How Green Bay Avoided Losing the Packers to Milwaukee

The Green and Gold Standard: A People’s History of the Green Bay Packers,” a new book by Thomas Nelson.

The Green Bay Packers were always susceptible to being moved to Milwaukee. The NFL and Milwaukee, to an extent, took advantage of the team’s misfortune and made another run at it in 1933. This is an excerpt from chapter three of The Green and Gold Standard: A People’s History of the Green Bay Packers,” a new book by Thomas Nelson: 

The disappointing 1933 campaign was even more a letdown because the team came into the season with high hopes and expectations of a return to glory with “one of the best Packers squads,” as the Green Bay Press-Gazette declared on the eve of kickoff Sunday. In the same story, the writer brought hopeful readers back to Earth by reminding them where the team stood in the NFL universe—a supernova in its final stages or a protostar just beginning its life cycle with so much more to come? “The wonder continues to grow throughout the country, that this comparatively little city, can continue year after year to put on the field the greatest or nearly the greatest football team in the world.”

And then there were the Bears. George Halas lived to beat and belittle the Packers whenever he could—especially when the Packers were down and Chicago on top.

As Papa Halas claimed his second NFL title at the end of the 1933 season, the Windy City’s press corps were having their way with dejected Green Bay fans. “The Packers,” crowed the Chicago Tribune, “will move to Milwaukee next fall and if the change is not made then it certainly will be made in 1935.” The charge wasn’t unfounded. Milwaukee had petitioned the league for an expansion team in 1930–31, and the Packers had whetted the city’s appetite by playing NFL-requested exhibition games in Milwaukee.

The Packers turned things around slightly in the 1934 season, when they finished third in the Western Division at 7–6. More importantly, they were digging their way out of the deep financial hole of the Bent lawsuit. [A fan fell off the bleachers and sued the team successfully and pushed them into receivership.] In December, team president Leland “Lee” Joannes and four contemporaries—known as the “Hungry Five” for their eager appetite for financial gain—formulated and executed a plan to bail out the Packers from their worst financial and legal crisis to date. Along with Joannes, the quintet included former team president and executive committee member Andrew Turnbull, prominent physician Dr. W.W. Kelley, team attorney and vice president Gerald Clifford, and Curly Lambeau. Others who played a pivotal role in resolving the crisis included court-appointed receiver Frank Jonet and executive committee member Charles Mathys.

If one member of the group didn’t need money, it was Joannes, who had spotted the squad $6,000 to tide them over until the receivership was resolved. Joannes’ intentions from the beginning were pure and sought no financial gain—simply put, it would have been a terrible investment. More importantly, he had taken complete responsibility for the team’s financial and legal liabilities by taking title of the franchise with the crushing verdict in the Bent case still unknown.

On December 14, Joannes hosted a “Big Talk” with 25 business and civic leaders including the Hungry Five and members of the team executive committee. Just 12 years after the most recent and first financial crisis, the team seemed right back where it started: deep in debt with limited options. Still, it must have felt different; back in 1922, they were in the aging and cramped Press-Gazette storefront office on Cherry Street. Now, they were at the outsized Joannes Bros. wholesale grocery buildings that occupied half of a city block on Washington Street. The December 14 meeting turned out to be as successful as Joannes had been in other business ventures. He secured unanimous support and $10,000 in pledges to set the team on sound financial footing.

The Press-Gazette naturally beat the fundraising drum with campaign updates, advertisements, and organizational meeting announcements, just as George Calhoun had done in the early years when he filled the newspaper’s pages with columns, pre- and post-game reports, and plenty of pigskin gossip. Successive publishers would do the same as the team continued needing a helping hand navigating future financial challenges.

It worked for Calhoun in 1922, and it worked for the Hungry Five in 1935.

Joannes and the Packers returned to the courthouse on January 29. Two years earlier they were facing certain death in Judge Graas’ courtroom; today they were celebrating a joyous occasion in the same room where the team’s fate seemed forever sealed. They were a few pen strokes away from approving the terms of incorporation and locking in pro football in Green Bay for generations.

The only question: How long until the next crisis?