The Green Bay Packers Have Become Obsessed with Settlers of Catan

(Image: Kyle T. Webster)

The Green Bay Packers are a football team in Green Bay, Wisconsin. They play football for a living. But for fun, a group of them play the board game Settlers of Catan--at every possible moment. It was started by offensive tackle David Bakhtiari, but now there's an entire group that pursues the game with a passion. Kevin Clark writes for the Wall Street Journal:

Packers center Garth Gerhart was intrigued by the game, because teammates were “talking about it all the time, all the different strategies.” He wasn’t expecting such cutthroat competition until he sat down with them two weeks ago and, he said, longtime players ensured his failure. “Everyone is super competitive, so when you first start playing they don’t tell you all the rules. So you start your moves and they say ‘well, actually you can’t do that’ and it sort of screws you in the game,” Gerhart said. “They get very salty.”

Word got around the town of Green Bay that the Packers are avid players of the game. The result was that many football fans began to explore and embrace the game:

Perillo, in passing, mentioned on a local radio show that he and his teammates had played the game the night before. Pat Fuge, who runs Gnome Games, a Green Bay game store, was flooded with texts and calls about it. Packers have occasionally come into Gnome Games—where the events include Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering releases—but those players were there to buy backgammon or other basic games. “Jordy Nelson bought a chess set,” Fuge said of the Packers’ star receiver.

Fuge said most of the gamers are Packers fans, but the store is one of the few local businesses that don’t allow Lambeau Field parking on game days—because many of the customers would like to play board games on a Sunday and not necessarily watch football. But when word spread that the Packers were playing Settlers, people started pouring into the store. After Perillo mentioned it in December, Fuge said, he sold “double what I expected.” He usually orders too many for the Christmas season, but this time he had to restock in mid-December. “When the average person sees the Packers doing it, it becomes a safe thing. That it’s not the kids in mom’s basement anymore,” Fuge said.

-via ClarkHat