About Green Bay Packers
Independent National Football League
The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Competing in the National Football League as part of the National Football Conference North division, the Packers are the third-oldest franchise in the NFL, established in 1919. They are the only non-profit, community-owned major league professional sports team based in the United States. Since 1957, home games have been played at Lambeau Field. They hold the record for the most wins in NFL history.
The Packers are the last of the "small-town teams" that were common in the NFL during the league's early days of the 1920s and 1930s. Founded in 1919 by Earl "Curly" Lambeau and George Whitney Calhoun, the franchise traces its lineage to other semi-professional teams in Green Bay dating back to 1896. Between 1919 and 1920, the Packers competed against other semi-pro clubs from around Wisconsin and the Midwest, before joining the American Professional Football Association , the forerunner of today's NFL, in 1921. In 1933, the Packers began playing part of their home slate in Milwaukee until changes at Lambeau Field in 1995 made it more lucrative to stay in Green Bay full-time; Milwaukee is still considered a home media market for the team. Although Green Bay is the smallest major league professional sports market in North America, Forbes ranked the Packers as the world's 27th-most-valuable sports franchise in 2019, with a value of $2.63 billion.
The Packers have won 13 league championships, the most in NFL history, with nine pre-Super Bowl NFL titles and four Super Bowl victories. The Packers, under coach Vince Lombardi, won the first two Super Bowls in 1966 and 1967; they were the only NFL team to defeat the American Football League before the AFL–NFL merger. After Lombardi retired, the Super Bowl trophy was named for him, but the team struggled through the 1970s and 1980s. Since 1993, the team has enjoyed much regular-season success, making the playoffs 23 times and winning two Super Bowls in 1996 under head coach Mike Holmgren and 2010 under head coach Mike McCarthy. The Packers have the most wins and the second-highest win–loss record in NFL history, including both regular season and playoff games. The Packers are longstanding adversaries of the Chicago Bears, Minnesota Vikings, and Detroit Lions, who today form the NFL's NFC North division . They have played more than 100 games against each of those teams, and have a winning overall record against all of them, a distinction only shared with the Kansas City Chiefs, Dallas Cowboys, and Miami Dolphins. The Bears–Packers rivalry is one of the oldest rivalries in U.S. professional sports history, dating to 1921.
The Green Bay Packers were founded on August 11, 1919, by former high-school football rivals Earl "Curly" Lambeau and George Whitney Calhoun. Lambeau solicited funds for uniforms from his employer, the Indian Packing Company, a meat packing company. He was given $500 for uniforms and equipment, on the condition that the team be named after its sponsor. The Green Bay Packers have played in their original city longer than any other team in the NFL.
On August 27, 1921, the Packers were granted a franchise in the American Professional Football Association, a new national pro football league that had been formed the previous year. The APFA changed its name to the National Football League a year later. Financial troubles plagued the team, and the franchise was forfeited within the year before Lambeau found new financial backers and regained the franchise the next year. These backers, known as "The Hungry Five", formed the Green Bay Football Corporation.
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