Originally Posted by
Dennis Gullickson and Carl Hanson in "Before They Were the Packers
On October 17, 1896, a former University of Wisconsin-Madison footballer named T.P. Silverwood was introduced.
Silverwood graduated with a law degree and came to Green Bay on a bicycle looking for a career as an attorney. He subsequently entered into the firm of Ellis and Merrill.
His law career would include a stint as Green Bay district attorney in 1904 and several high profile cases including a Neillsville, WI murder. However, football was not far from his mind and was likely the reason he traveled to Green Bay.
At the end of the 1896 season, the Green Bay Advocate interviewed Silverwood on “football benefits.” They identified him as a “ball enthusiast,” the interview focused on the brutality of the game and its effect on high school and college students.
Silverwood turned the interview toward the rewards of training and discipline required for football success. When asked, “Is it a brutal game?” Silverwood’s response was definite:
No! It is no more brutal to the player than the race to the trotting horse. To be sure, there are scratches and bumps and bruises, but these are nothing to one who’s been in the glorious hand-to-hand struggle of a football game, where all the physical strength, all the brains and all the science of one team are pitted against that of another team.
In the mass of bodies in the trenches Hulbert, and now Tom Silverwood, saw the kinetic pulse of strategy and finesse and a game elevated by their use.
In 1897, all the pieces seemed to be in place; superior talent, tremendous organization, great coaching, fan support, great press coverage and strong financial backing.
The Green Bay newspapers covered several team meetings in late August and early September, some coinciding with team practice.
The team met regularly at the headquarters of the West Side Athletic Association where Hulbert worked.
To accommodate the players with day jobs, arc lights were strung around the field at Ben Garlock’s lot on the corner of Dousman and Oakland for night practice.
By now the team had added a “second eleven” which would “meet every evening with the regular eleven for practice.” They had every reason to envision success. They were big, they were buff, and they were ready.
Hulbert’s presence was the key to the team in 1895, and the addition of Silverwood near the end of 1896 was also significant.
But the enlistment of Tom Skenandore, a bruising fullback from Oneida, who had acquired his football skills on teams at Carlisle Indian School in the early 1890’s was the key piece of the puzzle in 1897. His value was such that he became the first (and only in 1897) paid player on the team.
Silverwood assumed position as captain and coach of the team in 1897, and he immediately implemented some ideas about how to improve the team – both on and off the field. A board of directors was formed to ensure community support, and a second team was added to give the regulars real practice. In 1896, Hulbert, nicknamed, “Genial Fred” was willing to step back and let another hand lead the flock.
Tom Silverwood was a staunch believer in athletics, a gifted organizer, a colorful character with a handlebar mustache, a Republican activist and a lover of football.
Most of all, he had connections. Family documentation states that, “In 1897, Silverwood organized, coached and captained the Green Bay professional football team. The squad, predecessor to the present Green Bay Packers, played both professional and college teams and was undefeated for two years.”
With the presence of the first paid player in Green Bay history, Tom Skenadore, Silverwood’s squad did constitute the city’s first “professional” aggregation. The team passed a hat throughout the crowd of spectators for contributions, which were used for medical bills and to provide a stipend for some of the players depending on how much money they had at the end of the year. The amount was never enough to support a man and his family.
Out of five games in ’97, Silverwood’s squad went 4-0-1. The 1898 campaign was brief, but it was also without a loss.
It was Silverwood’s friendship with Kewaunee native Ikey Karel, who’d been tagged as “the Red Grange of the ‘90’s” that brought Karel to Green Bay as part-time coach and supporter of Green Bay football. It was Karel who, while watching the team practice on Garlock’s vacant lot, stated, “Some day Green Bay will be world champions.”
Under Hulbert and Silverwood, the team had advanced from a crew of undersized street brawlers to a crack unit with a statewide reputation.
The final game of the 1897 season, against Fond du Lac was played at Washington Park on Thanksgiving Day in a snow storm. An amazing 1,000 spectators looked on while the visiting team was dominated by a score of 62-0. “Fond du Lac wasn’t in the game one minute,” stated The Green Bay Review. “The visiting eleven was out-classed, out-played and outed generally.”
In 1919, Curly Lambeau’s pass-oriented juggernaut overwhelmed its opponents by a total combined score over 11 games of 565-12, for an average of 57-1 per game. But 23 years earlier, the Green Bay town team had accomplished a similarly remarkable feat. 1897 was part of an era when the emphasis was on defense and preventing the other team from scoring. Touchdowns were worth only four points. Yet, over five games, the Green Bay boys had bested their opponents 142-6 for an average of 28-1 per game.
This 1897 outfit was the very first championship football team in Green Bay history. It declared its status as such at the end of its amazing season, and no challengers issued a defi to say it otherwise.
Curly Lambeau’s team won its first National Football League crown in 1929, followed by championships in 1930 and 1931 – the first triple championship in NFL history. But the 1929 crown was not Green Bay’s first. Titletown saw championships in 1903, 1911, 1913, and 1915 as well.
The team photo taken at the end of 1897 is the first known picture of a Green Bay town team.
Going into 1898, thanks in large part to the efforts of Silverwood, the team had reputation, organization and financial success.
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