The Green Bay Packers are embarking on their 104th year of existence, kicking off the season with a battle against the Minnesota Vikings.
As part of What the Wisconsin? — where reporters take on questions about our state, our communities and the people in them — we’re answering questions we’ve seen online about Packers fandom and aspects of their history, such as their name, mascot and home venue.
Submit your question below or at .
Where did they come up with the name ‘Packers’?
The Green Bay Packers got their name from the Acme Meat Packing Company, which long ago closed its doors during World War II.
For those really new to the terminology, “meat packing” refers to slaughtering, processing and packaging livestock for consumption. It’s a feel-good story.
Packers founder Curly Lambeau worked as a shipping clerk for what was then called the Indian Packing Company, and asked for a donation to get equipment and uniforms so he could furnish a football team in 1919. Lambeau also got permission to use the company football field.
Lambeau then named the team after his supporters, with “Acme Packers” on the uniforms after Acme bought the plant in 1921, the same year the team was admitted into the American Professional Football Association.
It was a brief arrangement; Lambeau and his team cut ties with Acme early in 1921 after the company ran into financial trouble, but the name stuck.
More:A look at the history of outdoor theaters in Wisconsin
More:From TYME machine to ope!, here’s why many Wisconsinites say these words and more
Why don’t the Packers have a mascot?
Perhaps it’s the nature of the nickname itself (how do you translate a meat packing reference into … a giant foam mascot?) or the simple inertia of tradition, but the Packers are one of five NFL teams who came into the 2022 NFL season with no mascot. (One of those, the Washington Commanders, is in the process of choosing one as part of its rebrand.)
The San Diego Chargers have an unofficial mascot, but they join the Giants, Jets and Packers in lacking an official mascot.
It wasn’t always this way in Green Bay, though.
In 1984, the Packers made a number of changes coinciding with the arrival of first-year coach Forrest Gregg, who inherited the reins from fellow Packers legend Bart Starr. One of those tweaks (albeit one that emerged as an idea from NFL Properties and its “Huddles” program) was Packy Packer, a sausage-carrying bearded foam giant.
The experiment seemed kind of doomed from the start, however, and Packy Packer was discontinued in 1986.
During the 1984 exhibition season, the man who portrayed Packy Packer, Bruce Manderscheid, had to leave in the second quarter because of heat exhaustion caused by the heavy costume.
In October, Manderscheid said “most of the people who are Packer fans are short, fat butchers with big feet” on Gregg’s weekly television show, which uh, did not play well.
He also took the place of an unofficial mascot known as Gang Green, Oshkosh native Robert Wagner, who had previously been allowed on the field but was kept off once Packy Packer became a thing. Wagner, who had roamed the stands in green clothes, a green wig and face paint since 1978, was arrested during the fourth quarter of a game against the Jets for walking up and down aisles in sections that weren’t where his ticketed seat was located.
“They’re getting pressure from the top, from the front office,” Gang Green said. “I think I do a good service, and I don’t believe in their hearts the fans want me to stop.”
In 1986, the Packers also disbanded its cheerleaders, with college cheerleaders eventually taking their place in the 1990s.
Where did ‘Cheesehead’ come from?
Maybe they don’t have a giant foam man, but they do have giant foam heads. The Cheesehead is about as Wisconsin as it gets, and you’ll find a ton of them in the crowd at Lambeau Field.
But they actually started with a different sports team, the Milwaukee Brewers, debuting in 1987.
The story goes that a fan named Ralph Bruno was supposed to help his mother reupholster a couch at her south side Milwaukee home. When he took apart the couch, he took out the foam inside and thought it looked like cheese.
He took that foam, cut it into a triangle and burned holes into it. He spray-painted it yellow, and the first Cheesehead was born.
At the time, Chicago sports fans used “cheesehead” as a derogatory term in the direction of Badger State fans, so Bruno was employing some self-deprecating humor here.
Bruno’s hat was a hit, and the next time he went to County Stadium in Milwaukee, he brought more. Before long, Bruno opened Foamation Inc., currently based in Walker’s Point. He has created 50 different kinds of Cheeseheads and gives tours of the factory that makes the Cheeseheads.
The concept naturally spread to all Wisconsin sports and became a symbol of Wisconsin pride. That was quite the couch.
Did the Packers ever consider moving to Milwaukee?
The Packers have perhaps flirted with moving permanently to Milwaukee, and the team has had major roots in Milwaukee, including 62 years of playing some home games there. But thanks to the team’s unusual public-stock structure, Green Bay won’t be bailing for a bigger city anytime soon.
In 1933, the Packers played their first home game in Milwaukee at Borchert Field, the now-defunct wooden structure that served as the centerpiece of Milwaukee baseball for decades.
Thereafter, Green Bay played typically two games per year in Milwaukee, with locations at State Fair Park, Marquette Stadium (35th and Clybourn) and most notably at Milwaukee’s County Stadium from 1953 until 1994.
NFL owners, unhappy with the team’s home field of City Stadium (now the location of Green Bay East’s high-school football field), suggested the team should move to Milwaukee permanently and take advantage of County Stadium’s bigger capacity and better amenities. That led to the construction of Green Bay’s new City Stadium in 1957, which eventually bore the name Lambeau Field.
Later, when County Stadium was starting to deteriorate and Lambeau was undergoing top-shelf renovations, the franchise elected to move all home games to Green Bay after the 1994 season.
Many fans remember the final Packers game at County Stadium, captured in their mind’s eye by Brett Favre’s diving touchdown in the final 10 seconds to lift the Packers past Atlanta. The Packers also beat the Rams in the 1967 playoffs at County Stadium en route to Super Bowl I.
To this day, the Packers have two sets of season-ticket holders; two games per year are set aside for legacy Milwaukee season-ticket holders as part of the “Gold Package.”
Will the Packers ever leave Green Bay?
But how does a teeny market like Green Bay hold onto a major pro-sports franchise? It has a lot to do with the team’s unique structure (outlawed for the rest of NFL with the Packers grandfathered in), where it sells stock to fans and allows them to purchase a share of the team — even though fans are told up front that they won’t receive any dividends from owning stock.
Packers fans are routinely ridiculed for their participation in what appears like a scam to the outside world, but the structure also prevents anyone from purchasing a controlling stock in the team and moving it elsewhere. It can also be argued as a cleaner option than, say, teams pressuring municipalities to help fund massive stadium improvements when the Packers can simply open up more stock for fans to purchase and help fund team pursuits.
Thus, the romance of small-town America and a pro-sports franchise can be preserved — and, yes, fans can run around with their expensive pieces of paper calling themselves “owners.”
Which ‘G’ came first, Packers or Georgia?
The 2022 NCAA champion Georgia Bulldogs football team shares what appears to be an identical “Power G” logo on their helmets to that of the Packers, just with a different color scheme of red, black and white. So did the Bulldogs steal the idea from the Packers, or vice versa?
The Packers did use the G logo in the shape of a football first, back in 1961 and designed by St. Norbert College student John Gordon, though subsequent updates of the logo (with more rounded edges) have made it appear closer to the Georgia logo, which debuted in 1964.
Georgia’s design was created separately but had enough similarities to the Packers logo that the university reached out for permission to use it, and the Packers granted the request. There are actually subtle differences between the shapes, but they’re hard to spot.
What’s What the Wisconsin?
Is there something about Milwaukee or Wisconsin that’s been puzzling you? We’ve got experts who know how to find answers to even the smallest (and sometimes the most interesting) questions. When we can, we’ll answer with stories. Submit your question below or at bit.ly/whatthewisconsin.
JR Radcliffe can be reached at (262) 361-9141 or jradcliffe@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JRRadcliffe.
