I no longer watch Green Bay Packer games. The stress exceeds the fun. It’s a character flaw I developed growing up in Green Bay, and the only solution I’ve come up with is to not watch at all.
There are times, however, when I have no choice but to watch, and it happened again this Thanksgiving. If I am at my mom’s house on a day that the Packers play, my options are to watch the game with family or abandon them for three hours in the middle of the afternoon.
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During the drive back to La Crosse on the day after Thanksgiving, I tuned into Wisconsin Today. I have given up on many public radio programs, but Wisconsin Today is one of a few exceptions. It often covers stories that touch on my own life, and it does so without being overly analytical or pretentious. One segment on Friday’s show was an interview with author Ben McCormick about his recent book In the Room at the Top of the World. The book is about his experience of moving away from Wisconsin as a young man, but staying connected to the state through his allegiance to Wisconsin’s professional sports teams. Because I’d just survived a Packer game the previous day, I was interested in what he had to say.*
McCormick’s devotion to Wisconsin sports differs from mine in two ways. One, he grew up in Milwaukee, so his primary focus is on the Milwaukee Bucks and not the Packers. Two, he seems to see only the upside to his obsession and did not mention once any gut punches associated with watching his teams lose.
As it turned out, I was less interested in McCormick’s take on sports than I was in his thoughts about leaving Wisconsin as a young man. For example, when the interviewer tried to equate the author’s move to the West Coast with other Milwaukeeans who’d left the state to make their marks (the interviewer mentioned Gene Wilder, Oprah Winfrey, and Liberace by name), McCormick refused to compare himself to these icons. Instead he diverted the comment by saying that he was just curious to see what else was out there. I agree with him.
McCormick wound up in Portland, Oregon and, as far as I know, has no plans to come back to Wisconsin. I did return to Wisconsin, but it was due more to happenstance than through any conscious effort. The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse just happened to be the only school to offer me a job when I returned to the United States after two years in Taiwan. The move made my mom happy and made my new Asian wife wonder how she ended up in a part of the world she didn’t even know existed. If not for the fact that La Crosse, Wisconsin is on the Mississippi River, Manyu would have had no point of reference at all. For the first five years that she and I lived in La Crosse, Manyu referred to the city of 50,000 people as the “countryside.”
For those who don’t know much about Wisconsin, avid fandom for the Packers, the Bucks, and the Brewers is more than a citywide phenomenon. It is statewide. La Crosse is closer to Minneapolis/St. Paul than to either Green Bay or Milwaukee, but I dislike the Vikings, am ambivalent toward the Twins, and know nothing about either the Timberwolves or the Lynx. Professional hockey isn’t even on my radar. There is a good chance that Manyu and I may move back to Taiwan in the next couple of years, and when I go, the Packers will come with me.
* The radio segment was “New memoir chronicles fandom, homesickness during the Bucks’ 2021 championship run.” November 28, 2025. Wisconsin Today. Found at: https://www.wpr.org/shows/wisconsin-today-2/labor-and-data-centers-drugged-driving-milwaukee-bucks-fandom.
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