FanNation - The Republic of Sport

I have been sitting here recently, poring through the a recent score at the local thrift store. The book (which will be a future feature, for sure, of the FanNation Book Club) is titled When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi by David Maraniss, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author formerly of the Washington Post. The book has me thinking about the NFL team I grew up fantasizing about, the then-once-feared Green Bay Packers. Based on today's dominant win in Soldier Field in the oldest rivalry in the NFL, it would seem that the Packers are living up to their tradition as one of the preeminent teams in professional football. But what this book has me thinking most about is this: what builds a team's success?

Growing up in the 1980s and early 1990s, I had little recent history to fantasize about when it came to the Green Bay Packers. I remember the greatest thrill of my pre-adolescent years was recognizing one Packer vividly, ol' Rich Moran, because his name was the same name as the "town" (one school, one fire station, one post office, and five Park Service family houses) which bore the same name as the guard from Boise who was drafted out of San Diego State in the third round of the 1985 NFL Draft. But my father remembered, having been born as Lombardi and the Packers were rising to their second dynastic moment in NFL lore. The one player he remembered most vividly, as I remember it, was Ray Nitschke, lining up at middle linebacker and donning number 66.

In this book by Maraniss, he recalls in the 1967 NFL Championship which preceded the inaugural and as-yet-named Super Bowl, the game which will go down in the annals of history as the Ice Bowl on page 420-421: "Ray Nitchke, the emotional leader of the defense and special teams, had lost his voice. His toes were numb. [Packers radio commentator Ray] Scott watched him as he rumbled off the field this one last time, his fist clenched, and yelled hoarsely to the offense, 'Don't let me down! Don't let me down!'" A simple two-dollar find at the local thrift store can reveal so much if you only spend the two dollars on the CORRECT item there...

Today's game got me thinking even more about the middle linebacker position. I'm a great fan of the Wisconsin Badgers, having been born in Stevens Point (where the Packers used to hold training camp when my parents were still but babies); I am also a fan of the Oregon Ducks, as a current employee of the University of Oregon. I guess what prompts that disclosure is the fact that I must subvert collegiate loyalties to support the middle linebacker position of the current incarnation of the Packers...

Nick Barnett has been the heart of the Green Bay defense, the vaunted heir to the Nitschke seat if you will, for what is now his sixth season. Nick is a great guy -- but he is a Beaver, a four-year starter for Oregon State University. Now the Beavers and the Ducks, which have grapple annually in the Civil War since 1894, are understandable intrastate rivals... and as an employee of the University of Oregon for nearly three years now, I have been ingrained by the students with which I work to have a natural aversion (despite my Beaver-loving boss) to all things Oregon State...

I've gotten past this... in a half-dozen years (long before I even cared about things like the Civil War game), Barnett has become an integral part of the NFL team about which I most care. Yet he is now injured for the season, a torn knee ligament in last week's game against Minnesota rendering his abilities hindered. So who, pray tell, would step in for the integral cog in the Green Bay defense? None other than the dynamo from "The Ohio State University", A.J. Hawk, who moved from his weakside position to man the Nitschke hole left by Barnett's injury...

This, too, had me thinking... a born Badger fan, dad reflexively had me hating Buckeye and Wolverine and Gopher etc. etc. just as he had me loathing Lions and Vikings and Bears (oh, my!)... so to see A.J. Hawk filling that space was even worse, on a collegiate-rivalry level, than seeing Barnett there...

Which got me thinking... Nitschke was an ILLINOIS boy! So even DAD was willing to subvert his natural distaste for certain scholastic athletes as soon as they pulled on the green and gold! After all, as Maraniss has revealed in his 504-page tome about Lombardi, while the old guy SEEMED gruff, he in the end was one of the foremost progressive thinkers of his time; while his persona inspired the admiration of conservative types, he was nonetheless a silent champion of equality not only in the realm of race but also regarding sexual orientation and dissident voices.

So as you watch your favorite team, recognize the importance of the man in the middle... while the offense inevitably appears more sexy in the highlights, it is the Nitschkes of the world who matter just as much if not more in the building of a championship team... regardless of where the old buggers hail from...