LeBreton: 112,158 owners rooting for their Packers
ARLINGTON -- Any fool can paint his face blue.
Or wear a barrel. Or don a ladies dress with a hog snout.
But there's a fervor among Green Bay Packers followers that transcends mere allegiance.
They act, well, like they own the team. And a lot of them do.
Founded in their current incarnation in 1921, the Packers are the only nonprofit, community-owned team in American professional sports.
They are governed not by an overbearing owner who hires, fires and threatens to relocate the team on a whim. The Packers, instead, have 112,158 owners -- stockholders who hold 4,750,937 non-dividend-producing shares.
For $200 per share, the stock price the last time it went on sale in 1997, shareholders receive a certificate -- frame not included -- which they can place on their desk or hang on the wall of their finished basement.
The certificate notes, rather glumly, that the stock will never appreciate in value, nor does it come with any dibs on season tickets. But there are voting privileges and an annual shareholders meeting.
Stockholders elect a 46-member board of directors which, in turn, chooses a seven-member executive committee to run the franchise.
No other NFL team is structured like the Packers. The league amended its constitution in 1960, outlawing publicly held franchises and mandating that at least one owner hold a one-third stake in the team. The Green Bay franchise was allowed an exemption.
As they prepare for Super Bowl XLV, the Packers remain a quaint anomaly. The 2010 census listed the Green Bay population as 101,412. They have played in the same stadium, a national treasure, for 53 years.
Yet, you won't find their owner holding his own press conference in the middle of Super Bowl week. There is no one to rattle chains about moving the Packers to Los Angeles. And there is no greedy single investor, trying to lure the board of directors into making rash decisions in the name of higher dividends. There are no dividends.
Thus, general manager Ted Thompson and head coach Mike McCarthy were able to tell quarterback Brett Favre in 2008 that his services and yo-yoing retirement ways were no longer needed. Thompson didn't have to run the decision past a single owner harboring a personal agenda. And McCarthy doesn't have to worry about a meddling owner handing him a Terrell Owens.
Thompson and McCarthy know, however, that they are expected to win. They are reminded of it each day when they walk into their offices past the Packers Hall of Fame. The city that nicknamed itself, "Titletown, USA" in the 1960s has seen the Packers win 12 NFL championships. The trophy that they will play for today bears the name of the franchise's patron saint, Vince Lombardi.
The franchise hasn't built a better NFL mousetrap. Instead, it's found its own unique, history-tested route to the cheese.
Accountability? Thompson has 112,158 bosses to answer to.
Financially unfeasible? A public referendum in 2000 that helped to pay for a $295 million redevelopment of Lambeau Field seems to have answered that.
True, NFL free agents do not seem to flock to Green Bay's "frozen tundra." But the franchise has signed past free agents Reggie White, Sean Jones, Desmond Howard and Santana Dotson.
And there's a waiting list for season tickets that numbers more than 81,000 names.
With talk of a players lockout in the air, the publicly held Packers system has become a sort of NFL lab rat. Its books are a matter of public record -- unique among the 32 NFL teams.
Not surprisingly, league owners have picked apart the numbers and pointed to the abrupt drop-off this season in Packers profits. Players union reps, meanwhile, have seen the same numbers and say that a profit is a profit.
Five times in the past, Packers fans have come to the franchise's rescue and purchased shares in the team. The first came when the team was struggling for its financial survival in 1921.
The renovation and redevelopment of Lambeau Field seven years ago turned the stadium from a tin relic into a first-class tourist destination. The Packers' Hall of Fame, a feature of the new atrium, far outshines the NFL hall in Canton, Ohio.
The atrium hosts more than 50 weddings and receptions each year. Some 90,000 visitors toured the franchise's Hall of Fame.
A quaint anomaly? To be sure.
But unlike 30 other NFL clubs, some of which play in $1.2 billion stadiums, they are here this Super Bowl XLV week.
The Green Bay Packers are playing for a record 13th NFL title.
The stockholders would be delighted.
Gil LeBreton, 817-390-7697
This story was originally published February 4, 2011 at 6:56 PM with the headline "LeBreton: 112,158 owners rooting for their Packers."