#PACKERS BEAT WRITER FULL#
#PACKERS BEAT WRITER CODE#

#PACKERS BEAT WRITER FULL#

Covered in snow and dirt, with my jeans ripped at the knee but my Rodgers jersey-clad heart full of pride and excitement, I jogged back inside laughing deliriously to celebrate some more. Overcome by the exhilarating (and dangerous) feelings of victory and invincibility, I fully laid out for the ball in the street, diving and stretching and reaching and – of course – not catching it at all. Running a drunk go route down the middle of the frozen street, feeling as fast as Jordy Nelson but probably not looking quite as coordinated, my friend unleashed a long, nearly perfect pass, just slightly in front of me. But I soon came back.Īnd when the Steelers turned the ball over on downs late in the fourth quarter and the Packers ran out the rest of the clock to win the game, I jumped up, spiked the football I’d been holding and sprinted around the house, yelling 'Go Pack, go! Go Pack, go! Go Pack, go!' I dashed outside, where a rare and severe winter storm had blanketed the Dallas-Fort Worth area in snow and ice, and demanded my friend 'throw me a touchdown pass!' When quarterback Ben Roethlisberger found receiver Mike Wallace for a 25-yard touchdown that pulled Pittsburgh to within 28-25 with less than eight minutes remaining, I left the party and went to the bathroom to look at myself in the mirror in sad silence. When Charles Woodson left the game with a broken collarbone, I had a similarly explicit reaction, though that time it was unhappy. When Nick Collins returned that interception for a touchdown, I let out a no-doubt incoherent, joyously jubilant string of swear words. Simultaneously a nervous wreck and hard-partying 22-year-old, I cheered harder, shouted louder and drank more Shiner Bock than I ever had before. I used some of that overtime money to buy an authentic Aaron Rodgers Super Bowl XLV jersey, painted my face (poorly) green and gold and went to a friend’s house to watch the Packers play the Steelers. But after the Packers beat the Bears in the NFC Championship Game to secure their appearance in Dallas, my boss generously gave me the day off for the big game. I also got more and more shifts, along with the rest of the sports desk, working 17 days in a row in the weeks before the Super Bowl. With Dallas hosting Super Bowl XLV, a massive civic event and celebration that transcends the football game and has a significant economic impact on the city, the entire newspaper had been gearing up for months to be the media leader – locally and nationally – for Super Bowl coverage, with huge amounts of supplemental content, extra sections, and longer days and later nights for the paper’s award-winning staff.ĭuring the playoffs, as sixth-seeded Green Bay, an unlikely Wild Card entrant into the postseason, kept winning games – first against Philadelphia, then Atlanta, then Chicago – behind emerging superstars Aaron Rodgers and Clay Matthews, I got more and more excited about the prospect of my beloved home-state team playing in the Super Bowl in the city where I was living.

When the Packers were making their title run in 2010-11, I was a fresh-faced recent college graduate and fledgling newspaper scribe, working down in Texas on the sports desk for The Dallas Morning News.

#PACKERS BEAT WRITER CODE#

Back before I was an austere and objective professional sports writer bound by the Official Sports Media Code of Conduct not to cheer for particular teams or players but rather only for a good and compelling journalism story, I was just a regular old super-homer fan who cheered maniacally for his favorite Wisconsin sports teams.

Packers beat writer