Those Non-Profit Packers

By Dave Zirin
blog
The New Yorker
January 25, 2011

http://nyr.kr/hx65As

In a season where N.F.L. owners have steadily threatened to
lock out the players next year unless they secure more
profits in the next collective bargaining agreement, it's
poetic justice to see the Green Bay Packers, the team without
an owner, make the Super Bowl. Actually, it's not quite
accurate to say the Packers are without an owner. They have a
hundred and twelve thousand of them. The Packers are owned by
the fans, making them the only publicly owned, not-for-
profit, major professional team in the United States. The
Pack have been a fan-owned operation since the primitive pro
football days of the nineteen-twenties, when N.F.L. teams
could be won in card games and no one foresaw the awesome
power this sport would hold over both the American
imagination and the American wallet.

In 1923, the Packers were just another hardscrabble team on
the brink of bankruptcy. Rather than fold they decided to
sell shares to the community, with fans each throwing down a
couple of dollars to keep the team afloat. That humble frozen
seed has since blossomed into a situation wherein more than a
hundred thousand stockholders own more than four million
shares of a perennial playoff contender. Those holding
Packers stock are limited to no more than two hundred
thousand shares, keeping any individual from gaining control
over the club. Shareholders receive no dividend check and no
free tickets to Lambeau Field. They don't even get a foam
cheesehead. All they get is a piece of paper that says they
are part-owners of the Green Bay Packers. They don't even get
a green and gold frame for display purposes.

The shareholders elect a board of directors and a seven-
member executive committee to stand in at N.F.L. owners
meetings. But football decisions are made by General Manager
Ted Thompson, perhaps the luckiest and happiest G.M. in
sports. This structure allows Thompson to execute decisions,
even unpopular ones, without an impatient, jittery
billionaire breathing down his neck. Since his hire in
January 2005, Thompson has made his share of controversial
moves. But unlike his G.M. brethren around the league, who
carry little or no job security, Thompson has been given the
space to see his moves succeed or fail on their own accord.
It was Thompson who decided to jettison legendary quarterback
Brett Favre in 2008 for the unproven but younger and
considerably lower maintenance Aaron Rodgers. Today, Favre is
officially (we hope) retired and Rodgers stands at the
pinnacle of his sport.

The Packers' unique setup has created a relationship between
team and community unlike any in the N.F.L. Wisconsin fans
get to enjoy the team with the confidence that their owner
won't threaten to move to Los Angeles unless the team gets a
new mega-dome. Volunteers work concessions, with sixty per
cent of the proceeds going to local charities. Even the beer
is cheaper than at a typical N.F.L. stadium. Not only has
home field been sold out for two decades, but during
snowstorms, the team routinely puts out calls for volunteers
to help shovel and is never disappointed by the response. It
doesn't matter how beloved the Cowboys are in Dallas; if
Jerry Jones ever put out a call for free labor, he'd be
laughed out of town.

Here are the Packers: financially solvent, competitive, and
deeply connected to the hundred thousand person city of Green
Bay. It's a beautiful story but it's one that the N.F.L. and
Commissioner Roger Goodell take great pains both to hide and
make sure no other locality replicates. It's actually written
in the N.F.L. bylaws that no team can be a non-profit,
community owned entity. The late N.F.L. commissioner Pete
Rozelle had it written into the league's constitution in
1960. Article V, Section 4-otherwise known as the Green Bay
Rule-states that "charitable organizations and/or
corporations not organized for profit and not now a member of
the league may not hold membership in the National Football
League."

I talked with Rick Chernick, a member of the Packers board of
directors, about whether other communities should challenge
the N.F.L. constitution and be like Green Bay. Chernick
expressed doubt, saying:

      "I'm just not sure in today's day and age a team could
      follow the Packer way. The cost of ownership is a ton
      today, thus being almost an impossible task without
      deep pockets. Green Bay is truly a special, special
      situation."

 Chernick makes a valid point. But there is a strong
 counterargument as well. It may be exorbitantly expensive to
 run a team, but people don't buy N.F.L. teams as a civic
 service. Being an N.F.L. owner is like having a license to
 print money. Television contracts alone run in the billions,
 with the 2006-2011 contracts valued at approximately $3
 billion annually, $800 million more than the previous
 contracts. In addition, N.F.L. teams have received $6
 billion in public funds to build the current crop of
 stadiums. In other words, the public is already shouldering
 a great deal of the cost and debt for N.F.L. franchises. But
 these public dollars, through some sort of magic alchemy,
 morph into private profits that often flow away from the
 communities that ponied up the dough. In the United States,
 we socialize the debt of sports and privatize the profits.
 Green Bay stands as a living, breathing, and, for the
 owners, frightening example, that pro sports can aid our
 cities in tough economic times, not drain them of scarce
 public resources.

 Fans in San Diego and Minnesota, in particular, where local
 N.F.L. owners are threatening to uproot the home teams and
 move them to Los Angeles, might look toward Green Bay and
 wonder whether they could do a better job than the men in
 the owner's box. And if N.F.L. owners go ahead and lock the
 players out next season, more than a few long suffering fans
 might look at their long suffering franchises and ask,
 "Maybe we don't need owners at all." It has worked in Green
 Bay-all the way to the Super Bowl

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