Position in the Spotlight: Wisconsin

The next largest market for the Position in the Spotlight brings us to Milwaukee. Milwaukee is an interesting sports market because the most popular team in town...isn't in town. You have to head up north to Green Bay, home of the Packers, for that. In my opinion, a cheesehead is a cheesehead, no matter what city you live in, so this Position in the Spotlight entry will cover the entire state of Wisconsin.

When making the pick for each city, I think the first thing you need to take into consideration is what is the most popular sport in town, which in turn tells you the most popular team in town. Some cities are fairly equal, but in Wisconsin, football is king. Sure, the state has seen 1 championship each in baseball and basketball (Braves in 1957 and Bucks in 1971) but the Packers were so good and so popular in the early days of the NFL, that as teams migrated from towns like Decatur and Dayton to big cities, the Pack stayed put, and are still there today. Now, you pretty need to narrow it down to 2 spots within the Packers.

Currently, there is no doubt that Packers QB is the Position in the Spotlight because of all of the drama that Brett Favre caused, but in reality, the Packers have only really had 2 great QBs, Favre and Bart Starr. Aaron Rodgers has some huge shoes to fill right now, but it will be interesting to see what the expectations are for Packers QBs in the future. Over the course of Packers history, though, there is one position that may have even bigger shoes to fill, and that is Green Bay Packers Head Coach.

Historic Lambeau Field. The Vince Lombardi Trophy. What do these things have in common? They were both legendary Packers coaches. Over the 90 year history of the team, the Packers have only had 14 head coaches. Curly Lambeau started the tradition of great Packers coaches when he started serving as player-coach in 1921. He wound up coaching the Packers for 29 years, leaving with 6 NFL championships in 1949. He is known for helping to popularize the forward pass in the NFL, having witnessed it in action at Notre Dame under Knute Rockne. The 1950s were pretty rough on the Packers, but Gene Ronzani was the first to push for the Packers to wear their famous green uniforms.

In 1959, Vince Lombardi was next to step in line to try to achieve what Lambeau accomplished, and he turned the organization around. In just 9 seasons as head coach, he won 5 championships, including the first 2 Super Bowls. Only John Madden and some guy that coached in the 20s have a better winning percentage than Lombardi, and he was 9-1 all time in the playoffs. He could possibly be the most famous coach in NFL history, and is still quoted frequently. The Super Bowl Trophy was named after him shortly after his death.

The 24 years that followed Lombardi's departure threw a wet blanket on just about any legacy left by Lambeau and Lombardi, but the Packers still had some intriguing head coaches. Dan Devine left the Packers for Notre Dame, where he won a national championship with Joe Montana. Legendary 60s QB Bart Starr coached the team from 1975-1983. He wasn't all that great as a coach, but he is definitely a celebrity in Green Bay. Starr was replaced by another famous Packer, Forrest Gregg, who also led the Bengals to the Super Bowl in 1981 before going to Green Bay.

Everything started to change again in Green Bay in 1992, when Mike Holmgren and Brett Favre came to town. Holmgren led the Packers to the playoffs 6 out of 7 years with the team, and made 2 trips to the Super Bowl, winning the first one. He turned the Packers into a force to be reckoned with as the great 49ers and Cowboys teams of the early 90s started to decline. After Holmgren left, the Packers still had a reasonable amount of success under Mike Sherman, but were not as dominant as they were under Holmgren. Mike McCarthy is the current head coach, and the heat is on him now not for trying to live up to the greatness of past coaches, but because he had a negative 7 win swing after helping to run Favre out of town last year.

Honorable Mention:
Green Bay Packers Quarterback: Like I mentioned before, this was a tough call. Favre's legacy will live on for a very long time, and he left much more recently than Holmgren and especially Lombardi. Right now this definitely is the position in the spotlight, but if the Packers go another couple of decades without a great QB like between Starr and Favre, those expectations will start to fade, and Packer fans have almost always had at least an interesting head coach. Ten years from now, Coach Favre?
Milwaukee Bucks "Big Man": The Bucks have had some good "big men" over the years, especially in the early 70s when they had the legendary Oscar Robertson and maybe the even more legendary Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as teammates. In the early 80s, they had hall of famer Bob Lanier, and in the late 80s, they had Terry Cummings. In the mid-late 90s, they had Glenn Robinson, and currently they are led by Andrew Bogut and Charlie Villanueva. This is probably the first time ever the Bucks have been mentioned on this site.