were lucky to get through on the phone and purchase 4 of the 13,000 tickets that were available for this game. Season Ticket holders have the option of reserving seats for the playoffs but it didn’t look good for the Packers to make the playoffs a month ago when the invoices went out so they opted not to pay for playoff tickets. Thus 13,000 tickets were up for grabs to anyone who could get through on the phone lines when they went on sale.

It’s always good to see Linda but we eventually move on and visit another tailgate to see Bob, another friend of mine that I’ve come to know via the brotherhood of Packer Fans. There aren’t too many fans that come bigger than Bob and it’s always fun to see the glaze over his eyes as he tailgates in the Lambeau parking lot while transfixed with the Packer Experience. Bob is the kind of guy who would die if you put up a fence around Lambeau Field to keep him out. People need food, air, and water to survive; Bob needs Packers too. Perhaps it’s a curse, but Bob is back, he’s here, and he will live, his soul refreshed.

After visiting with Bob and his friends we make our way to my Cousin’s house. He lives in the shadow of Lambeau and is one of those people who let people park their cars on his lawn. He has a lot of friends who take advantage of his location so when we get there there’s a few of his buddies tailgating and doing pre-game warm ups. Some of them also scored tickets from the 13,000 available through phone sales and their tickets were in Row 1 on the Packer sideline.

Row 1! Packer side! They’re in heaven.

One of the guys is wearing a complete Packer uniform. We’re talking Class “A” official stuff. He’s a big guy too; if he were to hop the railing he’d be able to mingle with the other players and no one would know the difference. It makes for quite the visual display to look at the guy.

Next door on the next lawn some people are tailgating and there's a  guy who is bare from the waist up. Packer fans have been known to strip during a freezing cold game but to do it now? We think he’s crazy but he looked like it wasn’t bothering him. I guess some people just have the metabolism for it.

Nathan Poole is in town and we want to go see him, so we say good bye to my cousin and continue on with our journey through the Lambeau happnin’s. On the way we pass the point where cars are coming into Lambeau Field to park. There were security people there with a mirror on a pole and they would push the mirror under the vehicles to search for explosives. Trucks with an enclosed bed would be stopped to check the contents. A sign of the times.

We also stop at the Scalper Pit to see what ticket prices are like. Word was it was a buyer’s market. 13,000 tickets were available to fans who really wanted them, the game was a surprise and it’s hard for many to plan for a game on short notice, the weather wasn’t that good, so perhaps those were factors in keeping people from seeking tickets en masse. One guy is holding up a pair and I inquire what he’s asking and he says “$100 each.” With a face value of $84, that tells me that it was true, ticket demand was soft and the scalpers were not doing very well. It’s tough when you can’t find buyers for a playoff game at pretty much close to face value. Good news for the fans.

Oh, yeah… Nathan Poole… who is this guy? Poole is an Arizona Cardinal and is the guy who made the last-gasp catch to beat the Vikings, allowing the Packers to become the division champions and have a home playoff game. The mayor of Green Bay invited Poole and he was to make an appearance at a tailgate by Brett Favre’s Steakhouse. However, when we get there, Poole is there but we can’t see him because of the crowd. You have to pay to go into the tailgate area and while it’s all good fun, we didn’t think it was worth paying money to get up close.

There’s a little gift shop inside Brett Favre’s Steakhouse so we go in and browse. They have bottles of Brett Favre Wine, $24/bottle. If it was $6 I would have bought a bottle but I didn’t need to be suckered into the hype. Hype is fun, hype is good, but it’s hype. Go into the bar area and you can get a Brett Favre Steakhouse drink coaster for free if you really want a souvenir. Regardless, the place is a-hoppin’ and it’s standing room only.

It’s getting to be about that time so we head back to the car, drop off some stuff and pick up our game items, including putting on warmer clothing. As we enter Lambeau Field at the Atrium entrance, the line for the Pro Shop is now an ungodly length. It wraps way around and would probably be more than a hundred yard long if it were stretched out in a straight line. It’s 11:00 AM and there’s no way these people are going to have time to shop the Pro Shop and still go to the game. But they’re not giving up their spots in line.

The freebie du jour is a white towel, paid for by some sponsor, I forget who. Makes for quite a sight when everyone in the stadium is waving them. We sit on the Seattle sideline for a while, soaking up a little Lambeau Field and watching some of the players go through their warm ups. Don Majkowski walks by in front of us, a former Packer quarterback, and some of the fans are excited to see him.

We go get some stadium dogs and brats and head out to our seats.

We’re in the upper corner end zone. It may not sound like good seats but you can see the whole field and we’re closer to the field than some seats on the 50 yard line at other stadiums. Being up higher actually gives you a good 3D-effect, you can see all the players and how a play develops. On TV you’re usually limited to the frame of the camera and lose perspective on what is really going on.

The crowd. it's the crowd that makes being here an experience unto itself. When the Seahawks had the ball in key situations the crowd would be on its feet screaming with unprecedented ferocity. The Packer defenders would signal the crowd that they needed us and we’d respond. When the Packers were introduced and came out onto the field many of them ran across to the opposite corner and woofed it up with the fans. The interaction between the fans and the players is incredible.

The old cliche of football being a game of inches was true today. Both teams could not establish a running game and each team lived and died on short yardage situations. The Seahawks came out swinging but could not put it away, having to settle for field goals. They couldn’t gain enough inches. The Packers came back, went ahead, and then fell behind. They came back again and put the season on the line, going for it on fourth down and needing inches or else the season would be over. The Seahawks failed to hold those inches and the Packer season was still alive though the issue was still in doubt.

The cold affected the kicking game, both sides failing to put the ball where they wanted it but the Packers managed to control, for the most part, the advantage of field position. But the inches never came when they were needed or the Packers gave up too many inches and the Seahawks prevailed too many times.

At half time Paul and I walked around the upper concourse in order to get the blood going in the toes and the third quarter started before we got back to the seats. As we made our way through the crowd it seemed surreal that people would gather around the TV monitors to watch the game instead of going to their seats. They’re here, they paid for a ticket, but they were watching the game on TV.

We get back to our seats just in time to watch the Seahawks score, the Packers now failing to put the game away. Then the Packers fall behind in the score, again.

The season is now on the line and it’s the fourth quarter. The entire stadium is on their feet. Nobody’s sittin’ down for this one. Brett Favre engineers a drive and we tie the score. We hold the Seahawks and we engineer another drive, slow, methodical, perfect. We score a touchdown with two minutes left to go and we’re going to win the game!

Inches.

The Packers take the bend-but-don’t-break approach and they break. Throughout this whole time we’re all still standing, each second an eternity yet everything happening so fast that we can’t comprehend. The Packers come back again, kick a field goal as the game ends and
miss, putting the game into overtime.

The Seahawks win the toss and Matt Hasslebeck, quarterback of the Seahawks, being caught up in the moment, proclaims “We’ll take the ball and we’re gonna score!”

The Seahawks take the ball, but they don’t score. The Packers take the ball, but they don’t score.

Divine Intervention? Irv Favre standing up there, teasing us or tiring of the stalemate? Hasslebeck scores all right, he changing the play at the line of scrimmage, calling an audible, barks to the center to take the ball, fades back, and throws to Al harris, a Packer defende, who
takes the interception back to the end zone for a touchdown, winning the game for the Packers.

Just in time too, we were all out of fingernails. It's freezing cold and everyone is sweating.

The stadium erupts into pandemonium, practically the entire Packer bench piles into the end zone to celebrate, and it’s over.

The crowd shouts in random jubilation thoughout the concourses and ramps, cheering and celebrating, as they make their way to the exits. The ending of this game did not qualify as an official miracle but nonetheless it was dramatic finish.

On the way back to the car we passed by “Steve’s Fence.” “The Fence” is a Packer icon. Some guy who lives across from Lambeau Field on Lombardi Avenue paints his fence gold with green letters every year with a play on words, this year the caption being “Ahman Other Teams Are Green With Envy.” (For you causal fans, Ahman Green is a Packer player). Painted over this, someone had vandalized it by painting a Viking “V” over it, with purple paint. Yes, the Vikings were going to win the division, they were the champions, and they were, for the entire season, until the last play. The last laugh goes to the Packers, at least this time.

On the drive home we hit the snowstorm that’s coming through and the roads are bad. We listen to the post-game show on the radio, basking in the victory, and listening to road reports. We see one vehicle on the side, it having a rough landing, having gone off the road and blowing out a tire. Another vehicle is overturned. We’re going I-43 and the radio tells of similar accidents on I-41. Traffic moved along at about 35-40 mph the whole way.

We make it home safe and sound, but the Packer Experience is not yet over for me. Two friends from the internet are in town, Dave and Terry. Dave is from Texas and Terry is from Illinois and we had arranged to meet in Milwaukee after the game. We know each other from the internet and it’s fun to meet them and we talk about Packers and we also talk about… well… more Packers! We had a good time.

One thing to add about the drive home; they kept playing over and over on the radio Matt Hasslebeck’s gaffe about taking the ball and scoring when he called the overtime coin toss. Then they’d play the play-by-play of the Packer radio announcers….

Wayne Larivee: “Hasslebeck is making an audible, changing the call it appears, here comes the ball, he steps back, throws to the left…”

Larry McCarren: “YES!”

Wayne Larivee: “INTERCEPTED! YES! Al Harris takes the ball back, TOUCHDOWN!”

Larry McCarren: “That’s the kind of audible we like!”


EPILOGUE – DIVINE INSPIRATION


Divine Intervention or Divine Inspiration? If you’re a Packer fan you just have to believe that Irv and Vince are up there pulling strings and looking out for us. You just have to believe this. But we know you can’t believe such a far-fetched idea.

Irvin Favre, for those of us who are a part of this current generation of Packer fans, know that Irvin was an integral part of the Packers. He mentored the greatest quarterback of the modern era, was an inspiration in the locker room, and he was an inspiration for us who listened to him on the post-game radio show.

Irvin Favre will be missed.

Irvin Favre and Vince Lombardi. We learned from them. They inspired us.

Divine Inspiration.

I can’t help but note the irony of Mike Holmgren playing a playoff game at Lambeau Field and Packer fans hoping that he will lose. Holmgren was loved by all and in some ways is still missed but Green Bay was a mere stepping stone for his career. Holmgren moved up and out, seeking a greater challenge but failing to see that striving for greatness itself is the real challenge. Greatness was all around him in Green Bay, the lessons of the past were there, but did he learn from them?

Irvin Favre? He was a coach, too, and he taught greatness. The same greatness that Vince Lombardi inspired into his teams. That’s why we remember them and why they will be missed.  Perhaps Mike Sherman, too, realizes the lesson of striving for greatness and is learning how to make it work. Mike Sherman took parts of the old tunnel at Lambeau Field where great men and players previously passed and had them installed in the new tunnel when they renovated Lambeau Field. At the very least, Mike Sherman is inspired when he passes over the same concrete that other great players and coaches passed over in the past.

Divine Inspiration. Do Irv and Vince look down on us or do we look up to them?