Each year in Green Bay hundreds of new Packers fans are born.
They are carried home from hospital wrapped in green and gold NFL Packers blankets sucking happily on Packers soothers and fed from Packers baby bottles.
As they grow up they take their first steps wearing little Green Bay Packer football uniforms or cheerleading outfits and they eat breakfast each morning from their Packer cereal bowl.
They will go to school carrying books in their Packer backpacks and drink coffee from a Packer mug.
As an adult, they will purchase shares of Packers' stock on a Packer phone and play golf at the weekend with Packer golf balls while drinking beer from a Packer cooler.
When they die, some will be buried in their Packers replica jerseys -- perhaps autographed by one of the team's players -- cherished throughout a lifetime of unwavering devotion to "the Pack."
But the chances are that one thing this generation of Packers fans will never have is a season ticket to watch the team they worship.
As 2004 began, the waiting list for season tickets offering the pleasure of sitting on Lambeau Field's aluminum benches in biting sub-Arctic temperatures stood at 62,000 names.
When children are born, parents add their names to the list knowing that it might a grandchild who one day finally holds the treasured pass to the Packers' kingdom.
"You never know what the future holds but if things continue the way they are it may take many lifetimes before the people near the bottom of that list get a ticket," said Mark Wagner, the Packers' director of ticketing.
"People come in and sign up newborns knowing they will never have a chance at tickets but their children might.
"We even have newlyweds phone up and say they're planning on having a child and want to put him or her on the list.
"But before you can go on our list the child has to be born and we ask for something in writing for proof."
The team's popularity extends well beyond the Wisconsin borders with season ticket holders in 47 of 50 American states.
Like soccer's Manchester United, baseball's New York Yankees and ice hockey's Toronto Maple Leafs, the Packers have a huge appeal and a fanatical following with supporters scattered across the globe.
Despite the smallest sports television market in the US, the Green Bay franchise and their fans survive in the harshest of climates and economic conditions.
In fact, the Packers, the only publicly owned franchise in the NFL, have not only survived but have flourished, claiming a league record 12 championships, including the first two Super Bowls.
A publicly owned non-profit organization, the Packers have 111,507 shareholders, with no one person allowed to hold more than 200,000 shares.
Attending a Packers game in the January chill is not for the faint of heart yet since 1960 this city with a population of 102,726 has sold out every home game at Lambeau Field.
Until the 1995 season, the Packers also played some home games each season in Milwaukee but Lambeau Field has been refurbished and can now hold up to 72,515 fans.
If the Packers are Green Bay's religion the "Frozen Tundra" of Lambeau Field is the altar at which the "Cheeseheads" worship.
Jutting out of the gently rolling Wisconsin landscape like a red-brick mountain, Lambeau Field opened its gates in 1957. Only two other professional team venues in North America have been in continuous use longer -- Boston's Fenway Park and Chicago's Wrigley Field.
Founded in 1921, the Packers have no claim to be the birthplace of football yet 1265 Lombardi Avenue remains the game's spiritual home.
Guarding the entrance to Lambeau Field are bronze statues honoring two NFL and Packer giants, team co-founder Curly Lambeau and coach Vince Lombardi, who coined the phrase "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."
Inside the cavernous stadium the names of Packer greats such as Bart Starr, Paul Hornung and Ray Nitschke are stamped in gold around the arena.
Even though the dramatic overtime victory over Seattle in a wildcard playoff last weekend was the last game that will be played in Green Bay this season, the Packers still have a chance of adding to their 12 NFL titles.
They travel to Philadelphia to play the Eagles tomorrow in the NFL divisional playoffs and are just two victories away from another trip to the Super Bowl.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier