The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel did a valuable service for younger readers by reminding them that Packers football wasn’t always as good as it is now:

In fact, fans younger than 30 pretty much know only winning. Seventeen post-season appearances in the last 22 years (including an NFC Divisional Round game next Sunday at Lambeau Field). Eleven division titles since 1995. Three trips to the Super Bowl. Two quarterbacks, both headed to the Hall of Fame.

Yes, Packers fans have it pretty good. After all, they could have been born in Oakland or Cleveland. Worse yet, they could be stuck with Jay Cutler.

“I think us as Packer fans are spoiled rotten,” said Michael Hunt, who played linebacker for Green Bay from 1978 to ’80 and lives in Merrill.

“I don’t think fans understand how hard it is to (win) year after year, and have a chance to go to the Super Bowl every year,” said Gary Ellerson, a Packers running back for two years in the mid-’80s.

They have a point. Perhaps many Packers fans take success for granted. Maybe there’s a growing sense of Titletown entitlement, a smidgen of smugness, an undercurrent of complacency that has ever so slightly dulled passions.

If so, a reminder of the past is in order.

A friend of mine calls the interminable interregnum between Vince Lombardi and Ron Wolf as the “Gory Years.” The Journal Sentinel refers to it as the Sorry Years:

From 1968 through 1991, the Packers had four winning seasons. They qualified for the post-season twice and won exactly one playoff game. They went through more than 30 quarterbacks, some of whom seemingly had no idea how to throw a forward pass.

There were terrible trades and forgettable draft picks. The franchise lacked direction at the top, leadership in the locker room, talent on the field.

“There was chaos in the organization,” Dave Begel said of the three years (1978-’80) he covered the team for The Milwaukee Journal. “It was a time of chaos. They were a lousy team. They were a terrible football team.”

The Packers sank so low that Bob Harlan, who spent 37 years with the organization and now is chairman emeritus, wondered if they ever would find a way out of the abyss.

“I used to go to Super Bowls in the ’70s and ’80s and I’d see those big (inflatable) helmets on the field and I would think, ‘I’m not sure we’re ever going to have this again,’” Harlan said. “It seemed we just could not find a way to be successful.”

From Hall of Fame quarterback Bart Starr to future Hall of Famer Brett Favre, the list of Packer Quarterbacks In Name Only included:

• Jim Del Gaizo, 8 games
• Blair Kiel, 8
• Rich Campbell, 7
• Chuck Fusina, 7
• Don Milan, 7
• Dennis Sproul, 6
• Frank Patrick, 4
• Alan Risher, 3
• Randy Johnson, 3
• Vince Ferragamo, 3
• Bill Stevens, 3
• Bill Troup, 2
• Brian Dowling, 2
• Rick Norton, 1
• Steve Pisarkiewicz, 1
• Willie Gillus, 1

Some of that list have stories attached. Risher and Gillus played on the 1987 lockout team. Campbell was a number-one draft pick despite a throwing motion described by the Journal Sentinel as “unorthodox.” Patrick, who was 6–7 and weighed 225 pounds, was moved by Nebraska from quarterback to wide receiver, then the Packers moved him back to quarterback, only to find out why Nebraska moved him from behind center. Del Gaizo, a left-hander, was traded from Miami for two second-round draft picks, basically because he was the third-string quarterback on the then-NFL champions. Ferragamo got the Los Angeles Rams to Super Bowl XIV, and Pisarkiewicz was a number-one pick of the St. Louis Cardinals (because he apparently was a star at the University of Missouri). Dowling, the quarterback for Yale in the famous 31–31 tie with Harvard in 1968, became the “B.D.” from the Doonesbury cartoon. No, Randy Johnson didn’t later become one of the most intimidating pitchers in baseball.

The Packers also had Scott Hunter, Green Bay West graduate Jerry Tagge, Jack Concannon, John Hadl (of the infamous Lawrence Welk trade fame — he was acquired for five draft picks, and then was traded away with another player and two more draft picks), Lynn Dickey (before and after his broken leg), David Whitehurst, former UW quarterback Randy Wright, Don Majkowski and, when Majkowski held out, Anthony Dilweg.

Happily, now that people who know what they’re doing run the Packers, fans have enjoyed the work of one near-future Hall of Fame quarterback, Brett Favre, and one farther-future Hall of Fame quarterback, Aaron Rodgers. Notice as well they both have personalities. Rodgers’ is more subtle than Favre’s, but, the Wall Street Journal reports:

The only time Rodgers isn’t on the same page with his teammates is when he is telling jokes. Rodgers’s attempts at humor are so layered and dry, those who know him say, that the only thing more common than a playbook in the Packers’ locker room is the clueless comment, Is he joking?

“His jokes are what we call ‘Algebra 2,’ ” said Daryn Colledge, a Miami Dolphins offensive lineman and former Packers teammate. “I think a lot of people don’t get it.”

Rodgers’s sense of humor, though inscrutable, serves as a calming influence in Green Bay. After a 1-2 start this season, Rodgers famously told fans to “R-E-L-A-X”—a statement later backed up by the Packers’ 12-4 final record. In the locker room, Rodgers uses quips and stunts to tell his teammates the same. The comedic results are mixed.

Scenes like the following are common in Green Bay. Last week in a team meeting, Rodgers displayed a photo, randomly, of a figure in American history and asked rookie center Corey Linsley to identify him. There was no apparent purpose to this, but Linsley correctly identified John F. Kennedy.

“What’s his middle name?” Rodgers asked.

“I don’t know,” Linsley said. “Frederick?”

Half the room giggled. Half was confused. It was, teammates agree, kind of weird. (Linsley clarified that he is now aware of Kennedy’s middle name, Fitzgerald.

Then there is Rodgers’s habit of quoting “The Princess Bride.” While the 1987 romantic comedy is widely considered a classic, the allusions are lost on Rodgers’s 20-something teammates. (At 31, Rodgers is older than all but three guys on the team.) His favorite line to blurt out, he said, is from the character Vizzini: “Let me put it this way. Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? Morons.”

“They probably don’t get the reference, no,” Rodgers said.

“He does make jokes that fall on deaf ears,” said fullback John Kuhn. “But that’s what happens when you make a lot of jokes.”

Teammates say that Rodgers, during pregame walk-throughs, will stare at players with an angry look until the player expresses concern. Then Rodgers will laugh.

“It takes a really long time to figure it out,” Linsley said of Rodgers’s humor.

Rodgers’s jokes, teammates say, are almost entirely for his own entertainment. To them, that suggests a confidence that puts them at ease. “He’s about as relaxed and calm in this locker room as you can get,” said Packers offensive tackle Bryan Bulaga. “His demeanor has an effect on us. There’s never any panic in this locker room. Everything about him says, ‘Take a breather; we are going to be all right.’ ”

There is anxiety in the Green Bay locker room, but it is from players dreading falling victim to one of Rodgers’s quips.

During midweek meetings, in between breakdowns of offensive plays, Rodgers will award a “Man of the Week” award, in which he scours Google Images for less-than-flattering photos of teammates. He found one of tight end Andrew Quarless while he played at Penn State and blasted it on the video board in the meeting room. “He spends a lot of time on the Internet, trying to find anything,” Quarless said.

Rodgers spent plenty of time this season making fun of video that emerged of backup quarterback Matt Flynn, who danced on teammates’ shoulders at a Pearl Jam concert in October. “I’m out where people can see me, seeing my favorite band, trying to get the crowd pumped up. Why am I supposed to be embarrassed?” Flynn said. “He’s trying to roast everyone and it doesn’t work on me. Anything people think I’m embarrassed by I am actually proud of.”

Nothing, Bulaga said, compares with the oddness of the Saturday meetings that Rodgers runs with the offense.

“He has these little gigs every Saturday, he has 10 to 15 minutes to do whatever he wants,” Bulaga said. That means Rodgers focuses on football and addressing the entire offense on what needs to be done—until he starts getting weird. In one meeting this season, Rodgers randomly began to show what he called great commercials of the year. Bulaga knew what was coming, even if no one else did. It was all a setup to eventually show Bulaga’s commercial for cellphones featuring coach Mike McCarthy.

“There is no self-doubt in [Rodgers],” Bulaga said.

Rodgers’s eccentric sense of humor can be effective on opponents, too. Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive lineman Michael Johnson said that Rodgers’s on-field demeanor is so biting and confusing that he compared him with Clive Owen’s mysterious character in the caper movie “Inside Man.” Buccaneers linebacker Mason Foster said that Rodgers is likely to throw for a big play, then calmly walk by you and ask how your alma mater is doing.

“He went to Cal, so he just walks up and asks me how Washington is doing,” Foster said. “In between plays.”

The major flaw in this story is that it includes no mention of Rodgers’ famous photobombs of each week’s team captain photo, which can be found on, of course, its own website: