Should the Green Bay Packers actually be called “America’s Team”? America is a country of communities — and this is a prime example of a great one.

Lambeau Field

Photo: Green Bay Packers

… though I am not a fan

On Thursday, the Green Bay Packers announced that despite the coronavirus pandemic, they had enough money on hand to pull them through the season if no games are held this year. 

What makes the Packers unique is that they are owned by the community, not by a billionaire man wealthy family or a corporation with few ties to a community. 

The Packers president gave the good news to its stockholders today,

The Packers have $385 million in their reserve fund, and depending on what happens with the 2020 NFL season, they might have to dip into it.

The Packers, without a single deep-pockets owner, long ago established the savings account specifically to ensure the team could cover expenses for one year in case both leaguewide and local revenue dried up.

In a letter sent to team shareholders Thursday, Packers president Mark Murphy said he is hopeful the NFL season will start on time "with full stadiums, but we are also planning for a whole range of contingencies and examining the financial ramifications."

He pointed to the "ample resources available ... to weather these difficult times."

The Packers' reserve fund has dropped since last summer, when the team reported it at $397 million during its annual shareholders meeting in July.

Rob Demovsky, “Packers have $385M in reserve fund to help cover 

expenses, if needed,” ESPN, May 14, 2020

Organization is unique

The Packers are the only team in the National Football League that is owned by the public, a total of 361,256 people. They own collectively five million shares of stock, though no one person can own more than 200,000.

The corporate organization is one that started back in the early years of professional football in the United States,

The Packers are the last vestige of “small town teams” that were once common in the NFL during the 1920s and 1930s (for example, Duluth, Minnesota was home to two NFL teams in the 1920s – the Kelley Duluths from 1923-25 and the Duluth Eskimos from 1926-27). Founded in 1919 by Earl “Curly” Lambeau (thus the name Lambeau Field in which the team presently plays) and George Whitney Calhoun, the Green Bay Packers can trace their lineage to other semi-professional teams in Green Bay dating back to 1896.

The Packers represent – from an organizational standpoint – the only publicly owned franchise in the 32-team NFL.  In fact, the Packers are now the only publicly owned company with a board of directors in American professional sports (although other teams are directly owned by publicly traded companies, such as the New York Rangers (Cablevision), the Seattle Mariners (Nintendo of America), and the Toronto Blue Jays (Rogers Communications)). Instead of the team being owned by one person, partnership, or corporate entity; thus, a “team owner”, the Board of Directors (“Board”) of Green Bay Packers, Inc., a Wisconsin corporation (the “Corporation”), is the organization that serves as the “owner” for the Green Bay Packers football club.  It has been speculated that this is one of the reasons the Green Bay Packers have never been moved from the city of Green Bay, a city of only 102,313 people as of the 2000 census.

Jeffrey O’Brien, “Understanding the corporate structure of the 

Green Bay Packers,” Jeffrey O’Brien Today, Feb. 7, 2011

That definitely makes them a unique professional franchise.

Packers cannot ever leave Green Bay

What makes the team so community-oriented is that they can never leave the small city of Green Bay,

Based on the original “Articles of Incorporation for the (then) Green Bay Football Corporation” put into place in 1923, if the Packers franchise was sold, after the payment of all expenses, any remaining money would go to the Sullivan Post of the American Legion in order to build “a proper soldier’s memorial.” This stipulation was enacted to ensure the club remained in Green Bay and that there could never be any financial enhancement for the shareholders. At the November 1997 annual meeting, shareholders voted to change the beneficiary from the Sullivan-Wallen Post to the Green Bay Packers Foundation, which makes donations to many charities and institutions throughout Wisconsin.

Jeffrey O’Brien, “Understanding the corporate structure of the 

Green Bay Packers,” Jeffrey O’Brien Today, Feb. 7, 2011

Conclusion

The Dallas Cowboys were once called “America’s Team,” but that was always a joke. Imagine thinking that a person like Jerry Jones could be considered the symbol of American success and greatness.

I am not a Packers fan, but their community spirit and organization is more American than Jerry Jones will ever be. In fact, that is how the NFL teams were organized before the NFL became what is today — in 1933. 

It is unique — and interesting — and more American than apple pie.