And that is the absence of an owner, a greedy owner.
That is what happens with every author team.
Think about the bears.
The bears want to move from Chicago to northern Indiana.
Like that would never happen here.
Hello and welcome to the Dr. Kristen Lyderly Show.
I'm Dr. Kristen Lyderly and today we're doing something a little bit different.
We're talking football, but stick with me because this isn't really a conversation about just football.
It's about the people who built, grew and sustained a community unlike any other in this country and all of the history, politics and relationships tangled up inside of it.
If you live in these parts, you already know the Green Bay Packers aren't just a team.
They are practically, I'm using Bob Harlan's words here, a civic religion.
And today's
guest
just wrote the book on it, literally.
Tom Nelson is the Out of Gaby County executive.
He is an author and somebody who has spent years living at the intersection of Wisconsin politics and Wisconsin identity.
His brand new book, The Green and Gold Standard, A People's History of the Green Bay Packers, drops September 1st from Triumph Books, and it already has the seal of approval from the late great Bob Harlan himself who wrote the foreword.
This is not Tom's first book though, it's his third book.
And pre-sales are underway, the pre-season is going, Packer Nation is fired up, there is no better moment for this conversation.
Tom, welcome back to the show!
Great to be back on.
Thank you for the first kickoff interview for the book tour.
You know that I love you for so many reasons, but one is because you're awesome and two is because you write these really thoughtful books that seem like they're about one thing, but then there's so much more interwoven into what you're doing.
Your last book about the Edmund Fitzgerald wasn't just about the disaster, it was about the people and the failures of our government that created this disaster and cost all of these lives.
That's why I'm so excited about this book, because there have been a lot of things written about the Packers, but this one is different.
Why?
This was not the original book idea.
I started with and I had been pitching this concept and you touched on this and this was what drew me to the book project itself and I think why the Packers have so many fans not just around here but around the globe and that is trying to use and explain the Packers example of how it is organized and how it is run how it is owned and how we can replicate that model
elsewhere in society in civic society in politics in business government and so forth and I had pitched it to this academic press and they thought this is a great idea we want to do it and then another press got back to me that also had this early proposal and they said this is interesting to you know
you know, to be clear this is interesting though, but why just write a history in the Packers?
It's such a compelling story.
I'm like, well, I'm not
going
And he says, actually, no one really has.
You've had books about, you know, Lombardi, about Super Bowl One, about these different eras and players and coaches, but there really hasn't been this 1919 to now complete our historical narrative on the team.
And sure enough,
he was in fact correct and the result of that was the beginning of this project.
But the project doesn't begin at the beginning.
It doesn't begin in 1919.
The book actually opens at Janssen Elementary School in Combined Locks.
Why start there?
So if I write
more books which I hope to do I'll have to have like combined locks in there somehow no matter what it's about to me if it's about rainforest have to do that it's kind of like Alfred Hitchcock where he's always in some scene in all his movies combined locks is always in a Tom Nelson book
that's right you're putting combined locks on the map because a lot of people don't know it's like it's in the Fox Valley
um
So the reason why I began there and it and and it's kind of the heart and soul of the book so whether it's the Fitzgerald book I wrote or one day stronger there's always a personal connection I think people who write about something force have some sort of.
personal connection.
There's a reason why they're writing this book.
You know, they have some sort of relationship to, you know, they work there and so forth.
And it starts in Janssen Elementary School because that's where my dad started his mission church back in 1980.
And the reason why the Nelson's came to the Fox Valley.
And at Janssen Elementary School Sunday mornings, the janitor would open it up.
and Steve Vanderloop.
He was one of the first people that we met when my family moved here back in 1980.
He was a janitor at Janice Elementary School, and he had Packers season tickets.
And
noon,
we
And my dad wants people, my mom doesn't because it's a school night, but we still go.
And that is one of the most memorable, if not the most memorable, Money and I game, and one of the most memorable games in history, in Packers history.
And so that really was the beginning.
That was the love affair that really ignited.
That was like seven years old.
And so I always remember that.
I'm eternally grateful to how Steve Vanderloop brought this into our lives, that has brought so many people together.
It's been such an important part of my life and many others.
And he's actually one of the co-dedicates.
of the book.
I dedicate the book to both Steve Vanderloop and then Lee Remmel.
And I can get into that later.
But that's how it starts out.
So thanks for bringing that up.
That
kind
Yeah, well, this is so much more about the people than it is about the Packers actually like the Packers actually just
provide the framework, but it's the people.
And that's why the subtitle is a people's history.
So here's my question.
After spending years with this material, what do you think the fans ownership structure?
Because the Packers have over half a million shareholders.
They don't have a majority owner like everybody else does.
What does that do for a community beyond just like the sentiment?
Like I'm a Packers owner.
What does it really mean?
And I think that is just so powerful.
that there are other aspects to it though, but that really is what serves as this cohesive bind.
You mentioned, you know, Bob Harlan talking about a civic religion.
I mean, that's what it is.
It is something that brings everyone together in the introduction.
I make the point about how you have liberals, conservatives, urban, rural, everyone.
It doesn't matter who it is, like everyone seems to come together.
And I think that's very interesting.
poignant in Wisconsin, which is the bullseye.
of swing states and northeast wisconsin is one of audi game in brown county are consistently one of ten bellwether counties for presidential contests and so even though we are divided right down the middle there's this thing called the green wave hackers and it has a lot to do with the ownership structure but not a lot of people know exactly what that is so i think what makes it really strong and enduring is not what it is but what it doesn't have and that is
the absence of an owner, a greedy owner.
That is what happens with every author team.
Think about the bears.
The bears want to move from Chicago to northern Indiana.
Like that would never happen here.
And so even though the bears are almost as old as the Packers, it is the longest running rivalry in the NFL.
If we have like the McCulfskies or whoever the owner is and they want to move that, I mean, think about the connection that you currently have to the team.
Like your heart would be broken and that has never happened and it never will.
And so it's a solid relationship.
You know, you don't have to worry your spouse, your boyfriend, girlfriend, what are they gonna do?
No, this is a very strong fidelity and ours has been.
And I think that has a lot to do with the magic.
And part of that is growing up with it like you and I did.
Part of it, I can't explain.
Like I was in Hawaii for a meeting and I went down for breakfast in the hotel.
There was one seat available and I sat down there and the guy next to me was watching the Packer game on his iPad.
And I said to him, that's my team.
That's my town.
And he looked at me and with this strong European accent said, oh, I love the Packers.
I have their stock.
And
as it turns out, he
has friends in Depeer because internationally apparently you can't buy the stock.
So he has friends in Depeer.
peer who bought stock for him and he gets the NFL ticket in Belgium or wherever he lives so that he can follow because he loves the feel of the Packers.
Otherwise, never had any connection, but there is just something about this sense of community that pulls us
over the
someplace.
just
I travel with Packer Gurion and I always anticipate somebody's going to come up to me and give me a high five or knuckles because
that is
like there's
a
connection.
So let's talk about Bob Harlan because Bob Harlan wrote your forward.
Bob Harlan, longtime Green Bay Packer president.
This was really the last thing he did.
before he passed in March.
Wow, Tom, how did that all come together?
Well, first of all, his passing is a major loss for the area, for the NFL, for the Packers diaspora.
He is the reason why the Packers, I believe, are still in Green Bay.
It's a reason why I have named the modern era, the Harlan era.
So you've got the Lambo era, the...
the Lombardi era and the Harlan era that goes back to approximately 1991-1992 and he is as kind and generous as he seems from television.
I tracked him down because I had a subscription to Spokio and I had left a message at at his house he didn't get it but his son Mike Harlan did and passed along to his dad who was in Florida or someplace wherever they were winter
and he called me back.
He says, Tom Nelson, this is Bob Harlan from the Green Bay Packers.
Yes, I'm quite aware of who Bob Harlan is.
And I asked him, if I could interview him, he said, yes, it just was a great, we spoke for about an hour.
And then when the book came together, I'm thinking, be nice to have a forward.
So Bob agreed to do forward and why not call him?
So I called and he said, right away, yes, absolutely.
I sent him a train.
draft the least at the point so he won't you know because I wasn't gonna ask him just like write something site on scene so he read it and I still have this voicemail message in my phone I will never erase it and he has said Tom Nelson Bob Harlead here fantastic I just want to say this was one of the best pack one of the best pack of books I think you've done just a supremely fantastic you know just a terrific job and
You know, I called him back and I'm talking to him and he's saying the same thing and then all of a sudden I hear another voice and it's his wife Madeline who picked up the phone.
You know how like when you call like your grandparents, they have like you're calling a landline and they're you know, one's in the bedroom, one's in the living room, they're talking to and Madeline says, you know, Tom, I just want to say that this was an excellent book and thank you so much for doing that.
So I don't know if they are always very happy, generous people, though.
but it's something that meant the world to me.
And so he wrote this forward and it leads off the book.
It sounds like it meant the world to him too.
Let's talk about another Packer legend, Reggie White.
I had no idea when Regi White, because I wasn't that into like the mechanics.
You know, he was just an icon to me.
But you write that Regi White became the named face of the player's fight for free agency.
Basically
the NFL's version of a landmark rights case.
Was
there
a moment when you were writing that chapter when you saw him less as a Hall of Fame pass rusher and more as a legal figure who changed the league's entire economic structure essentially?
Yeah,
in general and I
think if you wanted if you asked him today if you talk to his family you know football player figurehead leader I think that they would say leader he was a leader because he was a pastor he was a leader because he was captain of of I think two teams plus the USFL and
He was the tip of the spear in the 1993 settlement and case that brought that brought both Free agency limited free agency and also salary caps and that of course was very important for small market teams like the Packers to have that structure to balance out the shared revenue Or to augment the shared revenue.
So yeah, he was he was the face that he was a figure and during
in the 1987 strike he was the NFL, he was playing for the Philadelphia Eagles, and he actually put himself in front of a bus to stop replacement players.
This is someone who, you know, knew what he believed, believed in it, and he lived it.
He lived it to a tee, and he did not apologize.
He was the genuine article, he was the real deal.
We all loved Reggie White.
Did you know?
Do you know about the area code?
Because that was back in the day.
We were 414 up here.
But it was soon after Reggie White had, I think, retired that we had to change area codes.
I
I don't know who comes up with making the changes for the area code, though.
But it's like, you know, don't dial 414 anymore.
Think of Reggie White.
Dial 920.
Because it was like sometime in 95 or 96, you know, when it was peak packers time.
Yes.
Well, in the olden days, everybody had dials, so they wanted the short numbers because they were easier.
Yep.
But,
you
know,
with the buttons, it's different.
920.
Every time I see our area code, I think of Reggie White.
It's kind of
neat.
Yeah, it is.
So, research.
Let's talk about how you researched this.
In your note on sources, you lay out a strict hierarchy.
First hand accounts first, then the primary documents, then the experts, then the secondary sources, and you say that you discounted other Packer's books that had factual errors.
You are precise and you write truthful, honest books.
So was there a moment when that rigor forced you to cut a story that you really wanted?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah,
There were.
I'm glad you brought that up because there was a story about Johnny Blood McNally.
But there was also another one that never that I never found in a book.
It was mentioned some article and or maybe on a blog.
And that was in the 1986 game.
in Chicago when Jim McMahon was body slammed.
And
was like the
I mean, we had, it was ugly, it was a bad name, Charles Taylor.
Charles Martin he was kicked out for he was suspended for two games, which was the most severe penalty Pete Roselle ever levied on a player and evidently after the game Brian Noble Went over to the Bears locker room and apologized
on behalf of Charles Martin and the team and their behavior and so forth.
And I thought, that is something that Brian Noble would absolutely have done.
He was a class act.
So I called around, I searched, I did everything, and I couldn't find confirmation about that.
So that's an example.
And, you know, it wasn't really until recently, until Cliff Crystal, who is the team historian, who was also reporter for a long time for the Presquizet.
for the journal Sentinel, and he wrote this four page encyclopedia set.
And what was important about this is up until that point, there was never a standard.
There was never this standard that took the Packers the entire history, like factually, year by year, very authoritatively.
And so I think that's part of the reason why there had been a lot of
books that had a really good factual basis just because there wasn't a lot of material out there and what I did in this book when we talk about first-hand accounts a lot of it was in the early early days a guy by the name of George Calhoun and he was a co-founder along with Lambeau so Lambeau was the one who played he put the people together he recruited he got the schedule set up but then George Calhoun who was an editor at the Green
Prescazette, he did the promotional in the PR.
He was the one who ginned up the news.
He's the one who made calls to other NFL teams to support the Packers coming to play there.
So he did double duty.
He was writing articles about the Packers for the Prescazette, and he was also doing promotional work for the team that he co-founded.
So I relied a lot on George Calhoun, but in this case, you kind of had a conflict of interest where the guy who's doing the PR is doing the covering.
So I had to check a lot
a lot of that against the NFL records to make sure that those things lined up.
And there was no reason for him to lie.
He didn't.
But I think just as a practice, when you see a possible conflict there, you need to check multiple sources.
And that's the reason why I did first hand accounts and then looking at other primary source material.
And that was very important in telling the story in the early years, because it was long ago.
There wasn't a lot of books written on that.
lot on articles, on interviews.
things like that, but that's also the formative years, going through the 1920s, struggling through a stock sale there, going through the 1930s through another one, losing Lambo, and doing another third stock issuance in 1950s.
So it was very, very important to get those early decades right because it creates the narrative foundation to go on and talk about the 1950s, the Lombardi era, the 1980s, and so forth.
Knowing all of the different pieces that you pull into this story, how you weave it all together, did you ever find yourself going down a rabbit hole and then just having to stop and refocus so that you could get this project done?
And since you've run for office before running for the assembly, when you're knocking on doors and you're really drilling into it, you're wondering, like, how long should I keep knocking on doors?
Well, it's not election day, so you have to keep going, though.
But at some point, you start hearing your buzz, right?
You'll be at a grocery store and they'll be like, oh, yeah, you came to my door.
And so you kind of see your name recognition, but it's repeating.
And so in research, you'll get a critical mass where you'll read a story one place and then
another place and then you're like okay I've gone all the way down that I need to tell this if I'm telling this complete arc narrative I'm only gonna be able to go so far down and there was just so many interesting subplots and personalities and games that you never really wanted to go too far because it would take away from the next season or
or the next draft and so forth.
So it's not like, I think sometimes for biographies, people write, you have someone who's very interesting, but they're only very interesting for one part of their life.
And you
It takes an author with discipline, Tom.
That's you.
Thank you.
Let's talk about the Reckoning.
The chapter titled Reckoning opens just four days after a Super Bowl win with Scott Walker and Act 10 politically tearing Wisconsin apart.
So we had this big joyous occasion and then this really troubling occasion just two and a half hours south of this.
Why does this football team, the Green Bay Packers, hold our state together in a tense political environment?
Really, that's been happening since that time.
It is the thing that we set everything aside and unify over every Sunday or Wednesday or Tuesday or Thursday or Friday.
It helps explain why it keeps us together, but above all, it is so important.
And I think when Bob Harlan talks about a civic religion to have an aspect of our day-to-day life,
of, you know, of civil society that brings us together.
I mean, imagine if we didn't have the Packers, how much more we were at our throats.
You know, you go to a family gathering.
What do you talk about?
Politics?
No, I can't
talk
All day
Right, right, right, right.
So, so many aspects of life and facets the Packers can come up.
But, you know, juxtaposed with winning the Super Bowl and then a couple days later for the
that remember the Act 10 protest then Governor Scott Walker talked about how he was going to drop the bond, which was Act 10 that would strip collective bargaining rights for almost all public sector unions.
There were huge protests that within a couple of days of the announced legislation that were peaking at 100,000 or so.
And that was right after this joyous moment.
So it seemed, I mean, it was just really surreal.
Like, we went from, you know, brothers in arm, this is up to like, okay, it's back to war, you know.
But, you know, things came back together.
We got through that.
It was very, very tumultuous.
But that's the reason why I opened up that chapter, because I thought that was a really good way to juxtapose the two phenomenon.
the packers that brings community together in politics that sometimes too often divides us.
The energy, though, was kind of similar in many ways.
We were living in Madison at the time, and we brought the kids down to the Act 10 protests.
And they were peaceful, and we were walking around the Capitol, going inside.
People had drums.
There were so many people everywhere.
But it was still that sense of we are here together to do good for our state.
And the Packers have that same kind of energy.
And it was perfect.
I mean, it really was a good antidote to that, antidote.
Because if you want to somehow fill that
We are going to family gatherings.
You're going to the water cooler at work You're gonna be walking the dog.
There has to be something there has to be something we can't just like stare at each other or stare each other get really angry We need to have something to bring us together and that's what the Packers do and so it's not something that is so enjoyable to look forward to in the fall on Sundays or Mondays Thursdays, but also something that takes us throughout the year and
We know that the Packers figure prominently in our lives year round.
Open the newspaper and you have not weekly, you know, day by day coverage of the Packers during the NFL season, but year round.
I don't think, I mean, you have to go back, I don't know, decades when there was a single day, when there was not a single Packers story in a sports section in the Prescosette or Postcrescent.
Yeah, it is.
core to not just our need for sports around here, but it is our economy.
It is our
especially in Green Bay, but really all across Northeast Wisconsin and all of Wisconsin buys into it.
So incredibly important.
We talked about the Packers.
pulling people together, being political, how complex that is.
Let's talk about the players.
You note that Aaron Rodgers was one of the most outspoken NFL quarterbacks when he defended Colin Kaepernick's right to protest and that he directed the team's social justice giving toward legal action of Wisconsin.
What does that chapter say about athletes?
and political speech, especially in these challenging times.
Because second to last chapter is called, okay, so let's put them together.
So redemption is chapter 12.
And it's called redemption because Aaron Rodgers was in Brett's Bret Farr shadow from 2005 to 2008.
There's a lot of controversy in summer 2008, whether or not
Farve would come back or not the fans were of one mind and the front office namely Ted Thompson was of a different mind talk Ted Thompson prevailed over popular opinion and we are so much better off because of what Ted Thompson did but it's called redemption because two years later or three after three seasons
Aaron Rodgers is in the Super Bowl.
And even though, for me, the Excited Seasons were in the 1990s, and I remember all these comebacks with Favre, and it's just, I love those games.
It is my favorite era far and away.
But looking at the numbers, which is everything, you know, Aaron Rodgers was by the numbers the best quarter
was the best quarterback in Packers history, with comebacks, win-loss, with his on passer rating.
And I spent a lot of time talking about him, but he was a really interesting...
Yeah, still is and very multi-dimensional and I thought how he stood up for Colin Kaepernick and that I mean he was radioactive, you know still is there were very very few people and like Reggie White Reggie White, you know, you know believed in what he believed and he lived thing and the same thing with Aaron Rodgers in that
respect.
So in that way, I saw a lot of Reggie White and Aaron Rodgers because Reggie White took very controversial positions when he was leading the NFL, when he put his name on the lawsuit, when he secured free agency for workers, when he sustained small market teams like the Packers with salary caps.
This is something that Aaron Rodgers felt very deeply about and he knew going out there talking about Colin Kaepernick in a positive light was something that not everyone was going to like and it really took guts.
Yeah, I don't think Aaron Rodgers really cares what other people think.
And that's what makes him very multi-dimensional.
I mean, he is not one political shade.
He is all over.
And say what you will about him.
He's someone that's doing it because he believes in that.
And he knows that when, even though you are someone who is very well known,
whose livelihood is dependent on your public persona and that every time you make a controversial comment or stake out a controversial issue, your capital falls that much.
And so some players and some people in general are kind of sloppy about that, but then some people kind of take, think about this, look, I know that I'm putting my name at risk.
This is not going to really help me though, but I believe in this issue.
And you have to cry to him for that.
Yeah, that's character, for sure, whether you agree or not.
I'm going to say three names, and then I'm going to ask you about succession.
Wolf, Thompson, Gudekinst, Favre, Rogers, Love.
Now we've got Micah Parsons.
Does Green Bay just get lucky with this?
When you look at how many quarterbacks the Bears have had versus how many quarterbacks we've had,
It is kind of crazy that we've had so much consistency and success.
This was an instance, one of the unsung heroes in the front office, the Packers, is a guy by the name of Sam Seal.
and he played for the Raiders under Ron Wolf back in the 80s and he became a scout and Ron Wolf hired him as a scout he went from junior position to the west coast and then staying back in Green Bay but he was he was the person that saw Aaron Rodgers that saw Bud
Jordan Love, that we know once from Utah, once from California, so that was part of his area.
And in both of those instances, he says, you know, Aaron Roger, he started out slowly, started community college, but look, this guy is the real deal.
Cal Berkeley had a good program, but it wasn't like top-top tier SEC so he wasn't really getting a lot and then you have Utah State for for Jordan Love and Those are two examples of how you know We didn't get lucky in the sense that we had good staff We've consistently had good staff because of the culture people want to play you know people want to play for the Packers people want to work for the Packers and That's a really good example about how you know Sam seal who's putting thousands and miles on
his car in the west coast he sees someone says you know we need to invest on him and credit Ron Wolf and the front office following
Bob Harlan and Bob Harlan took over.
He said, look, Ron Wolf, I'm going to let you do whatever you want to do.
Okay.
And that was a mistake that the Packers had made before and that the, that the, that the executive board that didn't have any political, that did, that didn't have any sports experience.
That was micromanaging things, which is a reason, a big reason why they didn't do well in the 1970s and 1980s.
So Sam Seal presents solid cases.
Now where the Packers
did get lucky was in 2005 with Ted Thompson.
Aaron Rodgers was supposed to go early.
And then one by one, he sat there in the green room and, you know, further on, I mean, there was like maybe a pick 12 or 13.
Ted Thompson decided this is the guy we want.
They weren't, I think they had needs and defense in the defensive line, but they really didn't have a lot of good players at that position.
And so he had made a decision midway through that first round that he was going to take him, and that this was going to be the successor to Brett Farr.
He got lucky because he didn't try it up and he happened to be there and Rodgers happened to be there at the very end.
So I would say that that was, you know, ice in the veins.
You got to see kind of got lucky with that.
And then going back to Brett Favre, that was he was overlooked, but
He's someone that Ron Wolf had his eye on, Mike Holmgren had his eye on, a lot of people.
He came out of the class in 1991 and there really weren't a lot of big names.
He came from a small program.
But Ron Wolf knew a good quarterback.
And that was really Ron Wolf's signature is when he was drafting, if there's a good quarterback on the board, you draft him.
And so that's the reason why there are about a half a dozen quarterbacks that he drafted in the 1990s that went on to start for other NFL teams.
So Ron Wolf put a lot of thought into.
into Brett Favre, and when it came available, he told Bob Harlan the first decision I make is a very controversial one.
I'm going for this no-name guy named Brett Favre.
And Bob Harlan, he could have said, okay, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that.
You can't do that.
Nobody wants to do that.
But he stuck to his guns.
And he let Ron Wolf make that very consequential trade.
So it's not luck.
It's leadership.
and smarts.
That's what I hear.
Yeah.
I think it's, I think it's some kismet and I think it's just, you know, being there at the right.
But, you know, that's how it is for everything in life.
I mean, not every single major occurrence or good thing that happens is strictly because someone made the right decision.
There's a lot of things that kind of line up.
A really good example is the Democratic primary for governor.
You could never have thought about that.
And David ran a very good campaign.
But if you kind of go back,
There were a lot of things that were way beyond his control way beyond most people's control that really had to go right But you still give in this case David credit for when the nomination Just like you give credit to Ted Thompson to Ron Wolf and to everyone for making these brilliant decisions
Speaking of brilliant decisions the brilliant decision of the Packers early on to be a
team owned by the community is something no other NFL team can do because the NFL actually banned it.
Yes.
So what does it say that the most successful version of a sports franchise is the one that the industry made sure could never happen again?
Well, that really confirms what we all know, which is these pro sports leagues, they're about money.
You know, the NFL generates about $22-23 billion worth of revenue every year.
If every team were to sell overnight, there would be a transaction of a quarter of a trillion dollars.
So this is big, big business.
So of course, this clash of billionaires, they don't want to leave
any money on the table.
And that's what the Packers are doing.
The Packers are worth like eight billion dollars and no one is making money off of them.
And they look at that and that is just wrong.
I can tell you no matter what they say in public, people like Jerry Jones or the Glazers in Tampa Bay, they do not like the Packers for that reason.
And so the proof is in the pudding.
They grandfathered the Packers.
They tried to disrupt this organizational structure many times, especially in the early years.
And the Packers stuck to their guns.
They went up against almost insurmountable odds, whether it was bankruptcy, whether it was receivership, whether it was the NFL working with the city fathers and mothers of Milwaukee, trying to bring the Packers down there.
It's just amazing.
So it's not just a story of.
how the people came together, persevered and won.
But it is really getting knocked down and standing up and fighting and doing it again.
Even though there was always an easy out to sell, they never did it.
That would have been an easy way out.
Nine times out of 10, they probably would have or somebody else would.
So the deeper you go into the story, the more appreciation you have for really what this team means.
And I was attracted to this.
not because I'm this mega sports fan, I love the Packers, but how this civic religion, what this is in the context of our society of what makes the state so special, that's what drew me to this topic.
It's the Packers, it's the sports, it's the leadership.
Is it socialism, Tom?
Are the Green Bay Packers an example of socialism?
If you look at how the NFL
runs.
It runs more like a, you know, a democratic socialist economy in Scandinavia than any other industry in a capitalist system.
I mean, no one has this, that they have shared revenue.
Think about that.
It's a redistributive economic scheme.
So it's very unique, and you can see those overt themes.
And that's not just a conclusion I'm making.
That's just what
what is happening.
No other industry has that type of arrangement than within the NFL.
So in that respect, it's not just the NFL has this outlier, this nonprofit.
corporation, but everyone, whether you have a team in New York or Buffalo or Los Angeles or Green Bay, it's you add up all the TV revenue and other aspects of the shared revenue formula and you divide it evenly among 32 teams.
And that's how much money you get.
Nowhere else in this country do you have a setup like that.
Yeah, it is great for the City of Green Bay, for the team, for us, for the fans.
In the epilogue, you write about how the team has kind of, as you were writing this, the team kind of mirrored your own journey as a Packer fan in the 80s and the 90s coming of age.
I was one of those kids too, like you just knew as a kid that you were a Packer fan the same way that you were a Wisconsinite or you were a member of your family.
It was just that core to who we are.
So was there a point as you were writing this book where it stopped being about the team and it started being a little bit about you?
I've
always looked back at my life and just how fortunate, how blessed I've been to grow up in a community like this, to live in a community like this, to have such a loving family.
And this is one aspect.
This is the manifestation of the relationship I had with my dad.
with my cousins, with friends, neighbors, and so forth.
And so these are really special times.
And so, of course, I'm not spending 13 chapters talking about thumbnails in the 1980s, but it's a jumping off point.
And I use this story to, I mean, I use the subject, the Packers, to tell a bigger story that when I read it, it helps explain some aspects of my life.
And I know that other people are gonna read this and hopefully they finish reading and they're gonna say,
Now I get it.
This is why the Packers are so special, but it also explains to them why
What it is about the Packers that really drew them in in the first place and maybe it animates a time in their childhood when they went to a Monday night game or maybe it was a tailgate party You know, it's absolutely endless.
But as I mentioned the epilogue Part of it, you know, I look at the Packers in 1980s, you know The Packers were coming of age in the 1990s or sorry in the 1980s the Packers were growing up 1990s.
They were coming of age same thing
1980s I'm growing up 1990s college early years and so forth so that's how those two those those track and so it begins this early experience and then it ends looking back at okay now this makes sense
I first learned about the Packers in 1983, and then looking back, well, the 1980s were growing up years for the Packers, just like they were growing up years for Tom Nelson, and things were taking hold coming of age in the 1990s.
Same thing with me.
So that's another example why it makes this so special.
And we can look forward to that Tom Nelson autobiography yet to come.
Not yet on the books.
No,
things
Now you're about to embark on a book tour.
How can people find the green and gold standard online in books?
Where are you going to be?
Your nearest bookstore.
I've reached out to many triumph books, which is publishing.
They've done so too so that will be on the stock on that will be stocked and on the shelf September 1st of course you guys go to Amazon trying books at their website has a copy too so all kinds of I mean if you just go and type in green and gold
Green and Gold Standard, Tom Nelson, People's History, you'll find 20 different options to do it.
My first, we're kicking off on September 1st in Green Bay at Lion's Mouth, then going down to Boswell's in Milwaukee on the 2nd, and we'll be hitting about seven or eight stops in that first week, and then I'll come out with more dates later in September, October, and into November.
So there are talks and so forth, but if we haven't firmed up dates or anything.
So if you want to follow it, go to
my Facebook page, Nelson 4WI.
We'll be giving updates in that way, but getting ahold of the book, pretty simple.
Go to Amazon, do a search.
Better yet, this is the best thing is if you go to your local bookstore and then say, I would like to order this book, what they're gonna do is they're not just gonna get one, they're gonna get four or five and I'll tell you what, once a book gets on the shelf and starts selling, it'll always be there.
That's right, especially in a place like Green Bay, Lion's Mouth downtown like to support our independent booksellers.
Tom Nelson, thank you for writing this book.
Thank you for chatting today.
I cannot wait to read it.
I didn't get my copy until this morning, so I haven't had a chance to go through all of it.
So I am like, I've got the PDF all queued up.
Wonderful.
And
I'll send you a hard
copy too.
It's in the mail.
Tomorrow
morning, it's in the
mail.
Well, perfect.
And I'll have all of the links in the show notes, so friends, they will be there for you.
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Thanks for joining us.