Life After Favre: A Season of Change with the Green Bay Packers and their Fans [Hardcover]

Phil Hanrahan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 2009

Wisconsin native Phil Hanrahan moved from Los Angeles to Green Bay to chronicle the Packers 2008 football campaign, the first season in seventeen years without quarterback Brett Favre. He is there as new starting quarterback Aaron Rodgers begins what one football writer called “the toughest job in professional sports.” Immersing himself in the worlds of team and town, Hanrahan is reborn a full-blown cheesehead: living above Vince Lombardi’s first Packers office, observing training camp practices, attending the team’s annual shareholders meeting, interviewing players, tailgating in arctic cold, shoveling snow at Lambeau for $8 an hour, celebrating Packer great Fuzzy Thurston’s 75th birthday at Thurston’s bar, and, at every turn, befriending scores of die-hard Packers fans he encounters along the way.

 

Hanrahan also journeys far from Lambeau as well, hitting away games in New Orleans and Minneapolis and pursuing adventures in Packer Land nation-wide, from a year-round Packers bar in Scottsdale, AZ, to wide receiver Jordy Nelson’s parents’ sports bar in rural Kansas, to tiny Napoleonville, LA, hometown of cornerback Tramon Williams.

 

Here is the first book written on the new-era Packers, the team of Rodgers, Coach Mike McCarthy, GM Ted Thompson. Featuring a new afterword that brings the Packers story up-to-date and covers their amazing triumph in Super Bowl XLV, Life After Favre chronicles one of the most dramatic seasons in Packers history while revealing, with energy, insight, and humor, the story of the NFL’s winningest franchise.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hanrahan's chronicle of the 2008 Green Bay Packers-the Green and Gold's first season in 17 years without three-time MVP quarterback Brett Favre-has a bit in common with the team that limped to a depressing 6-10 season: namely, a lack of focus. A Wisconsin native, L.A. freelance writer Hanrahan temporarily relocated to a Green Bay hotel (which, decades earlier, had housed the Packers' offices) to cover the whirlwind aftermath of the summer 2008 decision by team management to trade the 38-year-old, freshly returned from retirement, to the New York Jets. While Hanrahan remains surprisingly objective regarding the most dramatic episode in Packers history, enthusiasm leads him to overstuff his narrative with unnecessary detail regarding individual games and peripheral players. Told primarily through game summaries and the voices of fans that Hanrahan meets in bars-including not just Green Bay's Stadium View Bar & Grille, but the Broke Spoke in Favre's hometown of Kiln, Miss.-this volume manages a colorful team history and a comprehensive career overview of Favre's replacement, Aaron Rodgers. Unfortunately, the book ends prior to Favre's second "retirement," renounced in the summer of 2009 when he joined Green Bay's hated rivals, the Minnesota Vikings.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

The best book ever written on the Packers.

—John Rehor, GreenBayPackerNation.com

 

I’d give it an A for football fans and an A+ for Packer fans.

—Rick Gosselin, Dallas Morning News

 

Wisconsin native Phil Hanrahan moved from Los Angeles to Green Bay [to] chronicle the first season A.B. (after Brett). In the hands of an outsider (or less skilled writer), this could have been a “Gee, isn’t it charming how folks in this quaint little town love their football team” tome, but Hanrahan used access and insight to dig for deeper details that will surprise even diehard fans. He takes you from the practice field to the locker room to tailgate parties to Packers Bars nationwide, and tells the story of Favre’s exit and its impact on the state.

—Drew Olson, OnMilwaukee.com

 

Compelling.... Hanrahan doesn’t fall prey to sports-book clichés, and, as a result, Life After Favre ends up being much more a celebration of the inimitable culture that surrounds the Packers than just a look at one specific year or player.

—Jason Albert, Onion AV Club, Madison ed.

 

Freelance writer Hanrahan moved to Green Bay to live the life of a Packer fan, enhanced with a backstage press pass for player interviews.... While Hanrahan’s profile of personable new Packer quarterback Aaron Rodgers is particularly good, his strongest emphasis is on the delightful fans he meets not only in Wisconsin but also in far-flung Packer outposts in Kansas, Arizona, and Mississippi. VERDICT: A literate, fresh take [that] will be of interest to all football fans.

—John Maxymuk, Library Journal

 

Pack aficionados will dig glimpses of Green Bay’s storied past while they’re guided through [the] present. ... The book’s soul is Hanrahan’s interaction with fans. Whether he’s hanging with them in Kansas or Kiln, or shoveling brats or snow with them at Lambeau, those fans remind you that it is indeed a Packer Nation.

—Howie Magner, Milwaukee Magazine

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing (October 5, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1602397732
• ISBN-13: 978-1602397736
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #954,339 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Phil Hanrahan is a Wisconsin native and lifelong Green Bay Packers fan who has taught writing at Marquette University, managed publicity for Oxford University Press-NY, and served as media aide to a former presidential candidate. Currently splitting his time between Los Angeles and Long Island, he is a summa cum laude graduate of Middlebury College, studied literature at Oxford University, and holds an M.A. in English from Duke University. He loves movies (The Big Lebowski, Zoolander, Dodgeball, and The Other Guys rank among his favorite comedies), and never tires of hearing Sports Center anchor John Anderson tout the "power of cheese." In 2008, while contending for a writing post at The Colbert Report, he made plans to return to NYC, where he lived from 1995 to 2001. Instead he moved to Green Bay, Wisconsin and followed the Packers for a season. He loved it so much he returned in 2009, once again living in a downtown studio apartment nearly directly above the original Packers office of legendary Coach Vince Lombardi.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's a Packers book - not a Favre book., October 2, 2009

By 

Cecil Natapov (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Life After Favre: A Season of Change with the Green Bay Packers and their Fans (Hardcover)

Life After Favre, despite the fact that Favre's name is in the title (probably for obvious marketing reasons...) is really about the town of Green Bay and Wisconsin, really, and in fact it goes beyond Wisconsin to talk about both where the players come from and where the fans go (there are zillions of Packers bars all around the country, and world, for instance -- who knew?), so it is about Packers lore and fandom and about the culture of the midwest, too, and what curious mixes you get of players and fans. Jamaican Atari Bigby playing in the snow, Mormon linemen, Favre's mississippi hunting roots played out in Wisconsin duck hunting.

Also, you learn that Green Bay is the only serious pro sports franchise with a community of fan ownership, which is cool, and there is a great chapter on Rodgers, and the stuff on Favre and the vikings -- written BEFORE Favre came back for the whatever-th time, of course -- is kind of prescient. Hanrahan even pictures a purple-clad Favre getting sacked by Kampman in the first Monday Night Football game...we'll see if Hanrahan got that right, cause the Pack and Vikes play twice this fall.

Anyway. It's ambitious and literary, and while there is football game and football season narrative from 2008, it's really the profiles of the town and the team and the weather and the individual fans that makes this book a contribution to serious fun sports writing, and makes it much more than an account of the 2008 season, per se.

It's really in the tradition of Plimpton and Halberstam. I hope to see more from Hanrahan, because he mixes a love for the game with great research and a light touch with the pen. Don't miss the section where he talks about Favre and the greek notion of "thymos" -- comparing him to Achilles, the epic, flawed hero! He also drops in to Ruby's Roadhouse in Bloomer, Wisconsin and meets Skeeter and Hooter, who tell some off-color jokes; a different kind of hero, the everyman. Fun.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "We're No. 1", October 6, 2009

By 

Bryan J. Sverchek "Joseph" (Astoria, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Life After Favre: A Season of Change with the Green Bay Packers and their Fans (Hardcover)

As the previous reviewer said, this isn't a book about Favre. Yes, it's about the Midwest and Wisconsin, Green Bay and Lambeau field, and rookies and veterans. But really it's about identity and what it means to play for or (maybe more importantly) to root for the Green and Gold in its first year without its most recognizable face of the last two decades.

Hanrahan is an excellent writer, effectively navigating the intersection of professional sports and human interest. This is sports writing at its best--funny, literate, and truly moving at times. I challenge anyone not to feel chills as Hanrahan describes lifelong Packers fans watch Favre play his first game in Jets kelly green.

Favre fans, Packers fans, Jets or Vikings fans, football fans, and really anyone simply interested in people will find something to love in this book. Sure, we learn a lot about state of Wisconsin and the Midwest U.S., Lambeau field and the town of Green Bay, NFL veterans and NFL rookies, but in the end, what we know is that even in a year where they go 6 and 10, the Packers and their fans really are "No. 1."

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Gift for the Packer Fan and Non-Fan Alike!, November 9, 2009

By 

JBean - See all my reviews

This review is from: Life After Favre: A Season of Change with the Green Bay Packers and their Fans (Hardcover)

I am not a raved Packer or pro football fan, but I do live in Wisconsin and after a ten year absence due to school and military service, I was happy to return over thirty years ago.

The last book I read about the Packers was Jerry Kramer's classic, Instant Replay.
When I was given Life After Favre I was told that it was more about the culture of the Packer fan, and in particular, those who live around those Sunday afternoons at the many taverns and bars that are such a large part of Wisconsin's culture.

The book lived up to that preview and then some. It's not so much as a rehash of the 2008 season, but it's about the inner operations of this hallowed franchise that became a national icon during the great Lombardi years, and then with Brett Favre.

This book is not just for those who are Packer fans, but for any sports fan that is curious regarding how this professional franchise has survived as the only publicly owned NFL team. The inner workings and politics have been well research by the author who really cares about his team and wanted to learn more about it.

It's a fast and easy read that can be read in small or larger doses. However, for me, once I got into it, I found myself focused into the book while baseball games were in the background. What a great gift for the fan and non-fan of the Packers, the NFL, and pro sports.
--Mick Faulhaber