After the Super Bowl is Over!

     Did you ever wonder what happens after the Super Bowl is over? Where do the team members go? Where do the fans go? How do they all celebrate after they get back home? Do they fly back to their home town and retire from the media hype and quietly go back to their day jobs. No, I can verify that is not what happens.
    First of all the team flew back to Green Bay on Monday arriving about 1:30 PM. They were welcomed at the Green Bay airport by a crowd of fans. A huge cheer went up as Coach MacCarthy and the President of the organization stepped out of the plane and held up the Lombardi Trophy, back where it belongs, where Coach Lombardi himself coached a team to the Super Bowl so many decades ago. Then the team and all their staff members boarded about 11 buses that wound there way back to Lambeau Field where they had all left their cars as football players and returned as World Champions. People lined the way several deep especially as the buses got close to Lambeau. A media helicopter showed the cavalcade all the way in. Thousands of people were clustered around the pass into the parking lot that the buses would take hoping for just a glimpse of their favorite players either in the bus or as they disembarked the bus and went into Lambeau, or carried their bags to their SUVs. The players got out of the buses and made their way to the players' entrance to Lambeau. Many high-fived the fans, tipped their hats to the fans, and otherwise acknowledged their support. Donald Driver was especially moving. Even though he is in an ankle immobilizer, he limped up and down along all the fences that showed fans greeting them and waving. He is so well liked!.
     Meanwhile, a call had gone out to fans and a huge crew of volunteers who would get paid $8 an hour and a free ticket to Tuesday's celebration,  and were shoveling out the Lambeau Field seats all morning. The next day another group of volunteers applied salt to all the foot areas in the stadium where ice was found. Aaron Rodgers was not among the returnees. He had other committments, as the local media put it. First he went to Disneyland in FL where he rode in the daily parade. Then he flew off to New York City and appeared on Letterman last night. Today, Tuesday, he was back in Green Bay for the festivities there.
     Today, Tuesday, was the official welcome back and Return to Titletown Celebration to be held at 4:00 PM inside Lambeau Field, not in the atrium, but in the open air bowl itself. It is high of 14 degrees today with a wind that makes the windchill down below zero. Tickets were $5 a piece and the event was a selllout -- 56,000 fans weathering the elements to welcome their beloved Packer team back with their Lombardi Trophy. Coach McCarthy came in first carrying the Lombardi Trophy around a portion of the circle of the field so people could touch it. Later Nick Barnett carried it around the entire oval of the stadium letting people touch it with gloves or without gloves. Then all the players circled the field with also high fives all around. Part of the center of the football field between the 40 yard lines had been shoveled off; indeed their were huge piles of snow from the stands and from that center over the two ends of the field. It was certainly the Frozen Tundra. But here were all those fans, cheering, waving their various celebrants like cheeseheads (it was too cold for them on the heads), replicas of the trophy, and replicas of the MVP belt that Aaron's brother designed for him. The main players in this event spoke along with several of the coaches. Charles Woodson said he would never come down from the high he is on because no one will ever take this honor away from the Packers. Aaron Rodgers spoke very fluently about what everyone felt and how grateful to the fans the whole team is. He is due to now fly out to California to be on Jay Leno's show. Wow, being a Super Bowl MVP is hard work. And to a big cheer, both Coach McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers spoke of coming back and doing this same thing again next year. It is a young team who seem to have a lot of chemistry and with Grant and other players who were injured for this season returning next year, who knows? Maybe we can do it again. Wow!
     Our Fabio player, Clay Matthews, seems to initially be even busier than Aaron Rodgers. He has been on Jay Leno, will be on Ellen Degeneris' show this afternoon, and will be a presenter at the Grammy Awards this weekend in CA. He already has an endorsement contract for Suave shampoo, due to his long straight blond locks. On Jay Leno, he was a soft spoken man with lots of poise. Aaron Rodgers also shows a lot of poise when dealing in front of a camara, as do Charles Woodson, and Donald Driver. No doubt appearances and demands to be in front of those camaras will continue to occur. These are men who are tired, who haven't seen their families in weeks or months, who need to rest and rejuvenate. Some may need to hire agents to control and organize all this media hype. Meanwhile Coach McCarthy has already aluded to his work that awaits: he has to decide about next year. There are all these great players who played and won the Super Bowl, but there are a dozen or more players who will be coming off the Injured Reserved list. Where are they going to fit into this team after missing all or most of this last season. Some were very good players prior to their injuries. Coach McCarthy has to sort this all out during the off season to get ready for restarting practice camp this summer. As you can see, there is a certain amount of hard work and angst that continues even after this kind of huge Win. Ah, the ecstasy of winning but also the angst!
      Meanwhile I heard that media in Texas is saying publicly: Ok, your northern football teams and fans, the game is over now and you are all back home. So could you please turn the heat back on?

     So that is what happens after the Super Bowl.

SUPER BOWL XLV CHAMPIONS

       So many emotional ups and downs in this game. The Packers have overcome so many injuries this season. And this game was no different. Our number one defensive player, another well performing defensive player, and another probowl defensive player as well as one of our number one receivers went down during this game. And still whiteknuckling it and chewing our fingernails, this Packer team managed to hold on and put together offense and defense to win this Super Bowl Game and bring the Lombardi Trophy back to Green Bay where the coach for which that Trophy is nameed took the Packers to the Super Bowl , oh so many decades ago. I just can't believe it. What a great evening!
     CONGRATULATIONS GREEN BAY PACKERS

    And to top it off, Aaron Rodgers won the MVP trophy. Who needs Brett Favre!  Brett who? Our team is great! GO PACKERS!

Memorable Weather -- 2011

     The weather has been making quite a bit of national news over the last week. A huge storm, one of the largest that many meteorologists have seen in their career, stretching across the entire mid section of the United states, causing snow and sleet, and freezing rain even in Dallas where our Super Bowl will play in two days. Stretching all the way up to the plains states, to Green Bay and Milwaukee, home to the Green Bay Packers, and then moving slowly out toward Pittsburgh, home of the opposing team, the Steelers. First people who were trying to get to Dallas could not get out of Milwaukee and other midwestern airports. Then finally after about 26 inches of snow over 2 days here, after much work getting shoveled out of our driveways, and getting moving on side streets and freeways, taking a whole day to get our airport open, fans were able to start to fly out. Then Dallas got a second storm of 6 inches or so which paralyzes that area again, and again the midwestern and eastern visitors and fans can't get into Dallas. Meanwhile large chunks of ice fall off the top of the new domed stadium in Irving, TX where the game is to be played, and injures some people on the ground. What is going on with the weather?
     Of course, we have Green Bay Packers media frenzy going on here. One piece of coverage related to two men (should I say crazy men?) who met at the NFC Championship Bears/Packers game in Chicago and probably under the cover of a somewhat inebriated conversation made plans to drive an old Cadillac Eldorado convertible down to Dallas. Now this convertible is old and now has no top, not even a canvas one to pop up.  http://offthebench.nbcsports.com/2011/02/01/idiots-loyal-packer-fans-driving-from-lambeau-field-to-dallas-in-convertable/ So the owner has somehow fastened a surf board lengthwise onto the top of the car. These two guys somehow made up some head gear that was a mix between stocking caps, a mohawk down the middle shaped something like a yellow footbal helmut. The story showed them leaving for Dallas for a roadtrip to Dallas. Well, this open convertible was not going to make it anywhere near Dallas. No way, not with this storm of the decade or maybe even half century working its way across the country's midsection. These two guys and their ideas, no doubt born when reason was not high in the conversation, would not succeed easily. We have not heard anything more about them. No doubt they had to hole up in a motel somewhere and it would have to be a hotel or motel that had some sort of covered parking. Otherwise that convertible would just fill up with snow. I saw in today's newspaper that these two crazies made it to Dallas, and were photographed taking part in a fan event. They don't even have tickets to the Super Bowl. Like a lot of Packers fans they just want to play a part in the celebration down there. They made is down there in spite of all the snow storms on the way.
     The media called this storm one of 4 of the largest and with the highest wind speed of all storms. My mother heard the reporters citing the years in which these three other bad storms occurred. She heard 1936. So then she began to ask herself what she was doing in 1936 and what did she recall about a big storm. She recalled very astutely that she had just graduated from high school the June before. And she had found a job with National Lock in Rockford, IL. She had only been hired a week or so before. So she had to get into work. So her father, my Grandpa Harry got their old Model T car dug out of the bran, and they got on Route 20, a then 2 way road between Freeport and Rockford, IL. They lucked out and got behind a snow plow and just followed it into Rockford. Mom was working the second shift so Grandpa just took her right to the factory. She had made it to work. Now she says she realizes that then her father had to drive all the way back to Pecatonica, without the benefit of the snowplow. She doesn't recall worrying about that then, but she thought of that now. Well, obviously he made it. It is just quite interesting that my mother can recall this with complete accuracy even now. She is now 93 years old, widowed and living by herself in her little 3 bedroom ranch house even though she is blind from macular degeneration. But she is dong fine by herself. She still bakes cookies for church bake sales, and does her own cooking and cleaning. We have been calling her dialy through the storm days and so have neighbors to make sure she is OK. She is no doubt lonely and shut in from the storm but she is surviving. Just another view of this storm from the inside and from the eyes of a very old woman.
     Well, it's Super Bowl Sunday. It's snowing outside again here, but this time it is just a gentle light snow. We are only supposed to get about an inch. This afternoon we have been watching the lead up show. The Super Bowl is huge. It is a big celebrity event. Though the game is the center of the conversation, it's like all the bruhaha happening outside the stadium seems to have taken over. I guess I never noticed this when I didn't care about either of the teams that were playing. But now its our Packers. We should be only talking about them and the game, right? Expectations totally change.  GO PACKERS!!! I'll be back on this blog about the game if we win. If we don't, you'll not hear another word about it here.

Another football story!

     Both my sons are Green Bay Packer fans. My younger son went to college in California and still lives and works there. He continues to maintain strong ties to the Green Bay Packer games. He tries to find the bars in his area where they will put the Green Bay games up on the TV screens. And if the Packers are playing out in California he will try to attend the game there. One time soon after he graduated from college, he attended a Green Bay game versus the San Diego chargers with several of his friends. They were using their binoculars to look around the crowd. Soon one of my son's friends spotted a group of Green Bay fans in the crowd and a few of them were wearing cheesehead hats. Now for my readers outside of the United States, an explanation is in order here. First of all, Wisconsin has long carried the title of "The Dairy State" only recently having been overtaken by the state of California as having more dairy cows. But even so, dairy is still a very prominent occupation in our fine state. There are many creameries and cheesemakers. Hence people from Wisconsin have come to be known as "cheeseheads," because we love to eat cheese. Some one got the brilliant idea to make a triangular yellow foam hat like a large wedge of cheese and since the colors of the Green Bay Packers are yellow and green, fans began wearing these yellow cheesehead hats to the football games. If you look closely at the picture of the fans above, you will see a small scattering of cheesehead hats like the one below.

Back to my story: At the San Diego game, my son's friends started to make a big fuss about those Green Bay fans and their cheesehead hats.
"What is that thing they are wearing on their head? Crazy! It looks like a big piece of cheese. Are they nuts or what?" And laughing and more comments like that. My son just told them that is what is the going craze now for Green Bay fans. I had sent my son one of these as a gift and he proudly displayed it in his room. A few years passed and the Green Bay Packer football team became much better and in Super Bowl XXXI, in New Orleans, the Green Bay Packers won, beating the New England Patriots. Now all things Green Bay were suddenly verypopular.
"Hey, dude," my sons friend called to my son. "Can you get me one of those cheesehead hats to wear?" Even  those friends who had belittled and mocked this particular item of Green Bay Packers regalia wanted one of these hats. Someone soon made a similar cheese wedge shaped hat but painted it silver and Detroit Lion fans began wearing them. They had copied the idea from the Packers though a silver wedge didn't make as much sense as a yellow one for cheddar cheese. But in general, suddenly those nutty hats that the Green Bay fans wore were the height of fashion.

The following photo, stolen from the advertisement for Original Cheesehead hats, tells the whole Wisconsin story.

Wisconsin is on a Packer High!

     How can I update a blog, centered in Wisconsin without discussing the current euphoria that infects everyone here since the six-seeded Green Bay Packers beat the number one seeded Atlanta Falcons this last Saturday night. For any of my readers from outside the United States, I should explain that we are now passing through the so-called playoffs in American style football. The Green Bay Packers are a privately owned football team, owned by stockholders in Green Bay, Wisconsin, located on Lake Michigan about 2 hours north of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My husband and I have had Season Tickets to the Packer games in Green Bay for about 15 years. These tickets are very much in demand; someone has to die so that packets of Season Tickets become available. They can't be sold, but can only be passed on to family in a will. Some members of the family attend at least a couple of these games each year up in Green Bay at the famous Lambeau Field. Well, anyway that is all anyone can talk about. The Packers played beautifully, both the offense and defense clicking precisely together. The opposing team was unable to mount much of an offense at all. It was one of the few games this year that was not a nailbiter. We viewers actually could relax knowing that the Packers had it in the bag.
     Here are my three men, all hard core Packer fans, no matter where they live. In the background is the very famous Lambeau Field. My family is tailgating -- grilled tenderloin sandwichs which is the only way we ever go. (To explain to the out-of-country readers, everyone tailgates. That is we take various picnic fare and grill out, and eat and drink in the parking lot of Lambeau field and in multiple parking lots, and home yards that border the stadium.) For me this time of anticipation and socialization before the game is the most fun of the whole "football game" event.

Inside the famous Lambeau Field stuffed to the foundation with screaming Packer fans.


Next are scenes from inside Lambeau during a game with the Dallas Cowboys. We have seats on the 30 yard line, behind the opposing teams bench. Our seats are very good "heckle" seats. Our youngest son likes to heckle the opposing team members, but he is never mean about it, and often one of the team members will turn around and laugh at what my son says to them.

     Well, now comes this exciting week. Our next opponent is the Chicago Bears, a team that being so close geographically to Green Bay has always been a strong rival to the Packers. These two teams have met 182 times over the years in regular season play. Many of the years one team is much better than the other and the games have not been so well played. Thus, over the last 10 years or so, that rivalry had become somewhat subdued. Then when our old quarterback, Brett Favre, ended up playing for the Minnesota Vikings, that team had become more of a rival. But now with the Bears seeded number one in our division and the Packers playing at their peak, the Bears/Packers rivalry is again in full swing. The two teams have only faced each other once before in post season play. That took place in 1941, just 2 weeks after Pearl Harbor. The Bears won. But that was 70 years ago and football was an entirely different game back then So I don't think there is any feeling of getting revenge for that game in the sports enthusiast's mind this time round. It is just our proximity and the fact that both teams are good that has everyone on both sides fired up. We are hearing today that the Las Vegas line has the Packers a 3 point favorite. I don't know why, but we'll take it. Today a radio talk show was playing on my car radio and a Chicago fan called in and wanted to know why "Da' Bears" were favored like that. The local talk host said, "Aw, here that. Those Bear fans are already whining." I say the guy had a lot of guts to call into a Packer backer radio station.
     Well, everyone is clearing their schedules for next Sunday for the game. Grocery stores stock up on party fare, and liquor stores stock up on all the necessary beverages and ice. Restaurants and bars are setting up parties and organizing reservations. Other stores probably might as well shut down. (In fact I heard on the news today that Colders' Furniture Stores will all be closed next Sunday; the staff asked if they could be off for the game.  I'll bet most stores cut their staff down during the hours of the game. A lot of people hold parties in their home; others just want to be at home in their own living room where they can watch the game with total attention and not be disturbed by others comments. Every one has his own preferences for enjoying the football games. The winner of this Green Bay/Chicago Bears rivalry will go on to the SuperBowl against the winner between the New York Jets and the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Super Bowl will be played on February 5, 2011. Wow, it doesn't seem possible that our Green Bay Packers have a good chance of being in Dallas for the Super Bowl in Feb. Go Pack!