On Feb. 6, either the Chicago Bears or the Green Bay Packers will be playing in Super Bowl XLV in Dallas. But for several area families, the bigger game is Sunday, when the two longtime football rivals square off against each other in the post-season for only the second time in history. Not only that, the families will square off against each other, too. Except without the violence. We hope.
It’s like Cubs-Cardinals, or even worse, Cubs-White Sox, but with a pigskin instead of a baseball. A Bear and a Packer in 1924 were the first NFL players ever ejected for fighting during a game. “It will be the worst loss in franchise history, in my opinion,” if the Packers lose to the Bears, said Jacob Klug, who was born in Milwaukee and has decorated his basement in green-and-gold Packer regalia. “This is more important than the Super Bowl.”
Sheila Weed and her husband, Ron, both grew up as Bears fans. They raised four boys, all of whom played football at Lanphier High School, and one daughter. Three are Bears fans, one is a St. Louis Rams fan but has an excuse, and son Elton, who is graduating from McKendree University this year, is a Packers fan. “We had season tickets to the Rams and went to home and some away games,” Sheila said. “With some boys in high school and others playing in college, it got harder and harder to go to NFL games, so we gave them up. George stayed a Rams fan, but the rest slowly reverted back to the Bears. “Except for Elton,” she said. “I tell people I must have dropped him on his head when he was a baby.”
Season tickets
Jennifer Madiar of Springfield was raised in Wisconsin. Her grandfather had had two season tickets to Packers games since the 1960s, and she and her brother took turns going to games with him. “I have a lot of memories going to the game with him,” she said. Her brother and father inherited the tickets — the only way you can get them, by the way — and now her brother takes turns with her to attend home games in Green Bay.
She went to a Bears-Packers game in 2007 with her husband, Eric, a lifelong Bears fan born and raised in the Windy City. It was his first Packers-Bears game. “They passed out these red Santa hats with the Packer logo on them at the game,” she said. Eric got so cold — because he wasn’t properly dressed for a game in Green Bay — that he had to wear the hat.
She has pictures, of course. Eric has already razzed her about the game, and Jennifer said they definitely will watch. She’s also going to surprise her husband by dressing their two kids, Jack and Audrey, in Packers gear when they go to church.
Girls vs. guys
Elaine Menzel (Bears) and her husband, Matt (Packers), were both raised in Lincoln and are raising their two children, Zachary, 7, and Emma Jae, 3, there. “In my house, if you weren’t a Bears fan, you weren’t allowed to talk about it,” she said. Her father still wears a Bears T-shirt or sweatshirt every Sunday during the winter, win or lose.
Zachary takes after his father and roots for the Packers and the baseball Cardinals, so Elaine is “trying to teach Emma Jae right” to be a Bears fan. “Hopefully it will be girls against guys in our house when the kids get older,” she said. The Menzels have invited friends and family to watch the game Sunday on their new big-screen TV. “We’ll all be glued to the TV, screaming and clapping, maybe crying when the clock runs out in the fourth (quarter),” she said. “Some of us will be doing our victory dances, and others will leave the room in silence and make excuses for our team for the next two weeks.
“My husband has his own little man-cave with a TV in the garage. I’m sure he’ll be out there with his Packer friends if it gets too bad.” The Weed family will gather along with some other college kids at Packer fan Elton’s house in Lebanon to watch. “He’s been a Packer fan since he was 4 or 5,” Sheila Weed said of her son. “Reggie White (the late Hall of Fame Packer defensive end) clicked with him. He’s got a cheesehead firefighter hat, and his room is all green and yellow.”
“It’s going to be hard Sunday,” said Sheila, who admits to sometimes siding with Elton when the Packers play somebody other than the Bears. “Just so he doesn’t feel lonely,” she said. “There has been a lot of talk amongst the brothers.”
‘Old football’
Klug, the man with the Packer-themed basement, said one of the reasons he and his wife, Susan, were attracted to their current house was because the house was set up for watching football on Sundays. “We have a lot more room in the basement, and it’s set up for enjoying it,” he said. Of course, a bigger basement meant more room for Packers stuff, too.
Susan grew up in Girard in a Bears family.
“She’s lenient about the Packer additions,” he said. “But we have a Packer tree down there for Christmas, and she put one Bear ornament at the bottom of it.” The Klugs will have people over Sunday. Jacob says he’ll be outnumbered, although there will be a couple of other Packers fans, including one who was drafted by the Pack out of college in the 1960s but didn’t make the team.
“I’m a yeller and a screamer with the TV,” he said. “I don’t know how I’ll be able to handle it if the Packers lose. I don’t know if I could even watch the Super Bowl.” But Packers fans and Bears fans can agree on one thing that Klug says about Sunday’s game: “It brings back what old football was about.” Chris Dettro can be reached at 788-1510.
Oldest rivalry
The Bears-Packers rivalry began in 1921 and is the league’s longest, with 180 regular-season and one post-season game. Chicago leads the all-time series with 92 wins, 83 losses and 6 ties. The Bears won the only previous playoff meeting between the two teams, which took place a week after Pearl Harbor in 1941. In the one-game playoff to determine the Western Division championship, the Bears defeated the Packers 33-14, then went on to beat the New York Giants the following week for their fourth NFL championship.
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