Historians can argue the birth of the Green Bay Packers until Doomsday, and none of them will be able to claim a qualified date for the inception of the team. Some will say that the Packers can trace their ancestry to the first town team of 1896, that the Pack was born that autumn. Others will say the Packers were born in 1918 because Green Bay didn't have a town team in 1917. Of course, there's the standard belief that the Packers were born in 1919 in the head of one Earl L. "Curly" Lambeau, something akin to Zeus giving birth to Aphrodite in Greek Mythology. And there is the technical argument that the Packers weren't conceived until they joined the NFL in 1921 or that they weren't born until Curly Lambeau was awarded his own franchise in 1922.
The truth of all this is the Green Bay Packers are legendary, and like all legends, their beginnings must be clouded in mystery and intrigue. If they weren't, the Packers would be the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Officially, the Green Bay Packers, Inc., claim August 11, 1919 as the birth of the Packers. The Packers' media guide states:
"On the evening of August 11, 1919, a score or more of husky young athletes, called together by Curly Lambeau and George Calhoun, gathered in the dingy editorial room of the old Green Bay Press-Gazette building on Cherry Street and organized a football team. They didn't know it, but that was the beginning of the incredible saga of the Green Bay Packers.
"There had been some preliminary talk and planning and that night's decision wasn't announced until two days later, but the big step had been taken. So August 11 is as good a birthday as any."
That much is almost fact. Calhoun did call for a meeting of all interested "footballers" as he called them, and the date of their meeting was August 11, 1919. In reality, this was an annual event whose history began in 1896 and was interrupted only once, in 1917, because of the World War and the shortage of quality players to form a representative team for Green Bay. The difference in 1919 was the Indian Packing Corporation agreed to sponsor the town team with a donation of $500 for uniforms and equipment.
The Packer media guide goes on to state:
"Actually the initial spark had been struck a few weeks before during a casual street corner conversation between Curly Lambeau and George Calhoun. It was apparently one of those 'Why not get up a football team?' remarks, but once they got interested they wasted no time."
That is the beginning of the Packer legend? What a great tale! "A casual street corner conversation between Curly Lambeau and George Calhoun - " That one is almost as good as Alexander the Great's mother telling King Philip that Zeus was the father of their son.
Mrs. Marguerite Lambeau, Curly Lambeau's first wife, knew the truth. In summation, she related this story:
Lambeau's father, Marcel Lambeau, and she, Curly's sweetheart, wanted Curly to return to Notre Dame that fall, but he didn't want to go. He hated school, and he had a good job with the Indian Packing Corporation. Even so, if he wanted to play football, he had to go back to Notre Dame. Or so he thought until Calhoun suggested that he could play for the town team. That sealed the deal. Lambeau stayed, and he was elected as the team captain, a title that meant he was in charge of the team on the field.
Off the field was another matter and another chapter in Packer history that is detailed in The History of the Green Bay Packers: The Lambeau Years, Part I.
Lambeau solicited and received the financial support for the town team from his employer, the Indian Packing Corporation. The Packers, if you will and as the man wrote in the Packers media guide, were born. They died three years later, but that's getting ahead of the story.
The Green Bay Packers were the class football team of northeast Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in 1919. They whipped 10 consecutive opponents before being "homered" by another company-sponsored team from Beloit. The 1920 campaign was pretty much the same thing: Packers a lot, opposition very little, with the exceptions of the Beloit eleven and a squad from Chicago known as the Boosters.
Some consider 1921 as the birth of the Packers because that was the year Green Bay joined the fledgling pro league, the renamed the National Football League. Okay, the moguls of the NFL granted a franchise to John and Emmett Clair of the Acme Packing Company, the successor of the Indian Packing Corporation, to field a professional football team in the city of Green Bay, Wisconsin, for the 1921 season. The team was called the Packers, and it was composed of many of the same players who had played for the Green Bay town team in 1918, 1919, and 1920. The distinction between the 1921 aggregation and its three immediate predecessors? The '21 bunch were all contracted with weekly pay, making them hired pros instead of pros taking a share of the collection each Sunday. That's the basis for the argument for 1921 being the birth year of the Packers.
In their first NFL campaign, the Packers were competitive. After four tuneup victories with three athletic clubs and the always tough Beloit eleven, they began their championship pursuit with a win over the Minneapolis Marines, and the people of Green Bay, northeast Wisconsin, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan began to believe in their team. A setback the following week failed to dampen their enthusiasm for Curly Lambeau's squad of footballers. They turned out in record numbers for two more home games which the Packers won. The Packers concluded their first NFL season with a pair of games in Chicago against the Cardinals and the Decatur Staleys. They tied the Redbirds, but the Starchmakers from Decatur whipped them good, 20-0.
Time for more legend. The Packers media guide states:
" . . . But the team was so successful by 1921 that Lambeau was backed by two officials of the packing plant in obtaining a franchise in the new national pro football league that had been formed in 1920. Cash customers didn't quite pay the freight and at the end of the season it had to be forfeited."
The first sentence of that statement is somewhat true, but not completely. The second statement is pure company-line bunkum.
Some historians subscribe to this tale:
Curly Lambeau used some college players in a non-league contest in Milwaukee against the Racine Legion in early December that was billed as the Wisconsin State Championship game. A Chicago sportswriter found out about it and blew the whistle on the Packers. Incensed by this infraction of the rules, the NFL moguls demanded the forfeiture of the Green Bay franchise, and the Clairs complied.
Now the truth.
Lambeau used college players all right, but it was in Green Bay's game against the Decatur Staleys. George Halas's collegiate ringers spotted Lambeau's collegiate ringers, and Halas told the Chicago newspapers about it. The NFL demanded the forfeiture of the franchise, and the Clairs complied.
Why is the latter story true? Lets go back to 1921 and find out.
Most sportswriters, those in Chicago in particular, were opposed to professional football. Only those in small towns, such as Green Bay, bothered to attend games and write about the local team. When the big city scribes wrote about the pro game, they did so as a way of degrading the pros. The alleged game was held in Milwaukee. Why would a Chicago sportswriter be in the Cream City covering a game that didn't have a Chicago team in it? Why would a Chicago sportswriter care about a game in Milwaukee between two small town teams such as Green Bay and Racine? Why would the NFL care about the Packers using college players in a non-league game, especially since the circuit's rules didn't forbid such use of college players? One of the players used by Lambeau was Notre Dame's Heartley "Hunk" Anderson, a former teammate of Lambeau's and a native of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. George Halas coveted Anderson's services, and if Green Bay was in the league, Anderson would more than likely sign with Green Bay to play in '22. Therefore, Green Bay had to be removed from the NFL. Halas blew the whistle to the Chicago press, and the NFL gave in to their pressure to get rid of Green Bay from the loop.
More legend:
Lambeau's friend Don Murphy sold his car to loan Curly the money to buy back the franchise that the Clairs had forfeited.
The truth:
Curly Lambeau so loved football and he wanted so badly to play in the NFL that he went to the league meeting in January of '22 to apply for a new franchise for Green Bay. He didn't get it. Leastways, not at that meeting. For months, the league officials put off a final decision on his request. When they did make a decision, they told Curly that he could have his franchise if he could raise $1,000 as security against folding. Lambeau succeeded in raising the money by forming a corporation whose principal owner was Nathan Abrams.
Some historians have chosen June 24, 1922 as the birthday of the Green Bay Packers because that was the day Lambeau was awarded a franchise in the NFL and that franchise has continued without interruption to the present. They have a sound argument, too.
All that debating aside, the facts are these:
The city of Green Bay, Wisconsin, had a professional football team as early 1896. That team played every fall until 1917 when it died due to the first World War. In 1918, Nathan Abrams and George Calhoun created a new town team from the ashes of the first one. In 1919, the Indian Packing Corporation supported the town team, which was then nicknamed the Packers and had Curly Lambeau as its captain and leader. John and Emmett Clair were awarded a franchise in the NFL in 1921, and they hired Curly Lambeau to field a team for them. The Clairs forfeited their franchise January 28, 1922, and Lambeau was awarded a new franchise June 24, 1922. The team was born in 1896, died in 1917, and was resurrected in 1918. The financial support of the team was born in 1919 when the Indian Packing Corporation backed the town boys. It died in 1922 when the Clairs threw in the towel. Lambeau resurrected the team when he was awarded a franchise June 24, 1922. Nathan Abrams, Lambeau, Calhoun, et al, and the first corporation started up in 1922 to back the team. A new corporation, the one that has remained in existence with some revisions ever since, was begun in 1923.
Taking all that into consideration, when were the Green Bay Packers born? Like the media guide states, " . . . August 11 is as good a birthday as any." But the birth of the current Green Bay Packers occurred when Earl L. Lambeau was granted a franchise in the NFL on June 24, 1922. That makes Lambeau the founder of the Packers.
So what's the big deal over when the Packers were founded? Bragging rights. The Bears and Packers have argued for years over which team was the oldest in the NFL.
Packer fans shouldn't be disillusioned that Curly Lambeau didn't found the Packers in 1919. They can take consolation in the fact that George Halas didn't found the Chicago Bears in 1920 as his biographer and the NFL would have everybody believe. The truth of that tale is the Staley Starch Company fielded a company football team the year before Halas went to work for the company. Halas was hired to take over that team and the company baseball team, which was also in existence before his employment.
However, Halas really did start the franchise now known as the Chicago Bears. Halas and partner Ed Sternaman were given a franchise for the city of Chicago January 28, 1922. The franchise held by the Staley company was returned to the NFL at that same meeting. It was never transferred to Halas because of a dispute between Halas and another applicant for the Staley franchise. That makes Halas and his partner the founders of the current franchise known as the Chicago Bears.
Under those conditions, Lambeau is the founder of the current team known as the Green Bay Packers.
So the Bears are the older of the two franchises, but the Bears are not the oldest team in the NFL. That honor belongs to the Cardinals, now of Phoenix, Arizona, but originally known as the Morgan Athletic Club of Chicago, Illinois, founded in 1898. The Cardinals are an orignal member of the NFL, possessing a franchise that has been transferred from one owner to the next but which has never been returned to the NFL, unlike the Bears and Packers.
Confused? That's what legends are supposed to do, and the Packer legend is a dandy at that, isn't it?
Excerpts from Green Bay Packers Facts and Trivia Copyright 1994 by Larry D. Names