Nothing like Lambeau - or a 49ers win there 

Gwen Knapp

Sunday, November 22, 2009
(11-22) 04:00 PST Green Bay, Wis. --

In 15 seasons of covering the 49ers, my memories of their visits to Lambeau Field surpass those of all other road trips combined.

Every other stadium seems sterile by comparison, a world apart from the city that houses it. You absorb the character of other places before kickoff, Seattle for the Olympia Mountains framing the bay, Chicago for the architecture, Buffalo for the chicken wings. But in Green Bay, from the moment you touch down, every element of the weekend is about football.

Yes, the cheese matters, too. But ultimately, when the Packers are in town, even the cheese is about football - rendered in foam and worn like a tri-corner hat from colonial times.

Beating the Packers today would mean so many things to the 49ers - a 5-5 record, a discernible pulse for their playoff hopes, the end of a six-game losing streak in Lambeau, perhaps a small reduction in the angst about choosing Alex Smith over Aaron Rodgers in the 2005 draft. But without all that backstory, a win would still be meaningful, because a triumphant trip to Green Bay is always something special.

The 49ers won't have to contend with any frozen tundra; the temperature should be in the 50s. They won't get closer to Brett Favre than a visit to his downtown steakhouse or the purchase of a shirt with his No. 4 on it. The most recent version is a parody - a purple and gold model declaring his new home, Minnesota, the national leader in "Cash 4 Clunkers."

It would have been interesting to see the 49ers get a cold-weather test today. All of their games so far have been either at Candlestick or in a dome. Playing in San Francisco weather should remove some of the intimidation factor, because the fans get even more fiery in frigid conditions.

For the 1996 NFC title game, the field became a cold mud stew. The day could not have been more miserable, with sleet, snow and freezing rain. Large swaths of the crowd showed up in bright orange ice-fishing gear. A week earlier, when the 49ers beat the Eagles in a relatively warm rainstorm at Candlestick, more than 10,000 people left their tickets unused.

At Lambeau, the difference between the number of ticket buyers and the actual attendance was three.

The recent histories of the franchises helped account for the disparate passion levels. At that point, the 49ers were only two years removed from their last Super Bowl win, and five trophies over 14 seasons. The Pack had just returned to prominence, becoming the "It" team in the NFL.

The Packers might have been at the height of their charm then, surpassing even the Vince Lombardi-Bart Starr years. Lingering disgust about the baseball strike two years earlier merged with exasperation over the 1995 defections of the Rams and old Cleveland Browns to new, more subsidy-inclined cities.

The ascendancy of Green Bay, a small market in which the fans hold shares of the team, seemed like an antidote to the increasingly corporate nature of sports.

The Packers had Favre (their Joe Montana), the cheesehead hats, the newly created Lambeau Leap. They had newborns placed on the seemingly endless waiting list for season tickets, kids who lent out their bicycles to players during training camp, and fans parking cars on neighborhood lawns for a fee that generally included a bratwurst off the backyard grill.

It's tempting to call the atmosphere collegiate, except that a lot of college fans could use Packers crowds as a role model. It's not clear whether Packers fans or a University of Wisconsin crowd started the tradition of hopping to House of Pain's "Jump Around."

The Packers have lost some of their Lambeau invincibility in recent years. Once undefeated in playoff games at the stadium, they lost in 2003 to the Falcons and then in the NFC title game, in classic Green Bay weather, to the Giants two years ago.

On Saturday, a headline in the Green Bay Press-Gazette read: "TICKETS TO SELL: Packers seats made available as hunters head to deer stands." A ticket broker was quoted as saying the sell-off was predictable given the combination of deer season and a 5-4 team.

So have the Packers lost some of their allure? Maybe, but consider this: That was the lead headline - not in the sports section, but for the entire paper.

E-mail Gwen Knapp at gknapp@sfchronicle.com.