There was just under two minutes left in the game, when the Milwaukee County Stadium public address announcer finally acknowledged what everyone in the building already knew. “The Packers extend a sincere thanks to our Milwaukee fans for their loyalty and support over the last 62 years.”
The crowd of more than 54,000 booed. It was 27 years ago and the Packers had been playing home games in Milwaukee longer than all but five of the NFL’s franchises existed at the time. But it would be all over in a few minutes. An occasion marked without pomp or ceremony, without a roster of Packers legends taking to the County Stadium grass one last time or a series of pregame speeches. The halftime show that afternoon, which could have paid tribute to the 125 games the Packers had played there since 1953, instead featured a team of trained dogs catching Frisbees.
And the Packers were losing to the Atlanta Falcons, 17-14. The Falcons who had nothing left to play for in Week 16, already eliminated from the playoffs; the Falcons who possessed one of the worst defenses in the league; the Falcons who had lost Jeff George, their starting QB, to an injury early in the game. The Packers controlled their own destiny, with a pair of wins in the last two games clinching them a winning record, a playoff spot, and perhaps even a division title. But after jumping out in front early, the Packers lost their all-world receiver Sterling Sharpe to a neck injury. Sharpe laid motionless on the turf for several moments before leaving and, although he would play the next week, he’d miss the postseason and be forced to retire in the offseason. They held the lead going into the half, but the mood was decidedly subdued.
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The Packers looked tired in the second half, only managing a missed field goal on offense and doing little to stop backup QB Bobby Herbert’s march downfield to give the Falcons the lead. As they took over with just one timeout remaining and less than two minutes to jump-start their suddenly moribund offense, the Packers finally offered their tip-of-the-cap to the Milwaukee faithful. It’s no wonder their response was less than gracious.
Borchert Field Days
It had been the lure of better gate receipts that originally drew the Packers to Milwaukee, who first played at Borchert Field in 1933. They bounced between a handful of Milwaukee homes before County Stadium opened in 1953. The stadium had been built with the hopes of forcing the Packers to relocate permanently to Milwaukee. But when Lambeau Field opened in 1957, the team settled into a dual-home park routine of playing two to four games in Milwaukee each year. During the Lombardi years, the Packers looked forward to their Milwaukee dates. The city was a veritable metropolis compared to Green Bay, lineman Bob Skoronski later recalled, and the team was treated lunches from Jake’s Deli and dinners catered by Glorisoso’s. It didn’t hurt that the Pack was virtually unbeatable in the Cream City, winning 19 of 21 games they played there between 1961 and 1967.
But by the early 1990s, with the Milwaukee Brewers in the midst of what would become a long struggle to build a replacement for County Stadium, the Packers were making it known that a new facility was essential to maintaining their Milwaukee arrangement. Improvements to Lambeau Field had erased the old financial advantage to playing down south. Indeed, by 1991 the Packers were claiming that revenues for Milwaukee games were only about 60% of what they were in Green Bay. Gone too was any anticipation of Milwaukee games. Players hated the two-hour bus ride and, with the stadium’s cramped facilities and dual-use field, many opposing teams asked not to be scheduled for Milwaukee games. The Chicago Bears played their lone Milwaukee game in 1974 and refused to return.
In August 1994, with the stadium negations stalled, the Packers announced a commitment to play in Milwaukee in 1995. But just two months later, with MLB players out on strike and the team no longer convinced that a new stadium deal was likely, the Packers announced that the December 18th game against Atlanta would be their last in Milwaukee.
So as the Packers took over on their own 33, the Milwaukee faithful could only be sure of one more drive. After a 25-yard gain on a pass to Mark Chmura, young gunslinger Brett Favre mixed short gains with incompletions, twice reaching third-and-long before taking the team’s last timeout at the Atlanta 9-yard-line, third down with two to go and 21 seconds on the clock. Favre dropped back to pass, found no one, and then broke for the goal line, outrunning two tacklers and leaping head-first to paydirt to gave the stadium a football send-off that no one would have dared to script. A minute later, the Packers left the field to a roar rarely matched in the stadium’s history.
