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Titletown U.S.A. – The Pack Was Back in 1961
By December 1961, it had been 17 years since the Packers last won the 1944 league championship under Coach Curly Lambeau. As the New Year’s Eve championship game at New City Stadium approached, the people of Green Bay wanted to remind everyone that its team already had six championships under its belt. Their team, under Coach Vince Lombardi, would go on to defeat the New York Giants 37-0, renewing their pride as Titletown USA.
The Titletown claim was partly a response to big city writers who often dismissed Green Bay. In December 1939, a New York sports editor wrote “Great as Green Bay is as a team, loyal as the fans of the little town are, it can’t go on indefinitely being a big league city. It isn’t.” On December 10, 1939, four days after this quote was published in the Green Bay Press-Gazette, the Packers beat the New York Giants 27-0 for their fifth league championship.
The Packers as a “Community Property”: Hearts, Minds and Wallets
From the beginning, the Green Bay Packers faced the challenge of being competitive on the field AND financially solvent. As the pro football team from the smallest city, they needed to fill stadium seats to make it financially worthwhile for other teams to play in Green Bay. To fill seats, they needed to win games. Starting in the 1920s, they worked relentlessly to build a fan base beyond Green Bay. Over the years, they promoted season ticket sales to people in other Wisconsin communities, played some games in Milwaukee, and worked to connect with young fans and women. (Pictured: Andrew Turnbull, one of the owners of the Green Bay Press-Gazette Newspaper, President of the Packers from 1923 to 1928)
Team Historian, Cliff Christl has written that “the advantage the Packers had over most of the other small-town teams that failed was this small cadre of farsighted local businessmen who recognized the infinite value of keeping Green Bay in the big leagues and did whatever was necessary to keep it there.” Green Bay Press-Gazette owner Andrew Turnbull was one of these businessmen. Others included wholesale grocer Lee Joannes, attorneys John Kittell, Gerald Clifford and Frederick Trowbridge, and Doctor W.W. Kelly.
Stock shares sold in 1923 and 1935 helped the Packers out of financial tight spots. These shares were mostly sold to insiders like the businessmen mentioned above. When the Packers faced insolvency once again in 1949, however, the strategy for a 1950 sale of shares was different. In 1950, the team’s Board of Directors decided to sell shares to community members from all walks of life, broadening the team’s ownership and making the community the owners of the team.
1923 Green Bay Football Corporation Stock Sale Certificate
1950 Green Bay Packers, Inc. Stock Sale Certificate
