Unveiling the Legacy: The Green Bay Packers’ 1962 Championship Season

You're just in time for another exciting episode as we cover the NFL championship games before the Super Bowl.

And we have a special guest today, an employee of one of the NFL franchises and their official historian.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darrin Hayes, is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hees of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And we are up getting near the end here.

His name is Cliff Crystal.

Cliff, welcome to the Pig Pen.

My pleasure.

Cliff, maybe you can tell us a little bit about yourself, your fandom, and what you have to do in association with the Green Bay Packers.

I'm the official team historian of the Packers.

I've been in that position for a little over 10 years now.

I had been a sports writer in Wisconsin, primarily at the Milwaukee Journal and then Journal Sentinel and also the Green Bay Press Gazette for over 35 years prior to becoming a historian.

What was going on in the National Football League?

Well, I mean, packers were defending NFL champions, and, you know, they.

They had dominated along with the Bears for the first three decades of the NFL with Curly Lambo as coach.

And then in his latter years.

They.

Went through their first rough period in history.

And that was when they hired Vince Lombardi.

And then they won five NFL championships in a span of seven years.

No other team has won five in a decade.

So that's quite an accomplishment.

Certainly is.

And, you know, at that point in time, I forget what the number is, but the Western division had dominated the Eastern Division and championship games, I think, starting in, what about, oh, early 50s.

And I think they went through a period there where they won, like, 11 to 13 or something like that and so I think The packers in 61 just crushed the Giants.

I attended that game as, as a 14 year old kid in Green Bay.

It was the first championship game ever played, played there or in our city.

And, and then remember distinctly the 62, watching the 62 game on television.

Well, what was it like in that 61 game that had to be exciting and seeing your team just basically throttle the Giants who really played a close game earlier that season.

Yeah, they, that was, I to this day believe the excitement in Green Bay for that game.

And I'm speaking genuine excitement, not some hyped up event as so many things are today is still unmatched.

I mean people here were just giddy over the fact Green Bay was going to host an NFL championship game.

And because it never had back when they, you know, when they were going every other year the site would change based on division, not which team had the better record.

So the packers only had.

Would have only had one opportunity to host a championship and that was 39.

And the league as well as the packers decided that that game needed to be played in Milwaukee just to draw a bigger crowd.

So there was certainly, I mean a month before, shouldn't say a month, but right after the packers beat the Giants in early December to clinch the Western Division and at that point knew they would be hosting the championship game, they held a.

Civic leaders got together and held a breakfast in Green Bay and adopted the name title town.

Rather presumptuous on their part because it was almost a month before the game was played.

And then 62, they went back on the road.

One thing about the 61 game, it was never reported, but I've seen in our minutes now that I work for the packers that Pete Roselle wanted to move that game to a neutral site because he didn't want.

He felt Green Bay was too small and maybe too cold to host a 61 game.

So 62.

Lombardi was going home to New York.

So he probably, it probably didn't matter to him whether they're playing at home or on the road just because, you know, his fine.

Because of his finest for the New York.

Yeah, that's a very interesting point there.

And once again this happens.

It's the Giants and the Packers.

Yeah, you know, the east was so weak for so much of that time period.

They had, I mean it was basically the Giants and the Browns Eagles won that title in 60, but that followed several lean years and otherwise other, other than that it was basically a two team division.

Whereas in the West, I mean the Lions, I think most packers who played for throughout the Lombardi era or most of it would agree that the early 60s Lions were the toughest competition they faced during that entire period.

And I don't think there's any question in 61 and 62 their, their toughest games are against Detroit, not the Giants.

And in Baltimore, you know, they still had unitis, recently won championships.

Bears were always tough and the 49ers and Rams had their, had their seasons.

So Green Bay had kind of been the weak link for a good share of the 50s and that was no longer the case.

Yeah, very interesting.

62 had before the season started had some very interesting things happen.

Of course we had the AFL giving a little bit of competition.

AFL the year prior had the contract with ABC for multi year contract.

And it prompted CBS and the NFL to contract for first time National Football League had a national broadcast over.

It was like $4.5 million or something spread amongst all the teams except for the Browns who had their own contract with another network.

And also it was the first year of the Pro Football hall of Fame game while the hall of Fame was getting built.

And that was the Giants had played in that one.

Yeah, I mean the AFL certainly changed the landscape of the, of the pro football at the time.

I think that, that maybe the biggest transition during that period was the fact that there were an increasing number of black players in the league.

I mean that I.

I don't think there's any question.

The reason the, the AFL caught up so quickly with the NFL was the fact that they mined the black colleges and so many great players out of the places like Grambling, Prairie View, A and M players like that.

And then Green Bay was the one place in the NFL that had with Lombardi that had an open door, no quotas.

And so the 62 championship team, just like 61 and the team that got into the title game in 60, the strength was their offense.

When the packers won the three peep from 65 to 67, their offense sputtered for most of that time.

But they had this great defense.

And the reason they had a great defense is that they had six black starters, what is it, four in the Pro Football hall of Fame.

They were just A dominant defense during those seasons.

They had a good defense, very good defense in 61, 62, but it didn't match that the group that there was that played during the three peat.

Yeah, it's a very interesting point that you say that and sort of how the dynamics of that Green Bay team shifted.

But they still had success.

You know, Lombardi was a genius in so many ways, but he really knew talent and he knew how to play his teams and how to make them play to their talent and sometimes above expectations and really did a tremendous job.

Yeah, I mean the 62 season, the packers lost their best player, Paul Hornick for much of the season.

He tore ligaments in his ankle in the fifth game.

He.

He also had left one of the earlier games of the pulled muscle.

So he played sparingly.

And there was no question during through 65 that Vince Paul Horning was their best player.

He was.

When Lombardi came in and took the job, he did not build his offense around the quarterback.

He built it around his left halfback, just as he had in New York with Frank Gifford.

And Hornig was the guy and he was.

He's the only player that Lombardi ever called the greatest player ever coached.

The code, the quote about Forest Greg, I mean that's a fabricated quote.

Pro Football hall of Fame was the first to I think put it in a release I believe late 60s, early 70s and said Lombardi had said that run to daylight.

Well, he didn't say anything like it and run to daylight.

So Hornig, I mean as a kid just growing up because Horning like so many running backs after the 61, in 61 he was, you know, spend time in the Service and in 62 then was the first injury, injury riddled year he had.

And kind of from that point on you just.

You waited every Sunday to see if he was going to play because he was so, so vital to their success and yet they won that year without him.

Although Even in the 62 game he made the.

He played more.

He came back and played quite a bit of that game.

Didn't carry the ball a lot, but he made the biggest offensive play of the game, the option pass.

I think it was a 21 yard option pass to Boyd Dollar that set up Jim Taylor's touchdown, the only touchdown of.

So.

So during Hornig's absence, what did the.

The packers do to continue to have success offensively?

Well, they fed the ball a lot to Taylor.

He was a league MVP that year at halfback.

And even during the early part of the 62 regular season, the talk around the league was that Tom Moore was the best backup halfback and in pro football and actually probably could start for just about any other team.

And he had averaged like 5 yards per carry, I think maybe more in his first two seasons.

He had led the league in kickoff returns.

He was a big back with speed.

I'm not sure what happened in 62.

I think he got hurt early in the season.

I don't know if that was a lingering injury, but that was at that point was his worst season.

So he and Elijah pits kind of split time at halfback.

And Moore had some big games.

I think he had, you know, he had 84 yards and 14 attempts in one of those games.

He had 65 and 13 in another.

But the consistency wasn't there.

And I don't know if I'm not sure.

Later on he had some.

He had some injury issues that were undiagnosed.

I think he was one of the, maybe the first players that had a bone injury, a broken bone in his foot that before MRIs, it couldn't be diagnosed.

And so his last year in Green Bay, he had.

He was no longer the player he was earlier.

And Lombardi knew that and traded him to the Rams, trade him to George Allen and basically George Allen got damaged goods back in the day when nobody rescinded trades because you didn't.

You weren't honest about an injury or.

Whatever, that probably helped spark some of the more modern rules on some of that.

And of course, they didn't have to divulge to the media back then who was injured and everything.

So that's why it's kind of hard to know what some of these injuries were.

And of course, we didn't have the medicine and technical help with MRIs like you said earlier to help feed the public.

It wasn't as media friendly back back in those days.

No, Lombardi.

Lombardi pretty much kept injury secret.

I mean, I.

To this day, I'm not.

Hornick tore ligaments in his knees how it was described against the Vikings in the fifth game.

I have yet to determine what ligament it was.

We have no medical records on him.

We do have on some of our players on that injury.

I've never seen it written.

I don't believe Hornig even wrote which ligament it was or Ligaments, if it was in his books.

So.

But it sidelined him for basically most of the season thereafter.

Yeah, and I don't think.

I mean, I grew up basically in the 70s, and I don't ever remember the terms ACL or MCL being used till probably the 90s.

So, you know, it was.

If you had a leg injury, it was a lower leg, it was a knee or, you know, knee, blew out his knee.

It was terms like that that they used.

So I think some of this more modern, the modern fan is more recognizable to using medical terms than we were, you know, 50, 60, 70 years ago.

Yeah, I think some players played, Played, played with those injuries.

That definitely could be true.

It definitely is.

You know, I think that tragically was part of what happened to Gail Sayers, is that he played, played through whatever it was, whether it was an ACL or mcl.

And.

Yeah, I mean, the whole.

The thing about the loss of Hornig that year was Lombardi's offense was built around the power sweep.

Red right 49.

And basically the left halfback carried the ball in every play.

People talk about Taylor running the power sweep.

He almost never did.

Zeke Bradkowski told me that if he ran it 10 times the entire time he was there, he would.

It would surprise him if he said it would surprise him if Taylor ran it more than 10 times the entire time.

He was the backup quarterback and Taylor ran the weak side sweep.

And I think they ran a lot more weak side sweeps.

Not Lombardi's signature play during that.

That 62 season.

And maybe some to the right side.

Normally, Taylor would run that sweep to the left side like he did against the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl 1.

But it was.

It was a play built around the right halfback, and it was a play built around Hornig's ability to throw the option pass.

And yet, I mean, the running game, I think the packers ranked, what, first in the league in rushing that year?

So it was probably those.

That play two is probably.

They're counting on Taylor's block to be a key block to spring the other half back to get downfield.

You know, Taylor was not a good blocker.

That the guy Corning was a great blocker, okay?

Norm Van Brocklin said he was the best blocking back in the league.

And Taylor.

Lombardi once said that if Taylor blocked like he would have, if he was the ball carrier, he could be a good blocker.

Taylor was kind of an eye guy.

He wasn't into blocking for somebody else as much as he was into getting his yards.

Lombardi's offense was built around big backs.

I mean that was one of the reasons he got rid of Tim Brown.

I think he saw potential in Tim Brown and went on to start with the Eagles.

But he wanted 215 pound backs.

That's a desire of a lot of coaches.

Even today to this day they like to have those big bell cows.

Yeah.

So it was in Star at that point still really hadn't established himself as a.

I mean what I think he had 12 touchdown passes in a 14 game season.

Nine through nine interceptions.

He did lead the league in passing based on the criteria at that time.

But his yardage total wasn't.

Wasn't that great.

I think the packers were maybe even.

What did they.

What did they finish?

I can take a look here real quickly.

Yeah, I Mean Star Average 20 passes a game and I think that yeah they finished 10th in a 414 team league in passing.

So they did have a good cast of receivers.

It was a well balanced offense with Boyd Dollar and Max McGee each caught 49 passes to lead the team with average over 14 yards per catch.

And really maybe the best player on their offense other than Horning was and Taylor was Ron Kramer the tight end.

He was the first tight end damned the Associated Press all Pro.

He's just a dominating blocker, great athlete.

He had played.

You know he was an outstanding Big Ten basketball player.

Got drafted by the Pistons in basketball.

He was both a high jumper and a shot putter at Michigan and he just dominated.

Sam Huff really embarrassed him in the 61 title game and he was still outstanding player in 62 and then he kind of had a brief career.

If he hadn't, I think Ron Kramer would be in the Pro Football hall of Fame.

When he was healthy I think he was considered better than Ditka by most coaches in the league.

But that was probably 62 is probably his last real good season.

Well that's interesting.

So he may be perhaps the first tight end that was like the basketball star that they put in a tight end.

We see that quite often today with Antonio Gates and some of the other big guys that are coming in.

Had great basketball careers collegiately.

But you know you think of tight ends in an age like, like Dick and some of the other ones a little bit.

They're just football guys, you know but you get these athletes that can play multi sports.

That's really makes it great to be a receiver and a blocker.

Yeah, no, Kramer is a phenomenal athlete.

I mean I think he was like 6, 3, 2, 20 in college in Michigan.

And he was a high jumper and a shot putter.

Wow.

For an outstanding Big Ten track team.

So.

Yeah, that takes a rare athlete to do that.

And as I said, he was.

Yeah, I believe he led their basketball team in scoring and as a sophomore, maybe a junior.

See said it's great for.

For using the footwork and, you know, getting out on blocks that you need to do when you're playing out on the end.

So, yeah, you know, that year, I believe on the Associated Press all pro team, Kramer made it a tight end.

Forest Greg made it at tackle.

Jerry Kramer made it at guard, Jim Ringo at center.

That's just the AP team.

So that leaves two guys that didn't.

Fuzzy Thurston.

And Fuzzy Thurston was on the UPI all pro team.

And the reason the left tackles didn't is because Bob Square on ski and Norm Masters split the position.

So basically, you know, you're talking five out of six players were.

Were first team all Pro.

And when you have two guys split in a position, that means you have two guys that are pretty equal.

So you're in pretty good shape on an offensive line too.

Yeah.

And Skaranski, interestingly, in those later years, Jerry Kramer told me he was always.

He always got the highest grades from.

From Lombardi.

It was.

He.

He was really an unsung player.

It's just that early in his career he split time between him and Normaster, who was also a very good tackle.

But I mean, that's.

That offensive line certainly was a key to their success.

You know, they had that great line and then they had.

With Taylor running the ball and balanced passing attack, and then the defense again, they had.

Nitschke was the MVP of the championship game.

I think you could make a case that Taylor should have been.

I think he had 85 yards on 31 carries, but that's about.

I remember that game was just brutally cold.

Steve Sable said he believed he thought it was colder than the Ice bowl at Yankee Stadium.

I can still see those hot dog wrappers blowing around.

And actually the wind was.

It was.

The temperature wasn't as cold as the ice balls, like somewhere between 10 and 20 degrees, but the winds gusted to 45 miles per hour.

And I read the flat.

The American flag was split, split in half on the flagpole, Yankee Stadium.

So it was a brutally cold day and Taylor earned every yard he got.

Sputnitschke ended up being the.

The MVP of the game.

And that was really his first year as a starter.

Established starter.

It would.

Sports Illustrated Just prior to that, did put Dan Curry on the COVID and he was the outside linebacker along with Bill Forester and Si Story by Tex Mall, who really knew the game.

Had a lot of insight into the packers road to how their whole defense was built on.

They had the best two outside linebackers in the game, and Curry and Forester.

You know, Kurtnitsky, with Nitschke, was the third linebacker.

Wow.

The other thing made a big difference there, too, on that defense, which I think ranked second in the league, was Willie Wood had taken over as the right safety, basically free safety, and Herb Adderley become the starter left cornerback.

And I believe they had 15 interceptions combined that year.

And they also.

They were important in the return game.

Adderley had a 27.9 kickoff return average, and Wood had an 11.9 punt return average.

Those are good numbers in any era.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Wow.

So they're pretty stacked at, like, every position.

Was there any weaknesses to the packers in 62?

Obviously, when they lost Horning, their halfback position wasn't as strong.

Probably the weakest link on the offense at that point was Bart.

That's amazing to say that, but it's just because he.

He was fairly young still at that point in his career.

Yeah, it was just.

He didn't win the starting job for good until halfway through the 60 season.

So he was just kind of along for the ride in 61, 62.

Actually in 63.

John Roach replaced him when he got hurt.

And when they lost that Bear game.

There's.

There certainly probably the only one that knows this for sure is Lombardi.

But there are certainly indications in.

The Milwaukee Sentinel reported that Star was ready to play that game late in the season against the Bears.

And because John Roach had run four or five in a row, Lombardi started.

Started Roach in that game, actually.

Lombardi coach the.

Here's an interesting thing.

Lombardi was the coach of the Western Conference in the Pro Bowl.

60 was the first year that Starr made it.

And Lombardi started Unitis, who we thought was great, a great quarterback.

Talked about how much better the Colts had, how much better off the Colts were at quarterback during the season.

Lombardi didn't mince his words.

And he hardly played Star in that game.

He played United.

Lombardi played it to win, and he played Unitis almost the whole game.

And so in 62, Bart got picked for the second time, and again Lombardi started Unitis over Star.

That's when the coaches picked the starters.

And then Bart really only made the Pro bowl one more time after that.

That was 66, so 65.

Lombardi benched him twice, yanked him twice from games.

And 67, he really got, he really got beat up that year and had some injury issues.

But his big thing was he really, he really answered the bell in 66 and 67 in those big games, the championships and the Super Bowls.

And I, you know, that's where he gained, you know, that a lot of his fame from first of all, being the first quarterback to win three straight in the NFL and then also five in a five and short period of time.

Seven years.

Yeah, maybe he used some of those, those points, those low points of not getting the playing time over a competitive, competitive team's quarterback with his own coach there and maybe, you know, sharpened his metal a little bit going in to later in his career.

You know, just had some of those memories and did help them mature a little bit as a quarterback.

Yeah, actually Curry again.

Curry and Forester were the two outside linebackers on the AP All Pro Team in 62.

Wow.

Geez.

So tell us a little bit about the game.

You know, we know we have a tight score as a final score.

Maybe you could tell us sort of how the flow of the game went, the championship game, that is.

You know, I think first of all, The Giants were 12, 2 that year, so I believe they were a better team.

They got Frank Gifford back, who had sat out a year in 61.

He was no longer the left halfback though.

They moved him to flanker.

But I still think that that, that helped getting him back.

The Giants didn't do anything offensively.

Their only touchdown was scored on a block punt.

Eric Barnes, outstanding defensive back, blocked the punt and that was how they scored their only touchdown.

Packers didn't score either.

I mean, they had that one option pass that horning through, set up a seven yard touchdown run by Taylor in the second quarter.

And then Jerry Kramer kicked three field goals.

I think they were all 30 yards or shorter.

And he also missed two that were, you know, not that much further out.

So there wasn't a lot of offense.

I just, let me just check on what Bart's stats were in that game.

He was 9 at 21 for 85 yards.

Well, still not a bad stat when you have a.

You're playing in that much wind and that much cold.

Yeah, no, I, I agree the conditions were terrible.

Tittle had a better game, but not well enough to be at the Giants in the end zone.

I'm, I'm really impressed by the kicking.

You know, he's even Three of five back in that era with the cold, with the, you know, in a foreign stadium to them and you know, the, the elements against you.

That's still pretty good stats back then for the.

The kickers are kicking straight on, you know, with the toes, unlike the soccer we have.

Remember the hash marks for wider too?

Oh, yeah.

I think there was a.

I think Horning had an attempted field goal in 60 against the Eagles that was so far.

It was like from the, the.

The line of scrimmage was inside the five and he missed it because he basically was kicking sideways.

When you talk about kickers at that point in time, I mean, first of all, they weren't specialists and in Kramer and Hornig's case, they both played offense and Hornig was carrying the ball when.

As their primary kicker for several of those years.

A lot of the, A lot of the other teams, I think were using defensive players as kickers.

Yeah.

So that was a factor with those two guys.

And then the hash marks, I think among all the other things that was.

That made a lot of their kicks much more.

Yeah, you think about.

You have goal posts, if you're looking straight on, you know, you have goal posts are like this.

But as soon as you start to get an angle, you have a smaller target, you got and goofy angle.

You really got to be accurate then.

And these guys are kicking from the, you know, straight on, from their toes.

You know, they're just like you're kicking the end of your shoe and God, you hope you're hitting that round ball and it's going to go straight and depends how your.

Your holders doing.

A lot of variables happening there.

So that's a really tough job.

That's what I'm saying.

I'm impressed with three of five in those conditions in that era.

Yeah, that's a really good stat.

Now what I think is his kicks were from the 26, 29 and 30 and he missed from the 37 and 40.

Oh, yeah.

Ms.

The long ones.

Yeah.

And I mean, he came through in the clutch.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it definitely helped.

So the packers scored in every quarter.

You know, the field goals in the first, third and fourth, and the touchdown, like you said, in the second.

So.

Yeah, very, very impressive and playing good defense too.

And you talk about, you know, Nitschke, you know, and, and how the backs are responding in the cold.

Well, it hurts when you're a defender, especially a lineback, and you're coming, you're taking a few steps to hit a hole just as fast as the running backs.

Are sometimes to take them down.

That's.

There's still a little bit of pain getting inflicted when you have the cold to the backers themselves because you're like two cars crashing into each other.

So I'm impressed by that too.

Yeah, I think the players felt like they were playing a concrete that day that the so hard.

And you know, Taylor Hoff played much better than he did in the 61 title game.

And that was a real battle puff puff versus Taylor.

And Taylor was bleeding bit its tongue I think early in the first half.

And there was blood dripping out of his mouth.

And then he.

I think he had a gash in his elbow that needed stitches at halftime.

So he was bleeding pretty good as he was.

Just check that.

31 attempts for 85 yards.

I said those were the toughest 85 yards that I think anybody's ever gained.

I'll bet it's in brutal conditions.

And when you're.

You're ailing a little bit too from earlier injuries, that's.

That makes a real tough day.

I mean I.

Even though those.

That average per carry isn't impressive, I actually, I think Curry might have played a better game than Nitschke too at linebacker.

But Nitschke came up with two fumble recovery.

He was credited with two fumble recoveries.

Bill Forrester and I don't know if this is true or not.

I watched the game film and I couldn't.

I couldn't tell.

And I have my doubts whether this was true.

But Bill Forrester claimed that Nitschke grabbed the ball on one of those fumbles and from either Forester or one of the other defensive players and said he wanted to be the MVP and was credited for a fumble.

He didn't recover.

I don't know if that's the case or not.

Curry had an interception, I believe in that game.

A really, really tough interception.

He was really good.

He was the first draft pick at 58.

Draft.

Lyle Blackburn, the previous coach was.

That was his draft.

And it was Curry in the first round.

Then three.

They got three hall of Famers after that.

Jim Taylor, Ray Nitschke and Jerry Kramer.

At that point in 62, going into the 62 season, Dan Curry had had the best career so far.

Jeez, that's amazing when you say those other names too that we know are.

You know, have bronze bus in Canton.

That's pretty impressive.

And what happened to Curry was in that 62 season, I think he was the only defensive starter that missed any significant.

He missed like two or three games.

Tommy McDonald, cheap shot at him, blindside block at the.

At the knee.

And Curry never really recovered from that knee injury.

He came back and finished the 62 season and played pretty well.

He might even have gotten some all pro recognition in 63, but.

But he was never the same player after that.

And again, Lombardi traded him State straight up for Carol Dale, I believe, who turned out to be an outstanding receiver for the Packers.

Again, ship damaged goods to the Rams.

He was picking on poor George Allen, wasn't he?

Yeah, I think George was there for that.

Was he there for both of those trades?

I'm not sure, but he was, I believe.

I think he might have been.

Wow, that's impressive.

So Lombardi could not only spot the talent coming up as they were coming up, he sort of knew when to cut bait and get him out off of his team and get some value for him too, it sounds like.

Yeah, his personnel guy, Pat Pepler told me and Norb Hacker, one of his assistant coaches, both told me his hero was Jack Adams, who was the general manager of the Detroit Wood Wings.

And he just believed in and trying to stay young.

And I mean, really, people think about the 60 packers and think it was pretty much a static lineup, but Lombardi basically turned over the entire defense and on offense, you know, he changed it.

By the time he won his title in 67, he had.

The running backs were new.

He had added two new offensive linemen.

So he.

And a tight end.

So he had turned over the offense to some degree too.

And he would have turned it over more except that he was really one of the things during the.

That 63, 64.

60 more.

64.

He wanted to get younger in the offensive line and.

But he had.

They lost like three really good offensive linemen and the AFL draft picks.

And so he wasn't able to do what he.

I think he wanted to do.

So they were getting old in the offensive line and that by the time they won those three straight 65 to 67.

Father Time is undefeated, as we all know.

That's for sure.

Actually, Lombardi's theory was the most important thing in player personnel is to get rid of people.

So I read stories today about fans screaming this, their team didn't sign any free agents or this or that.

I think, though I think about Vince Lombardi and the most successful coach should and at least short, short term in the history of the NFL and the only guy with a better record in the NFL.

I don't know what Paul Brown's winning percentage will be now, but was John Madden, regular season games, I believe.

And you know, with that kind of success, as I said Lombardi, Lombardi would tell his staff, you know, we got to get rid of.

People preached it all the time.

So his key to success of team building was getting rid of players.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean he just, he felt it was necessary to.

He said, he was quoted as saying that, that you've got a.

Well, I mean, I made the point.

I mean that's what.

Yeah.

And when you think about it, I mean, think about it in our lives, you ever work any place that when they hired somebody, you thought that that was going to change, turn the whole building around?

How often did that happen as compared to how many times did maybe somebody get fired where you thought, oh good, this is going to improve things here?

That's true.

That's a good point.

Yeah, you bet.

Much.

Probably much more common that way than it was the earlier one you said.

Yeah, definitely.

Well, Cliff, you just got done having an amazing draft in Green Bay and I know you had had so many different features that you were part of to bring the, the National Football League history through Green Bay's eyes to the world and really enjoyed some of your pieces in there and I know you have projects going on all the.

What do you have coming up and what can you say about that?

The draft that you guys had up there.

Yeah, it was just amazing.

The attendance and how.

Well, I mean, one arrest was what.

I think something came out today.

There were 600,000 people.

Yeah.

Unique visitors.

Not exactly sure what that means, but.

And one arrest in three days.

That's pretty remarkable.

Yeah, I guess when I was, since I've been hired, the first big project, we redid our hall of Fame and I wrote for a lot of the text for that and then we did a couple.

There were some other history projects in the building and then a good share of my time and I think the reason they hired me was to write our 100 year history.

So I wrote a four volume book, the Greatest story in Sports.

It's more than 1,000 pages and 41 pages of small type footnotes that, you know, one of the unfortunate things, we have this great history and it's just got.

Became a muddled mess.

Packers were somewhat at fault, but the NFL's been at fault.

The Pro Football hall of Fame, they've gotten a lot of our history wrong and it's just unfortunate.

And so we tried to correct.

Mark Murphy's been great, been really supportive and even though he had no previous ties to Green Bay, he Wanted to get our history right for the 100th anniversary.

And so a lot of that book, thousand pages.

Because so much of it was spent trying to set the record straight.

And where would this book be available?

Is it on, like, packers.com it's packers.com.

It'S the great historian sports and expensive.

But I think shipping is still free, as far as I know.

And they get it pretty quickly.

And a lot of great stories in there.

I mean, one of.

For example, just be talking about Bart Starr.

And the other quarterback was Lamar McCann.

That's who Lombardi acquired from the Cardinals.

And he started the.

He was the beat Star out in camp in 59, started early.

And then Bart went into that season.

He had not won any of his first 18 starts.

The packers had won three of them when he was pulled from the game.

And Babe Perrilli won games, but he had not won a start.

Wow.

Until he beat Washington late in Lombardi's first season.

And so it was Star wins four in a row.

And Lombardi anoints him the starter and he starts him in the opener against the Bears in 60.

And he has a bad game.

Yeah.

And so Lombardi benches him again, turns back to McCann, and they're playing in Pittsburgh and they're trailing.

McCann's not playing very well.

And Lombardi put Star in for him.

Star rallies the team.

They beat the Steelers.

But Cam is all.

A lot of his teammates, even his.

Some of his friends on the team told me he was like he was a psycho.

And after that game, he started screaming at.

He screamed at either.

I think it was Boyd Dollar said something to him in the locker room about why do you catch stars passes when you don't and you won't catch mine?

And I don't think it was an issue with Drops for why he was pulled.

So anyway, after that game, McCann was excited about flying, but he got drunk on the flight home.

And at that point in time, the players and the coaches would both meet, would both go out to the same supper club, Nancy's Supper Club, and Lombardi would have a private room there.

So McCann went in there drunk and walked in.

And I write about this.

He encountered.

He encountered Lombardi in there and went up to him.

And one of the players said he started jabbing him on his chest, calling him a name, Italian name that I'm not going to repeat here.

And had a confrontation there.

And that pretty much cemented Starr's job.

When I talk about Mark Murphy being so good, I mean, he allowed me to write podcast stories like that.

You know, I wrote about the head coach who had a drinking problem and come to meetings during camp slurring his words.

And the bizarre era of Dan Devine and went into all of that as well as the.

The reason I called it the greatest story in sports is it's a miracle that the packers have survived.

And not only that, I won the most championships and the most games in the history of the NFL.

Yeah, amazing franchise.

And especially being one of the smaller franchises by today's standards.

And I, I know I.

Green Bay was doing it, sort of being, you know, owned by the community type thing.

And they were trying to adapt to that, which they never had success doing.

And I know some other franchises failed doing that where Green Bay still thrives today.

So they are survivors, that's for sure.

Portsmouth tried to do it, too.

Pottsville actually is the only.

Tonawanda, New York, was the smallest.

Although Lumberjacks, if you combine card Xanahonda card X.

Yes.

Near Buffalo.

And they played one game and folded.

The packers have played all over a thousand now and then.

The packers were the smallest team until Pottsville was admitted.

They had.

Green bay was about 30,000.

Pottsville was about 21,000.

And then once Pottsville folded, the packers basically been the smallest.

Smallest team, small city in the league ever since.

Orange, New Jersey, which had a team for one year in 29.

The Tornadoes, right?

Yeah, I think so.

You can't.

Orange Tornadoes.

You can't.

And it was really close.

So there is a possibility Orange was smaller.

But based on the census figures for 30, I think it would suggest that Green Bay was probably smaller than Orange.

Yeah.

And really, you sit there and think about how amazing that is, where you would think, you know, the smallest community, the smallest franchise community has the most success over, you know, 100 some years.

That is just a tremendous fact.

And, you know, you would always, you almost always think, okay, it's got to be Chicago or New York because those are the.

Where the big boys play and they have the bigger fan base and more chance of sustaining, you know, financial success.

But then there's Green Bay.

That Sort of disproves all the experts and disproves, you know, the logic of that.

And that's really quite amazing.

Yeah, especially, you know, early they, I mean, the Bears and the packers were just so dominant.

What they win like 11 out of 15 championships over, 13 championships over like a 13, 14 year period.

I forget what it was.

And Bert Bell, mid-30s.

I think Bert Bell said that if you formed an all star team of the Eastern Conference, you could not beat the Packers.

They'd have a better.

Yeah, I think that's, I think that was very true what you said too.

They were really deep.

I mean, Lambara, Lambeau would be three deep in the backfield, you know, some of those teams.

I mean, he had one year he had a passing backfield and a running backfield.

And I think he, I don't think he gets the credit he deserves for being his thing as a coach.

And I think his genius was that he adapted his offense to his talent.

So he changed that Notre Dame box, like made pretty major changes three or four times over the course of his coaching career.

And Lombardi, too, I don't think gets credit for being the, for his coaching acumen as much as for maybe his emotional pleas and the psychological advantages he gave the Packers.

But he too, I think was a pretty brilliant strategist.

Well, yeah, I think there's no doubt that they both were and both had the successes.

And you know, the, the only two, three Pete's in the National Football League history are by those two gentlemen at the, at the helm of the Packers.

So pretty, pretty amazing stuff there, you know, that's definitely a testament to how good they were and the players played for him, that's for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think that you're one of them because you're helping to preserve that history and make things right.

And that's something that we always salute here on Pigskin Dispatch.

Well, I appreciate those kind words just a bit player over there, but yeah, and good luck with your, with your podcast and my pleasure being on.

That's all the football history we have today, folks.

Join us back tomorrow for more of your football history.

We invite you to check out our website, pigskindispatch.com not only to see the daily football history, but to experience positive football with our many articles on the good people of the game as well as our own football comic strip kleet marks comics.

Pigskindispatch.com is also on social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and don't forget the Pigskin Dispatch YouTube channel to get all of your positive football news and history.

Special thanks to the talents of Mike and Gene Monroe, as well as Jason Neff for letting us use their our music during our podcast.

This podcast is part of the Sports.

History Network, your headquarters for the yes, the year of your favorite sport.

You can learn more at sportshistorynetwork.

Com.