Welcome to Lombardi's Den

It's playoff time again and our Green Bay Packers will host Ice Bowl II. Hopefully, it won't be 35 below and take a quarterback sneak by a one-legged Aaron Rodgers to win the game, but I'll take a win any way we can get it. But a blowout would be nice. I'm not a fan of the Dallas Cowboys.

 

This is my inaugural blog as I enter the arena of the Packers blogosphere that is populated by more local and more intelligent observers than myself, but I think (being a legend in my own mind) I have something to offer and hopefully my thoughts will generate some comments that lead to a lively discussion of all that is Green Bay Packers.
 

A little bit about myself. I am a freelance sports writer in Southern Illinois that has never lived and only visited twice in Green Bay. By all rights I guess I should have been St. Louis Cardinals or Chicago Bears (heaven forbid) fan, but fate made we a fan of the greatest sports franchise in the history of sports. I can't imagine rooting for any other football team.

I'm in my early 60's and became a Packerbacker on Sunday, December 19, 1965 when I was 12. We had come into town for Sunday dinner with my mother's parents, my grandparents, and at some point I asked my Grandpa who's the best team in the NFL. He pointed to the TV and said, "That one right there," as the Packers were playing the San Francisco 49ers in the doubleheader game.

I don't remember if a bolt of lightning hit me or I had an epiphany. I only remember that the result of that act made me a lifelong Packerbacker. By the way, I prefer Packerbacker, instead of Packer Nation. Every team, pro and college, is a nation of some sort, so to my mind Packer Nation is just one of a 1000 similar groups of fans. However, the name Packerbacker is an unique as the Packers fans themselves. I like the idea of being unique.

I was lucky to have been a Packerbacker for the last years of the Lombardi Era and the first two Super Bowls and not so lucky to have gone through the Wilderness Years when the Packers became a joke and a threat by coaches and general managers to keep their players in line or they would be traded to Green Bay as a punishment.

I've never wavered. I watched games when I could and read everything I could including subscribing to Packer Report. Remember this was all before the internet and where I live is Cardinal (now Rams) and Bear country. In fact, I live in a college town where over half of the student population are from Chicago. It can be rough on game days back in the day when the only games you could watch at the bars were the Packer-Bears games. There is a story about that I will post later.

I've been a working sports writer since the fall of 1998 and a regular on a sports radio show, so I think I do have some professional prospective to offer my opinions. And I do have opinions on the current state of the Green Bay Packers.

So welcome aboard and share your opinions on my opinions and others. But remember be respectful (even to Bears' fans even though they are never respectful to us) and lets have some fun.