September 8, 2006 - Lambeau Field and Green Bay Packers

OK, this is the last one for a while!

On Friday, September 8, we drove to Green Bay to visit Lambeau Field. We had a tour of the stadium and this was an excellent tour also. Probably 9 out of 10...

I am going to tell this story as I remember it from the tour. If any of you know that the facts are not quite perfectly correct, forgive me, but I think they are close... For those of you who are not real football fans, you'll get the idea.

Curly Lambeau was a Green Bay boy who played football in High School. He went to Notre Dame and played on their varsity team as a starter his Freshman year. When he came home for Christmas vacation he got sick with tonsillitis and could not go back to school in January. When he finally got better he decided to get a job and when September rolled around he was making so much money ($250/month) at the packing plant that he decided not to go back to school but to keep working.

However, he really missed football so he talked his boss into funding $500 for uniforms and supplies for a local football team. The bosses even threw in a practice field next to the plant. The team played other local area teams and was very good. The packing plant was sold. The new owners still supported the team and the new name of the plant was Acme Packing Plant so the team became known as the Acme Packers. In 1921 the plant owners paid $50 to join the brand new National Football League. (The Houston team just paid $800,000,000.00 to join...) Now the Acme Packers played other teams in the league when they weren't working at the packing plant. Eventually the team needed more money and the citizens of the city of Green Bay bought 1000 shares of stock for $5.00 per share and the team became the Green Bay Packers. This has ensured that there was never an individual owner of the team. The citizens of Green Bay own the team. Green Bay has 45,000 residents and is by far the smallest city with a professional football team. However, tickets for the games are sold ONLY on a season basis (although you can buy 3, 5, 7 or all home games for your season ticket) and tickets have been SOLD OUT since 1960. In 1999 it was decided to build a new, bigger, more useful stadium that could be used year round for many different events. The city voted for a 1/4% sales tax (but only be a 6% margin) to help pay for the new stadium and there were a lot of corporate sponsors who put up a lot of money. However, they were still short of the money they needed so every season ticket holder who wanted to keep his full season ticket had to pay $1400 per ticket as a one-time surcharge. The season pass is based on the price of the particular seat times the number of home games the ticket is for. Most of the seats are in the $50-$90 range. You are allowed to pass your season ticket to any relative as far away as a first cousin in your will. There is a waiting list of 75,000 people for season tickets and only about 25 tickets are relinquished each year. The new stadium holds 72,000 people.

The private boxes are between $60,000 - $160,000 per year with a 5 to 7 year lease. There is a waiting list of about 80 companies for the boxes but they are almost never given up by the corporations that hold them.

The new stadium has an Atrium with food areas and 2 Pro Shops. The Pro Shops in the stadium grossed about $17.5 million in 2005 - the most of any Pro Shop in the country.

The second floor is Curly's Pub and Dining Room.

The fourth floor is the Legend's Floor and has the private corporate boxes.

All of the administrative offices for the team are in the stadium. Also, all of the training rooms, classrooms, health care, diet control, etc. are in the building so the players do everything right there.

We got to run out of the tunnel to the field (but not ON to the field) just like the players do for the game. It was fun because they put on a recording of all of the fans yelling and cheering and the announcer saying "Here come the Green Bay Packers!" They have removed some of the bricks from the tunnel of the old stadium so that they new players can run across the same bricks that the Legends of the Past have run across.

We spent quite a bit of time in the Hall of Fame. It was VERY well done and fun.

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