RUNNING THE TABLE
Packers fan from Wauwatosa going 16 For ’16 — attending every game this season
Aaron Rodgers is not the only one vowing to run the table. Jeff Roznowski, a fan of everything green and gold since his childhood in Green Bay, is on a quest to attend every Packers home and road game this season.
He is not claiming it’s never been done before. What excites him is crossing the feat off his own bucket list. (Read on to find out how many Packers games in a row Journal Sentinel beat writer Bob McGinn has attended.)
Jeff even has a name for this achievement: 16 For ’16.
“I have tickets for the final two games, including Detroit on New Year’s Day, so barring the unforeseen, I will make it,” he said.
For a while there when the Packers were busy losing four games in a row, people told Jeff he had picked the wrong season. Now, they’re asking about the playoffs and if Jeff plans to add those dates.
“Well, of course I’ll go to the playoff games,” he said. “And what if they make the Super Bowl? Then I’ll have to figure out a way to go to the Super Bowl. I would disappoint too many people if I didn’t play out the string.”
Jeff is 59 and lives in Wauwatosa, where he served as an alderman until this year. He is a semi-retired engineer who teaches part time at Milwaukee School of Engineering. So he has time to chase his favorite team around the country.
Jeff is attending four games by himself this season, and others with family and friends. He has calculated his travel mileage at 13,386 miles for the entire regular season. And the cost? About $5,000.
“Mostly tickets and airfare. Very little on hotels as I tend to fly in and out the same day, and when it’s a night game on the road I have often crashed with friends,” Jeff said.
One longtime friend has joined Jeff at three road games this season. Dave Flessas, originally from Hales Corners and now the Washington, D.C., area, calls Jeff a DIE-HARD fan and told me to put that in all caps.
“He has encyclopedic knowledge of the Packers. I often accuse him of using 5-by-7 cards to store all the stuff he has. He can tell you the game, the score, the play, the quarter, and the seats for each one,” Dave said.
“On the Maslow hierarchy, he is listed at self-actualization as it relates to being a Packer fan, and he’s at the highest point of the pyramid with this 16 in ’16 thing.”
Jeff has two Green Package season tickets to Lambeau, so he usually gets to most of those six home games. He bought tickets for the two Gold Package games for this season. He rarely attends a preseason game, although he did go to one this year.
Then it was just a matter of scoring tickets for the eight road games against Jacksonville, Minnesota, Atlanta, Tennessee, Washington, Philadelphia, Chicago and Detroit. He bought from scalpers, StubHub and the NFL Ticket Exchange. Most were around $100 apiece; the highest he paid was $300 for the first-ever regular-season game at U.S. Bank Stadium in the Twin Cities.
The Packers-Vikings road game has become a tradition for Jeff, who attends with his son, Matt, who lives up there. Jeff also has gone to games with his daughters, Emily and Lauren.
His wife of 36 years, Diane, is good for one game at Lambeau per season, preferably