BACK TO BACK! The Packers Are Going to San Diego

Hi, I'm Ray Westervelt. I drive a milk truck in Kewaunee County, Wisconsin, picking up at about two dozen dairy farms between the lake and Green Bay, and I have been on the waiting list for Lambeau Field season tickets since 1971. My number is getting closer every year. My grandson is going to love those seats. This page started out last year as my Super Bowl XXXI page, and now it's my Super Bowl XXXII page, because we're going back!

Last Year | 13-3 | The Playoffs | The Broncos | The Party | Me and the Pack | Guestbook

LAST YEAR: SUPER BOWL XXXI

Sunday, January 26, 1997, at the Superdome in New Orleans: Packers 35, Patriots 21. I still watch the tape about once a month. Cathy says it's once a week. Here's what I remember best:

• Brett to Andre Rison for 54 yards and a touchdown, right out of the gate.
• Brett to Antonio Freeman for 81 yards, the longest play from scrimmage in Super Bowl history.
• Desmond Howard taking the kickoff back 99 yards in the third quarter, just after the Patriots had closed it to 27-21. That was the ballgame. Desmond was the MVP, the first special teams man ever to get it.
• Reggie White with three sacks, a Super Bowl record.
• The Lombardi Trophy coming home to Green Bay for the first time since Super Bowl II. Twenty-nine years. I was 23 the last time.

THE 1997 SEASON: 13-3

NFC Central champions again. Raising the championship banner on opening night against the Bears, I had a lump in my throat the size of a cheese wheel.

• Brett Favre: 35 touchdown passes and his third straight MVP, the first player ever to win it three years running. He shares it this year with Barry Sanders, who ran for 2,053 yards, and I can live with that.
• Dorsey Levens: over 1,400 yards rushing. Nobody wanted to tackle him by December.
• Reggie White: the Minister of Defense, still chasing quarterbacks at 36.
• Antonio Freeman and Robert Brooks, back from his knee, catching everything. Mark Chmura at tight end.
• LeRoy Butler, who invented the Lambeau Leap, and Gilbert Brown plugging up the middle.
• Ryan Longwell, the rookie kicker nobody had heard of in July. Everybody's heard of him now.

The three losses: by a point at Philadelphia, at Detroit, and the one in Indianapolis, to a team that hadn't won a game all year, which I refuse to discuss.

THE PLAYOFFS

The NFC Championship was played in rain and mud, and Levens ran through it like a man plowing spring ground. That's three years running we've sent the 49ers home from the playoffs. Cathy made me take my boots off before I came in from the porch, and I'd only been out there yelling.

SUPER BOWL XXXII: THE BRONCOS

Denver went 12-4 and came in as a wild card, then beat Jacksonville at home and Kansas City and Pittsburgh on the road. Terrell Davis ran for over 1,700 yards this year, and he's the one I'm worried about. John Elway is 0 for 3 in Super Bowls, and everybody wants him to get one before he's done. I like Elway fine. Just not this Sunday.

The NFC has won thirteen Super Bowls in a row. The Packers are favored by about eleven. The game's on NBC.

THE PARTY IN THE BREAK ROOM

The cows don't take Super Bowl Sunday off, so the plant doesn't either. Last year we watched at home. This year Steve Craig, our plant foreman, got the OK to bring the big TV into the break room, so second shift and families are watching it together. Here's the plan:

• Doors open at 3:30. Wear green and gold.
• Brats on the grill out back. Yes, in January. I'll shovel a path.
• Fresh cheese curds from our own plant, squeaky.
• Gladys Kneeland from the office is making her seven-layer dip, and she's running the squares pool, a dollar a square.
• Lynn Gilliam from the lab is baking a sheet cake frosted like Lambeau Field, with the G at midfield.
• No Broncos jerseys inside the fence. Steve's brother-in-law from Colorado has been warned.

And Monday morning at 4:30 I'll be on my route, win or lose, because the cows don't care. But I'll be smiling. I just know it.

ME AND THE PACK

My dad took me to my first game at the new City Stadium in 1959, Vince Lombardi's first year. I was fifteen. We sat in the end zone, and I've been hooked ever since. I listened to the Ice Bowl on the radio in my uncle's milk house, the only warm spot on the farm, and I cheered all five Lombardi titles, and then a whole lot of years nobody wants to talk about. Then Holmgren came, and Brett, and Reggie, and here we are.