National Football League

Green Bay Packers: Curly Lambeau led franchise toward greatness

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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Curly Lambeau is synonymous with the Green Bay Packers, leading the franchise to several championships during his decades with the team.

With a single day left until the start of the NFL season, our numbers countdown to the big day winds down.

Tomorrow, Sunday, Sept. 11, the day when the Green Bay Packers travel to Jacksonville to take on the upstart Jaguars.

Most recently we looked at numbers 3 and 2 – numbers worn by Tony Canadeo and Charles Mathys, two of the pioneers of Packers football.

But today we finally get to number 1, a number worn by none other than Earl “Curly” Lambeau, the man who was the first of the pioneers and started it all – the team’s face from 1921 through 1949.

Curly was born and died in Green Bay, so fitting for the man who was the Green Bay Packers for the team’s first decades and whose name adorns the greatest of the National Football League’s shrines – Lambeau Field.

There are many reasons for his name being affixed to so much history.

But we’ll let John Maxymuk, the author of “Packers by the Numbers: Jersey Numbers and the Players Who Wore them,” tell us about who Lambeau was and why he is so important to Green Bay Packers football: