The only place success comes before work

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The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.

Vince Lombardi

For those living outside of the United States who are unfamiliar with Vince Lombardi, he was the very successful coach of The Green Bay Packers, a professional American Football team.

Unlike all other American professional football teams, which have their headquarters in large cities, the Packers are headquartered in Green Bay, Wisconsin, which has a population of a little over 100,000 shivering souls.

Green Bay typically has twenty-one days with high temperatures failing to rise above freezing during a typical November and December, which is the latter part of football season.

Green Bay is also on the shores of northern Lake Michigan, one of the Great Lakes. Lake Michigan generates lots of strong cold winds during November-December, the latter part of football season.

These days, professional sports franchises typically play in large domed stadiums where the temperature is always the same as it is inside the homes of the spectators. Green Bay is different. The Packers play in Lambeau Field, an open-topped stadium that holds over 80,000 Packers fans.

The coldest day for a football game in Green Bay was the “Ice Bowl,” a game played between the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers in 1967. It was a crisp -13 degrees Fahrenheit, while the wind chill made it feel like -48 degrees.

A photo of Packers fans taken during The Ice Bowl

And the team name, The Packers?

In 1919, one of the original founders of the club, Curly Lambeau, a shipping clerk at The Indian Packing Company, a meat packer located in Green Bay, asked the owner of the company to donate money for the jerseys for a football club he was organizing and for permission to practice on the company’s athletic field.

The owner of the packing company agreed to both requests and The Packers were born.