The Packers are the last of the “small town teams” which were common in the NFL during the league’s early days of the 1920s and 1930s. Founded in 1919 by Earl “Curly” Lambeau and George Whitney Calhoun, the franchise traces its lineage to other semi-professional teams in Green Bay dating back to 1896. Between 1919 and 1920, the Packers competed against other semi-pro clubs from around Wisconsin and the Midwest, before joining the American Professional Football Association (APFA), the forerunner of today’s NFL, in 1921. Although Green Bay is by far the smallest major league professional sports market in North America, [10] Forbes ranked the Packers as the world’s 27th most valuable sports franchise in 2019, with a value of $ 2.63 billion.
The Packers have won 13 league championships, the most in NFL history, with nine pre – Super Bowl NFL titles and four Super Bowl victories. The Packers won the first two Super Bowls in 1967 and 1968 and were the only NFL team to defeat the American Football League (AFL) prior to the AFL – NFL merger. The Vince Lombardi Trophy is named after the Packers’ coach Vince Lombardi, who guided them to their first two Super Bowls. Their two subsequent Super Bowl wins came in 1996 and 2010. Additionally, with at least one playoff game yet to be played in the 2019 NFL season, the Packers have won more games, including playoff wins, than any NFL franchise with a total of 791 .
The Packers are long-standing adversaries of the Chicago Bears, Minnesota Vikings, and Detroit Lions, who today comprise the NFL’s NFC North division (formerly known as the NFC Central Division). They have played over 100 games against each of those teams through history, and have a winning overall record against all of them, a distinction only shared with the Kansas City Chiefs and Dallas Cowboys. The Bears – Packers rivalry is one of the oldest rivalries in U.S. professional sports history, dating back to 1921.
