Sometimes readers and friends, familiar with my past, ask what it was like working so closely with Green Bay’s most famous football team back in the ’90s. Here’s one little glimpse.
Picture the Packers’ locker room. It’s circa the ’95 – 97 season, sometime in the late afternoon of training camp, and the players have just completed afternoon practice. We had done the pre-camp medical physicals one week before, and I’d compiled the data for a report to Pepper Burruss, the team’s head trainer.
On this midweek day, I was delivering the vision results for Pepper. This comprised a list of players who needed specific contact lenses, or had failed the vision part of their medical assessment, and would require correction in order to perform optimally on the field. (In those days, pre-LASIK, 1/3 of the players wore disposable contact lenses.) While I was dropping off the results, I wanted to make a few notes in the medical files, indicating the need for follow-up care on those individuals showing suspicions, or potential ocular health concerns.
By the time I arrived at the stadium, and was given the go-ahead to proceed through the elevators to the locker room, most of the players had already cleared out. The Packers’ unchallenged star at the time was none other than Reggie White, whose locker room presence loomed large. Reggie, a licensed minister, was never shy about rendering advice to his fellow players (or anyone else within earshot). On this day, as he lumbered through the training room and took his position on one of the padded tables to have his ankle tape removed, Reggie spied a few of the younger players lingering near the back of the room. In those years, the players seemed to be in a continuous battle to have their favorite music on the CD player in the training room; and on this day, hip-hop music had won out. Apparently not the favorite of the future Hall-of-Famer.
As Reggie launched into a diatribe about the evils of “rap music” and young people not paying enough attention to “family values,” I remember feeling like the proverbial fly-on-the-wall as I finished my charts in the back room.
Peering out into the larger central training room, I noticed a few of the rookies gradually easing their way toward the exit doors as Reggie issued his proclamations. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the famous Marx Brothers movie “Duck Soup.” In one of my favorite scenes, Groucho (as tinhorn dictator Rufus T. Firefly) launches into a pompous political speech at a banquet (in his honor, of course). Harpo, at his silent best, grits his molars in a grimace and begins tiptoeing for the room’s exit.
That’s exactly what these young players were doing. Edging their way toward the exit, hoping to avoid the scalding glare directed their way by the “Minister of Defense.” It reminded me of my high school days, when I’d do anything to dodge the notice of the school vice-principal.
To this day, whenever I hear a politician or man-of-the-cloth begin preaching about this or that, I can’t help but think back to that day in the Packers’ training room. I find myself smiling, knowing that I’d be right behind those players who were painstakingly skulking their way out the door.
