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Great stuff from the great Jerry Kramer....
- Thread starter P@ck66
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IPBprez
Cheesehead
Kramer takes fans into Packers locker room
By Alan Hancock
SuperBowl.com
DETROIT (Feb. 3, 2006) -- It's January 1968. The Green Bay Packers are preparing for Super Bowl II at the Orange Bowl in Miami, back before the game was even called the Super Bowl. On the Wednesday before the game, coach Vince Lombardi is addressing the team in the locker room, going over the team schedule. He walks away to the front of the room and mentions, "This may be the last time we are all together."
For Packers guard Jerry Kramer, this was the first that he heard the coach mention retirement. So on Sunday before the game, Kramer, who had been carrying around a tape recorder to document observations for a book he was working on chronicling the season, secretly turned on the recorder.
Now, those recordings are being made public for the first time, released by Kramer on his Inside The Locker Room two-disc CD available on www.jerrykramer.com. It contains Lombardi's final locker-room speech before Green Bay went on to beat Oakland 33-14 in Super Bowl II and other clips from the 1967 season.
When he was making the recordings, Kramer never anticipated playing the tapes for anyone other than **** Schaap, who he was working with on the book, Instant Replay.
"At the time, I was recording it just for the book to get a better picture of the season," Kramer said while in Detroit for Super Bowl XL. "I didn't think of it as something that would become a piece of nostalgia. Who knew that Lombardi would become an icon? Who knew Lombardi would have the (Super Bowl) trophy named after him? Who knew the NFL would explode in popularity and the Super Bowl would become so big? It was a piece of research and I never anticipated taking it out again."
So the tapes sat buried in Kramer's garage. But after unearthing them nearly 40 years after the recordings were created, Kramer, an All-Pro five times during his 11-year career with the Packers (195-68 ), still felt uncomfortable with letting any outsiders hear the tapes.
"It was a private moment and a breach of confidence," Kramer said of bringing the recorder into the locker room. "And I didn't think it should go public."
He sought out the Packers captains from that season, Willie Davis and Bob Skoronski, to seek their opinion. And the former teammates gave Kramer the assurances he needed to go public with the secret recordings.
"They told me the statute of limitations on that ran out a long time ago," he said.
At first, though, the tapes, stuffed in a chest in Idaho for nearly four decades, were barely audible. They were sent to a sound studio in Dallas to enhance the quality to see what exactly still remained on the recordings. The end result turned out to be a piece of Packers and football history.
"After I took it to be enhanced, I listened to it, and for the first time I heard (Ray) Nitschke, (Bart) Starr, (Max) McGee." Kramer said. "It was a real nostalgic moment that took me back to the locker room and back to that time."
More information on Jerry Kramer's two-disc CD set, Inside The Locker Room, can be found at www.jerrykramer.com.
===================================
"At the Steeler game - I was able to get a photo of Jerry, and he signed my copy of that double-cd, at the same time." IPBprez
By Alan Hancock
SuperBowl.com
DETROIT (Feb. 3, 2006) -- It's January 1968. The Green Bay Packers are preparing for Super Bowl II at the Orange Bowl in Miami, back before the game was even called the Super Bowl. On the Wednesday before the game, coach Vince Lombardi is addressing the team in the locker room, going over the team schedule. He walks away to the front of the room and mentions, "This may be the last time we are all together."
For Packers guard Jerry Kramer, this was the first that he heard the coach mention retirement. So on Sunday before the game, Kramer, who had been carrying around a tape recorder to document observations for a book he was working on chronicling the season, secretly turned on the recorder.
Now, those recordings are being made public for the first time, released by Kramer on his Inside The Locker Room two-disc CD available on www.jerrykramer.com. It contains Lombardi's final locker-room speech before Green Bay went on to beat Oakland 33-14 in Super Bowl II and other clips from the 1967 season.
When he was making the recordings, Kramer never anticipated playing the tapes for anyone other than **** Schaap, who he was working with on the book, Instant Replay.
"At the time, I was recording it just for the book to get a better picture of the season," Kramer said while in Detroit for Super Bowl XL. "I didn't think of it as something that would become a piece of nostalgia. Who knew that Lombardi would become an icon? Who knew Lombardi would have the (Super Bowl) trophy named after him? Who knew the NFL would explode in popularity and the Super Bowl would become so big? It was a piece of research and I never anticipated taking it out again."
So the tapes sat buried in Kramer's garage. But after unearthing them nearly 40 years after the recordings were created, Kramer, an All-Pro five times during his 11-year career with the Packers (195-68 ), still felt uncomfortable with letting any outsiders hear the tapes.
"It was a private moment and a breach of confidence," Kramer said of bringing the recorder into the locker room. "And I didn't think it should go public."
He sought out the Packers captains from that season, Willie Davis and Bob Skoronski, to seek their opinion. And the former teammates gave Kramer the assurances he needed to go public with the secret recordings.
"They told me the statute of limitations on that ran out a long time ago," he said.
At first, though, the tapes, stuffed in a chest in Idaho for nearly four decades, were barely audible. They were sent to a sound studio in Dallas to enhance the quality to see what exactly still remained on the recordings. The end result turned out to be a piece of Packers and football history.
"After I took it to be enhanced, I listened to it, and for the first time I heard (Ray) Nitschke, (Bart) Starr, (Max) McGee." Kramer said. "It was a real nostalgic moment that took me back to the locker room and back to that time."
More information on Jerry Kramer's two-disc CD set, Inside The Locker Room, can be found at www.jerrykramer.com.
===================================
"At the Steeler game - I was able to get a photo of Jerry, and he signed my copy of that double-cd, at the same time." IPBprez
Hammer
Cheesehead
Outside the Lines, ESPN sunday morn, did a story about cold weather super bowls. Jerry, Forrest Gregg, and Carroll Dale were interviewed for the story. As expected, die hard fans and ex-players are all for it. The talking heads afterwards were both against it. Always good to see the former Packers in the news. Bart was all over the place this weekend.
Hammer
Hammer
calicheesehead
Cheesehead
The last exert from the link really puts things into perspective. Very moving. What a privilege to be part of the history as a Packer fan.
If you guys (and gals) ever get a chance to read Kramer's 2 books, "Instant Replay", that he wrote LONG ago, and the follow up "Distant Replay", you won't be disappointed. GREAT reading for Packer fans! Now.......trying to find copies of them, thats the real difficulty. I had both at one time, but have no idea what happened to them.
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