NFC Championship Game: Green Bay Packers vs. Chicago Bears
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Highway 50 is sometimes considered the 50-yard line in the rivalry between the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers. Squatting at that spiritual midfield -- if not exactly the geographical one -- is the Brat Stop, a sprawling restaurant/bar/concert hall/cheese shop just off Interstate 94 at the edge of Kenosha, Wis.
The Bears and the Packers will play in the NFC championship game in Chicago Sunday. The only other time the teams met in the playoffs was in 1941.
"This is bigger than the Super Bowl," said Gail Khayat, working behind the Brat Stop's bar.
Two neon helmets lighted the bar's back wall. One had the "C" of Chicago, the other the "G" of Green Bay. Between the two, only one opponent matters.
About 200 miles separate Chicago and Green Bay. Traveling the distance and occasionally venturing from the highway for a mile or three, vestiges of the NFL's oldest rivalry can be found tucked away in unexpected places between Soldier Field and Lambeau Field -- cemeteries, old stadiums, even the halls of a high school.
There was no better time for such a trip than Monday. The Bears beat the Seattle Seahawks Sunday afternoon, and the Packers beat the Atlanta Falcons Saturday night, and the span between the cities and their teams shrank with the shared excitement of playing the other for a spot in the Super Bowl.
As if the historical significance was not tangible enough, the conference winner receives the George Halas Trophy, named for the Bears' founder and longtime coach. The Super Bowl winner receives the Vince Lombardi Trophy, named for the famed leader of the Packers.
But Soldier Field, site of the game, is hardly where the Bears-Packers rivalry was forged. For most of their history, the Bears shared Wrigley Field with their baseball-playing cousins, the Cubs. It was the site of the previous playoff game with the Packers, Dec. 14, 1941 -- a week after the attacks on Pearl Harbor.
With war declared but not yet fully reverberating through the Midwest (newspaper reports surrounding the game made little mention of it), the Bears won, 33-14, in front of 43,425 fans.
That set up an NFL championship game against the New York Giants the next week.
"What the Monsters of the Midway figure to do to the New Yorkers is enough to make women weep and strong men shudder," Arthur Daley of The New York Times wrote. The Bears won, 37-9.
First Published January 21, 2011 12:00 am
