Packers Win! How Green Bay's NFL team matters to alternate history

[Gary Oswald]

Discuss this article by @Coiler here

 

[Charles EP M.]

And if no Packers, who instead does Anna Kendrick have to battle in Pitch Perfect 2?

 

[Thande]

I know a tiny bit about this, and it does seem to me like the Packers get the closest thing to the kind of organic levels of fan support you see with association football outside the US, precisely because they have that odd coelacanth survival of a small town team still close to its roots in a cynical money-driven industry.

 

[Charles EP M.]

I know a tiny bit about this, and it does seem to me like the Packers get the closest thing to the kind of organic levels of fan support you see with association football outside the US, precisely because they have that odd coelacanth survival of a small town team still close to its roots in a cynical money-driven industry.

I did think "I wonder what it looks like in an AH where the NFL remained lots of smaller place teams" and then realised "oh, that'd be like how football works like in the league system here"

 

[Coiler]

I know a tiny bit about this, and it does seem to me like the Packers get the closest thing to the kind of organic levels of fan support you see with association football outside the US

The Packers are the most soccer esque pro football team in America, but college football is a lot closer, both in good (lots of teams, organic bottom up support) and bad (dominance by a few megaschools like Alabama)

 

[Kimkatya]

@Coiler Listen, as a dedicated member of the anti-pack, being a fan of the team of the Brett Favre Revenge Tour, I’m sorry to say I’m not going to have to boycott this article and this website due to this relentless propaganda for a team who have been engaged in an authoritarian occupation of the NFC North for 30 years.

 

[Thande]

The Packers are the most soccer esque pro football team in America, but college football is a lot closer, both in good (lots of teams, organic bottom up support) and bad (dominance by a few megaschools like Alabama)

The way university sports works in the US is also a huge cultural difference that could be different in a changed TL.

I have a particular perspective because I went to Cambridge (which still has the whole elite sports thing that spread outside the Ivy League in the US but never did to the Russell Group here) and know that our rugby team was good enough to beat some national teams. But that doesn't mean many people ever went to their matches, and people would look at you like you were mad if you suggested televising them to people unconnected with the university. They have to have periodic donation drives to keep the team going.

 

[RyanF]

The cynic in me says that the smaller city teams may find themselves bought and relocated if they don't have something like the Green Bay ownership model in place.

In some ways sports in the US may have been destined for a franchise model given the travel distances involved in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, the college teams seemed to manage it via an existing framework of institutional relationships. Trying to think of similar ones that could be explicitly tied to their cities. I keep coming round to union organised teams in the Great Lakes during the era of sewer socialism, but that would require far greater changes to come about and survive than just in sports.

 

[Kimkatya]

The way university sports works in the US is also a huge cultural difference that could be different in a changed TL.

I have a particular perspective because I went to Cambridge (which still has the whole elite sports thing that spread outside the Ivy League in the US but never did to the Russell Group here) and know that our rugby team was good enough to beat some national teams. But that doesn't mean many people ever went to their matches, and people would look at you like you were mad if you suggested televising them to people unconnected with the university. They have to have periodic donation drives to keep the team going.

It could also be changed in the UK, which would be interesting.

 

[Thande]

It could also be changed in the UK, which would be interesting.

It's possible but I feel like our class system would get in the way; feels like too much of a posh-people thing. Of course, once the same was true of rugby, so (shrugs)

They have tried to astroturf the US college sports philosophy into Sheffield in recent years (though Covid has obviously interrupted that) and it hasn't been entirely unsuccessful, but it's still only really people connected to the universities who care.

 

[Francisco Cojuanco]

The cynic in me says that the smaller city teams may find themselves bought and relocated if they don't have something like the Green Bay ownership model in place.

In some ways sports in the US may have been destined for a franchise model given the travel distances involved in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, the college teams seemed to manage it via an existing framework of institutional relationships. Trying to think of similar ones that could be explicitly tied to their cities. I keep coming round to union organised teams in the Great Lakes during the era of sewer socialism, but that would require far greater changes to come about and survive than just in sports.

College teams also managed to do it because prior to the Second World War university education was at least an upper middle class thing, if not higher. It combines the intense particularism of university alumni (often linked to catchment areas or demographics) with the fact that before said World War your typical college anything fan was likely to be richer than average.

 

[Lilitou]

And if no Packers, who instead does Anna Kendrick have to battle in Pitch Perfect 2?

It should come as no surprise that this is the only reason I know of the Green Bay Packers.

 

[Charles EP M.]

It should come as no surprise that this is the only reason I know of the Green Bay Packers.

Das Sound Machine were robbed, damn it

 

[OwenM]

The Packers are the most soccer esque pro football team in America, but college football is a lot closer, both in good (lots of teams, organic bottom up support) and bad (dominance by a few megaschools like Alabama)

In what you can argue falls into either column depending on perspective, the way you have wealthy donors contributing to the sports teams does remind me of the way owners in association football (when they've existed) have traditionally differed from those in American sports.