Busy Week In Green Bay » Brats & Beer

July 26, 2007
posted under: Bob Harlan, John Jones, Packers, Pre-season

Packers training camp finally gets underway this Saturday, which means the start of the NFL regular season is just a little more than a month away: Thank you, sweet baby Jebus. Having rounded the final turn and headed down the stretch, there’s been a lot going on in Green Bay this week, from rookies signing contracts to the shareholders meeting.

Shareholders meeting? Yes, for the uninitiated who happened to stumble upon this site, the Green Bay Packers are the only community-owned team in the NFL (in all of North American sports), and to celebrate that fact the team invites thousands of shareholders to Lambeau Field each year to hear about the state of the franchise. Pretty awesome, no?

At this year’s meeting, shareholders heard that the Packers had a very successful year financially, increasing its reserve funds to $180 million. That is very good news indeed for the team in the smallest NFL market. They also heard that Green Bay ranked in the top 10 in merchandise sales and local revenue last year, and the the waiting list for season tickets has grown to 74,500 names.

What the 11,000 shareholders/fans didn’t hear about is the search for a replacement for John Jones, who officially resigned this week. That was saved for a news conference afterwards, though even that was slight on details beyond the fact that the Packers have hired executive search firm Spencer Stuart. But there was an interesting item this week about the Jones situation in the Insider Blog from the Press-Gazette.

Rob Demovsky posted Tuesday that he spoke with someone close to Jones who told him that the problems started well before the emergency heart surgery in 2006 cited as the reason for his resignation. The post says about Jones, “People who worked for him didn’t trust him, didn’t get along well with him and didn’t respect him. Jones took credit for good work done by others and deflected blame when things didn’t go well.” Yeah, doesn’t sound like an ideal candidate for CEO. Still, you’d think that would have raised red flags earlier and the Packers would have taken action then rather than waiting until this year. I guess we’ll probably never know the full story on that but it does sound like the right decision was eventually made.

In addition to the shareholders meeting and all, the Packers front office has been busy signing rookies to contracts before camp. Yesterday they finally reached a deal with second-round pick Brandon Jackson, the running back out of Nebraska. That leaves just third-round pick James Jones and first-round pick Justin Harrell as the only holdouts at this point. Getting a deal done with the wide receiver Jones shouldn’t be a big deal with everyone else signed, but Harrell’s contract talks might drag on past the start of training camp. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn into a protracted standoff.