A site called WhooNew claims to have identified 10 different types of Packer fans, including …
1. The Tough Guy
These are the fans who like to call themselves “die-hards.” They prove their love of the Green Bay Packers by self-inflicting pain upon themselves.
Most often, that pain comes from extremely cold temperatures that no human should have to endure. These guys (and girls) don’t just go to a game even if the wind chill is 40-below. They make sure to tailgate all day ahead of time.
By halftime, they are so numb that they start stripping down. According to the Mayo Clinic, this is actually a sign of hypothermia. They will never leave the stadium early to try and beat the traffic. They’ll stay in the bleachers (never the skyboxes) until only other frozen Tough Guys are left standing gripping those little beanbag hand-warmers that ran out of heat hours ago. …
2. The Old-Timer
The Packers are one of the oldest teams in football history. So it makes sense that they also have a lot of geezers for fans. (Not you, Grandma)These are the old folks who constantly remind you that they were actually there at the Ice Bowl.They proudly proclaim that they were once seduced by Paul Hornung, Vince Lombardi cut them off in traffic, they arm-wrestled Ray Nitschke and perhaps they even watched the Acme Packers play at the old City Stadium. …
3. The Oblivious Moron
The moron means well – but truth be told – these fans simply don’t understand the game of football. They just want to get caught up in all the excitement like everyone else.
These fans are the ones who have to ask questions like”Why do they get two points for a safety?” or worse yet “Who has the ball right now?”
If they go to the game, they’re even more confused, because they don’t have Joe Buck and Troy Aikman to help explain things. So their favorite part ends up being the chance to guess the attendance at Lambeau Field. …
4. The Selfish Fantasy Freak
On the opposite end of the spectrum is the fan who is obsessed with stats and history. Chances are…this number-cruncher has at least four fantasy football teams.
Fantasy football is great. But the one problem is that it makes you focus on players’ performances instead of your favorite team.
These types of fans often deal with an intense internal conflict because of the desire to prove they know everything about the NFL and could actually be the GM of a real team.
The fantasy freak may quietly cheer to himself when Adrian Peterson runs for 80 yards against the Packers. Or he may yell in disgust with the rest of us, before exclaiming “Well, at least he’s on my fantasy team.” …
5. The Bandwagon Jumper
Any team that has success will also have bandwagon fans. But the Green Bay Packers are unique, because they are one of the few franchises to pick up bandwagon fans even when they’re having a terrible year.
That’s simply because the passion and excitement portrayed by the real fans is so contagious.
Bandwagon jumpers could be people who moved to the area from out of state, or people who married into a family of Packer-Backers. They had no choice but to assimilate when their father-in-law gave them a cheesehead for Christmas.
They’ll often keep their allegiance to their home-state teams in other sports. So you’ll get St. Louis Cardinal/Packers fans or Detroit Redwing/Packers fans. …
6. The Eternal Pessimist
We all know fans who predict the Packers will be in the Super Bowl every single year. But for every prediction of 14-2 there is a fan of the Green & Gold who is certain they’ll be lucky to go 8-8.
They complain about the team more than they complain about the Wisconsin weather (and we all complain about that a lot).
If there’s a player that’s having a bad year, the Eternal Pessimist shows no mercy. “Bench him! Cut him! Tar and feather him and run him out of town on a rail!” They question every coaching decision, every draft pick, every play.
If the team goes for it on 4th down – they should have punted. If the punter comes out – they would have gone for it.
Don’t be fooled – these fans love the Packers. It’s just a tough love. …
7. The Cry Baby
Some fans get just a little bit too emotional when they watch the Packers.
If you’ve ever been brought to tears by a regular season loss, this might be you (playoff loss crying is acceptable).
The Cry Baby fan doesn’t only experience exaggerated emotions when the Packers lose. They feel like the world is going to end whenever Aaron Rodgers gets sacked. They stress out when the team loses yardage on 2nd and 3. But they also celebrate a lot harder than the rest of us.
If you’ve never seen two grown men hugging each other with tears of joy streaming down their faces, you’ve never watched the Packers win on a last-minute drive with a couple of Cry Babies. …
8. The Angry A-hole
This fan seems capable of expressing only one emotion. And that emotion is pissed-the-hell-off!
It works out – because there is always something to be angry about in football. You can be furious at the Packers poor performance, or at the coaching staff. You can be ticked off at the referees, or because you think Chris Collinsworth “hates us for no good reason.”
They are a close cousin to the Eternal Pessimist. However, these guys tend to have high hopes, which get smashed into a million pieces no matter what. …
Comments added other types (Internet smilies theirs):
The Black Sheep. These fans are people who married into a family that cheers for a different team, and you’re the only one that cheers for the Packers and they all make fun of you for it. My husband and I have a mixed marriage: he’s a Bears fan and I’m a Packer fan. …
The Lifer (my wife): From baby pictures in Packer gear to wallpapering their bedroom with Packer newspaper articles in high school to formulating contingency plans for if a playoff game falls on your wedding day, the Lifer has always been and will always be a fan and makes sure everyone knows it. They NEVER miss a game, though may not get to attend many in person. He or she is also incredibly superstitious, believing in lucky hats, shirts, jewelry, seats, etc. (My mother-in-law was forced to spend 3 seasons in the kitchen during games because the Pack once won at the last minute when she was in there) Typically enraged by Wisconsin residents who are not Packer fans. …
Prob a category I’m sure I cannot be alone in something like Favre 4ever(even though i don’t care for that spelling)…I’m a die hard Favre lover. Created by my dad growing up eating our hot ham & rolls….continuing to cheer for him no matter what team he went to! Even buying their jerseys (yes i even own a special edition #4 vikings jersey,ugh). My baby girl so to be 2 has a couple favre jerseys already (one bought by her grandpa).It then became a game in my own household because it seemed to annoy my husband sooooo much so I, of course, continued on times 57285932! So much, to this day announcing “did you hear that? They’re still talking about my man brett” every single game or during any highlights. I always like to add for those scoreless slow games DRINK when they say Brett Favre
still a PAcKeR fan the whole time too
a*rod now not so much but he did get to watch & learn from a legend aka god lol. And I’m sure there are those out there that discredit all of him and hate him…prob good amount that spell it faRve!! No need to hear from them
I’m not sure how you can discuss Packer fandom and not bring up the subject of owning Packer stock. The Old-Timer is most likely to own the original stock, whereas I own the late ’90s stock, so I can look at early 2000s Lambeau Field improvements and know that I contributed to that.
I confess that I have been type number eight on occasion, for instance Brett Favre’s last Packer game. I have become sort of fan type number six, though I am not of the everybody-sucks school referred to there, and I don’t sit in gloom anticipating the next Packer loss. I’m not really fan number two, though I can say that I met Max McGee and got pounded in the chest by Ray Nitschke. (Really. At a bank branch opening in Madison, just before or after Nitschke’s retirement.)
Part of the reason is that, contrary to fan type number three, I know more about football than many fans, having observed it at all levels for three decades or so. I have more appreciation for the success of the Packers over the last two decades because I remember what it used to be like in Green Bay, and for that matter in Madison. (In 1988, the Packers and the Badgers had a combined 5–22 record. Really.)
But winning is hard in the NFL. (More on that momentarily.) To win a Super Bowl, nearly everything has to go your way, including things you can’t control. The most unpredictable Packers title was the last one, in 2010, Winning Super Bowl XLV required (1) winning the last two games to just get in the playoffs, (2) winning three road playoff games, and (3) beating the AFC’s best team without your best defensive player in the second half.
Since we’re discussing fandom, I’d add one of the types of Wisconsin non-Packer fan — the Contrarian, someone who cannot merely root for a team not named the Packers, but someone who obnoxiously brings up every Packer stumbling. I’m not sure why the Contrarian feels this way — perhaps low self-esteem; perhaps the Jerk is strong in this one. In my experience they are more likely Bears fans, though there probably are some Viking fans in western Wisconsin too. (Which, by the way, is the Packers’ fault, the result of their chronic ineptitude during what a friend of mine calls the Gory Years, basically the entire 1970s and 1980s. My friends include a Steeler fan and a Dolphin fan, and I went to high school with both.)
This is the space where I usually reveal my prediction for the upcoming Packer season. (Besides something inane like: The Packers will play 16 games this regular season.)
The good side of predicting came in 1996, when I predicted not only the correct regular-season record (13–3), but every game correctly, and in 2008, when I channeled my inner fan type number six and predicted that, with Favre having departed, the Packers would win six games that season. I did not predict 15–1 in 2011. I predicted 13–3 last season, and they went 11–5.
My prediction method is simple. I don’t pick postseason until the postseason, because the regular season and the postseason are really two different seasons in today’s NFL. (The 2010 season is a perfect example.) I simply go down the schedule, pick each individual game, try to avoid optimism as much as possible, and add up wins and losses. Doing so results in a 10–6 record. I have to think that’ll be good enough to win the NFC North only because, well, based on how they seem today neither Da Bears nor the Vikings nor the Lions seem very good.
The key to the Packers’ season will be their defense. It will not be their running game, because running the football is something you now do in the NFL when you’re ahead. (I’d say that Vince “Run to Daylight” Lombardi would be rolling over in his grave, but Lombardi was more adaptable on offense than usually portrayed. Quarterback Bart Starr, not the Packers’ running backs, keyed the Packers’ first two Super Bowl wins.) Unless you’re one of the teams (including Sunday’s opponent, the 49ers, who will provide loss number one this season) running the read-option, the NFL’s flavor of the day, running is your third or fourth option on offense.
The Packers will score enough points, even with wide receiver Greg Jennings having left and made himself, as long as he is with the Vikings, a one-championship player. (Of course, the words “rookie left tackle” should concern all NFL fans.) The first two games, with the 49ers’ Colin Kaepernick and Washington’s Robert Griffin III at quarterback, will be different from the following 14, because no other Packer opponent runs their read option. However, their run defense needs to be better anyway because Adrian Peterson is on the schedule twice.
The schedule to me includes three no-way-in-hell-will-they-win-there road games — at San Francisco, at Baltimore and at the Giants — and they will probably lose one divisional game they shouldn’t lose and one home game they shouldn’t lose. (The number of home games you should lose is zero, but home field advantage isn’t what it used to be in the NFL.) I therefore come up with 10–6. Come back in four months to see if I’m right.
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