The Green Bay Packers are the only fan-owned team in professional sports, and once you understand why, you understand a lot about the people of Wisconsin.
In this episode, I sit down with Outagamie County Executive and author Tom Nelson to talk about his new book, The Green and Gold Standard: A People's History of the Green Bay Packers, out September 1st from Triumph Books.
Tom didn't open his book with Curly Lambeau or Vince Lombardi. He opened it with Steve Vander Loop, the janitor at his dad's school who had season tickets and shared them with a kid who'd go on to write the definitive history of this team. That choice tells you everything about the book Tom set out to write: not a highlight reel, but a story about the people who built, grew, and sustained a community unlike any other.
We talk about the fan-ownership structure the NFL later banned everywhere else in the league, because it worked too well to allow anywhere but Green Bay. We talk about Reggie White, who became the named face of the fight for NFL free agency, and how that fight reshaped the entire economics of the sport. And we talk about the chapter Tom calls "Reckoning," which opens just four days after a Super Bowl win, right as Act 10 was tearing this state apart politically.
This book covers a lot of years, but at its heart, it's about how a football team can hold a place together when almost nothing else does.
Tom's foreword was written by the late Bob Harlan, the former Packers president, just months before he passed. Bob called it the book that finally told the team's whole story "in one sitting." I think he was right.
This isn't just a conversation about football. It's about the history, the politics, and the relationships tangled up inside one of the most unusual and enduring institutions in American life.
Pre-order The Green and Gold Standard on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1637278373?
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Of course we always recommend supporting your local bookstore, too.
Keep an eye on Tom's Facebook page for book tour dates and more: https://www.facebook.com/NelsonForWI
Tom Nelson is the Outagamie County Executive and author of Wrecked: The Edmund Fitzgerald and the Sinking of the American Economy and One Day Stronger: How One Union Local Saved a Mill and Changed an Industry.
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Dr. Kristin Lyerly is an OB-GYN based in northeast Wisconsin and a leading voice on healthcare, politics, and the issues shaping our collective future. As the named physician plaintiff in a landmark Wisconsin abortion decision, she brings a perspective to these conversations that goes beyond politics. New episodes drop every week. Subscribe to stay current on reproductive rights, health politics, all things Wisconsin, and everything else that matters.
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