I remember my father taking a phone call back in 1975, just days after he had signed me up for tackle football for the first time. I was 9. When the call ended, he hung up and said, “You’re going to play for the Packers.”
More than a half century later, I have teamed up with Cheesehead TV to write a book about Green Bay Packers history. It all stems from that phone call, and my green and gold obsession which followed.
Even at such a young age, I began to obsess, reading about the Packers of the 1960s, including Jerry Kramer’s seminal book, Instant Replay. I read about Bart Starr in a book I got from the Scholastic Book Club at my school, and he immediately became my favorite Packer. My young mind couldn’t comprehend how he could have been the quarterback so recently and now was the head coach, and my mind found it intoxicating. The obsession only grew.
Enter our forthcoming book release, The Green Bay Packers: An Illustrated Timeline.
Here’s how it happened: When Josh Stevens, the publisher at Reedy Press, with which I have published several books previously, called me in early 2024 and asked if I was up for a book project, I of course said yes. Then he asked me, “You’re a Packers fan, right?” I said something like, “Josh, if you’re suggesting I write a book about the Green Bay Packers, just send me the contract. I don’t need to hear anything else.”
But there was one request – since I am based in Louisville, Ky., he wanted me to have a partner with closer ties to Green Bay and/or the team. It was pretty much a no-brainer to reach out to Aaron Nagler to gauge Cheesehead TV’s interest in getting on board, given I had been a long-time fan/patron and had also just started writing a weekly column for the platform.
Aaron and Cheesehead TV co-founder Corey Behnke weighed my offer and agreed to partner with me. And then the work began. Luckily, I had a head start thanks to reading Packers historian Cliff Christl’s amazing four-volume book, The Greatest Story in Sports. It also didn’t hurt that I had been consuming Packers content and history for years and years.
In other words, immersing myself in doing Green Bay Packers research was more like a vacation than doing actual work. I visited Green Bay three times last year as part of the process, interviewed Christl himself and met with Josh Gordon, son of John Gordon, who designed the now internationally recognized ‘G’ logo for Vince Lombardi.
I spent an afternoon at the Brown County Library in downtown Green Bay and met with historian Mary Joe Herber, who provided me with access to a ridiculous amount of Packers books and clippings.
And I spent three afternoons writing the first 20 or 25 chapters of the book at Lambeau Field, upstairs at the bar in 1919 Kitchen & Tap. (Cheese curds and Spotted Cow may or may not have been consumed during this process.)
The result is about 45,000 words on Packers history, from 1919 to the present, including player profiles, how the team was founded, how it progressed, and plenty of quotes and stories you may not know.
The book is now up for pre-sale on Amazon, and books should be printed and in stores – and landing on your porch if you order now – by early September. It will also be available in the Cheesehead TV store and on my website when books are printed and ready to go. We at Cheesehead TV can’t wait to hold copies in our hands, and we hope you will enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed producing it.
And as always, Go Pack Go.