Copyright Austin Daily Herald
Although most of the people I know in the Austin area are Viking fans, as a lifelong Green Bay Packer fan who has seen Brett Favre, Aaron Rodgers and Jordan Love play in Lambeau Field, I felt compelled to give my piece on the reunion of Green Bay and Rodgers on Sunday night. No, this will not be a gush-fest like the Sunday Night Football announcers put on, where they mentioned Rodgers 94 times and Love 51 times, it’s more of a reflection about how sports brings our past into the present. While they were drafted 15 years apart, there is one thing that Aaron Rodgers and Jordan Love have in common. They were both greeted with mixed reactions as Rodgers was taken while the legendary Brett Favre was still at the helm in Green Bay, and Love was taken while Rodgers was still winning MVPs. As for my life, a lot has changed from the time Rodgers was drafted to the time that Love was drafted. When Rodgers was taken, I was a somewhat fresh college grad working at a weekly newspaper in Durand, Wisconsin while shuffling in weekend shifts at a Holiday gas station in River Falls, Wisconsin. I was actually at that gas station, which has now been torn down for Kwik Trip, when I received the call that the Packers had selected Rodgers. At that point in my life, I was just getting used to becoming an adult, and a lot of us had to grow up fast in the Post 9/11 world. There was endless anxiety about the war in Iraq and the future was far from certain. While other Green Bay and Favre fans were angry with the pick, knowing the Packers had just drafted a quarterback who projected to go as high as No. 1 made me feel better about the team’s future. When Love was drafted, I was working at the Austin Daily Herald from home as we were in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Again, there was a lot of anxiety in society as nobody knew what was going on with the pandemic and how long society would be put on hold for. Once again, many Packer fans were upset because they felt taking Love was a slap in the face to Rodgers. I figured it’s always good to be planning for the future when it comes to the most important position in sports, so I had no problem with Love going to the green and gold. It’s hard to believe it’s already been 20 years since Rodgers came to Green Bay. I’ve had many changes in my life in that time. Relationships have come and gone, family has grown older, I lost one of my best friends, and my children are now almost adults. My son was a five-month old baby and he cried from all of the yelling when Rodgers led the Packers to a Super Bowl win in the 2010 season; now he’s all-in on the Packers and would like nothing more than to see them win a Super Bowl that he can remember. My daughter remembers that Super Bowl, but she stopped emotionally investing herself in the Packers after the 2014 debacle in Seattle that still haunts most Packer fans. “I said I wouldn’t cry and now I’m crying like a grown-up at a funeral,” was her exact quote after that one. Sometimes it still seems like a few days ago when I think of those games and how different my life was back then. Sports can do that, the names and faces change, but the uniforms and the stadium remain the same. Whether our chosen teams are good or bad, sports connect our past and future in many ways and they provide a common bond for us to share with our friends and family. I know the mere mention of the name Aaron Rodgers brings out all sorts of negative reactions in Minnesota, but I’ll close this column with one of my favorite memories. The year Rodgers replaced Favre as starting quarterback was as much pressure and disdain a player has felt from his own fan base in my lifetime. The move was not popular amongst most Packer fans and some were even talking about dropping their support for the Packers altogether. That offseason came to a boiling point when Favre showed up to training camp on Family Fun Night at Lambeau Field and Rodgers played awful. Forced to decide whether to bring back Favre or ride with Rodgers, the team stuck with Rodgers and shipped Favre to the Jets. Something else happened that night, and I discovered it when I attended Green Bay’s game against Peyton Manning and the Colts that October. Some fan had taken a permanent marker and written on a lightpost outside of Lambeau Field that Rodgers was a failure and would never make it as a quarterback in the NFL. It was dated the night of that Family Fun Night. The words of doubt were in clear view of every single Packers player when they walked into the stadium. I’ll never know for sure, but I’ve always liked to think that Rodgers told the Green Bay staff to leave it up there for motivation. Either way, the message I’ve learned from both Love and Rodgers is quite clear. When nobody is betting on you, bet on yourself.
