The Packers lost the first game I went to with my dad. It was a preseason game against the Rams (in 1995) so losing shouldn’t have been a big deal, but it’s hard to explain to a five-year-old why preseason games don’t matter as much as regular season games.
Soon after, we moved out of the promised land and to North Carolina – the first state in a sequence of six over 15 years. For most people, that would spell the death of fandom in the bloodline. But NFL Sunday Ticket had just come out and Packers fans are a different breed.
Living in North Carolina and then Tennessee, we naturally grew a little apart from our extended family in Wisconsin but whenever we went back, we could still watch and talk about the Packers. Although I hadn’t seen my dad’s brothers in a few years, I was shocked to discover they shared the exact same frustration that my dad had with Robert Ferguson dropping deep balls.
When we ended up in Minnesota, living among the enemy, my dad and I would listen to the Vikings radio dinguses in the car and talk endless crap about them. Being a Packer fan in Vikings land is almost certainly to blame for developing my contrary streak.
In 2004, we moved to Utah, where I lived until 2022. High school in Utah was quite the culture shock, but every week we had the Packers as appointment viewing.
I went to college in Utah after my family had moved to Illinois and still watched (often on questionably legal sources) every Packers game and called my dad after. And then called him again three more times that week to talk about it again.
After college, I met my wife and immediately began Operation convert her to Packers fandom. She is from Illinois and certainly held on loosely to any sort of Bears fandom.
Somehow it worked, even though my strategy was basically to tell her to about how I was so distraught from the Packers squandering the NFC Championship game to the Seahawks months earlier that I closed the garage door on my car.
Eventually we had our first son and I started to feel the pull back to the homeland. Both of our families live in the Midwest now and six-hour travel days during COVID to allow them to visit with him quickly became unsustainable. So we started making plans and eventually I got a job in Madison.
Full Circle at Packers Family Night
It’s been almost two years since we moved to Wisconsin. We were here for Aaron Rodgers’ descent into ex-QB and Jordan Love’s breakout.
We now have a second son and finally made it to our first Packers “game” as a family this weekend when we made the two-hour trek to Family Night.
I expected it to be hot and loud and for the boys to not quite understand what was happening. But I didn’t quite expect to get emotional as the Packers players and coaches walked through the high five line with their own kids as my sons sat next to me – almost 30 years after my first game.
It’s easy to explain to others why it was important to move our kids closer to their grandparents.
It’s harder for anyone who isn’t a hardcore fan to understand just how important the Packers have been to me and my dad over the past 30 years and how important it will be for me to have that with my boys over the next 30. We took the first big step to get there at family night.
Mike Price is a lifelong Packers fan currently living in Utah. You can follow him on twitter at @themikeprice.
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