It's Beginning to look a lot like...

Christmas! For many of our readers we've now entered one of their favorite times of year. Who doesn't love freezing temperatures, icy sidewalks, whiteout conditions, and power disruptions! Besides dealing with the worst Mother Nature has to throw at us, the Packer faithful are hoping for a Christmas miracle in Miami this year as the Pack cling to slim chances of making the playoffs (*update* after the Christmas Eve games went perfectly for GB the odds have gotten a LITTLE better). Whether Santa has a playoff present for Packers fans remains to be seen, but watching the Pack from the warmth of Grandma's house  and surrounded by family should be a gift everyone appreciates this year!

In this week's edition of The Post Pattern, we have an update on our end of year prize and a Christmas '78 Vault edition. As a special treat to our audience, keeping up with the "origin story" craze of Hollywood, we have our own origin story article written by none other than the original creator of the Post Pattern, Doug Buboltz.

The Post Pattern wishes all of our readers a very joyous Christmas season...enjoy!

Santa's Workshop

Have any of you been stressing out about your packages arriving on time this year? As if global supply chain disruptions weren't enough, now we have to deal with Bomb Cyclones that threaten our gifts arriving on time.  Fortunately for the Post Pattern, we have no such worries in that department.  Not only can our newsletter drop from the clouds to your inbox (I'm sure Gramps would appreciate that today instead of hand delivering his Post Patterns in this weather!), but we have a very special package that is being delivered just in time for our championship!  One of Santa's best elves, who bears a striking resemblance to one of our Hall of Famers, has been busy in Santa's workshop preparing a special treat for our champion picker.  For anyone still in contention for the top prize...this is a goal well worth chasing!

Pickers hope Santa brings a Trophy!

While we still have 3 weeks left in the season, a few of our pickers have visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads. Heading into the Week 16 games, Casey and Jack remain tied atop the leader board. After Thursday's game Jack took the lead as the Jets let Casey down, but the Cowboy victory evened things back out. If either Jack or Casey falter, Tracy is knocking on the door only 3 picks behind. Sadie Dubs also has hope for a title as she is 4 picks back. Finally, Rick has stormed back from an early season deficit to take the lead of the Hall of Famers division by 1 pick over Steve and by 3 over Hoofer and Kim.

With only a few weeks to go and the race as tight as it is, every game will matter from here on out.  Good luck to all our pickers!

The Origin Story

At the cousins reunion this past summer, Collin and Nick announced the rebirth of The Post Pattern. They referred to “tradition” often when talking about The Post Pattern and the Impeccable Pickers. Tradition can be defined a few different ways, but the one that applies here is: “the handing down of stories, beliefs, customs, etc from generation to generation.” I feel confident in saying the traditions of our family as started by dad/grandpa are faith, family, football and freedom.

Apparently there is some confusion and uncertainty about the origins of The Post Pattern and Impeccable Pickers. For gosh sakes the Impeccable trophy is missing. Personally I have no idea where it is and granted, it’s not the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant but it still would be nice to find it.

Now as far as the origin of The Post Pattern… I can shed some light on that. By the time I was a sophomore in high school my older siblings were married and gone from home so mom and dad finally got peace and rest for a change. A Sunday morning “tradition” for us was breakfast on the patio after late church service. It was summer of 1978, (Collin and Nick were infants at this time) and on a warm late summer Sunday morning Audrey Schwahn and her son Paul, my best friend since kindergarten, joined us for brunch on the patio. Paul and I had the idea to start a newsletter for Brillion area Packer fans. We would have people write articles and have people send in their picks for all of the games every week. If you refer to the very first edition of the Post Pattern I believe Audrey and Paul were the first and at that time the only “guest” pickers we had.

So how did the name Post Pattern come about you ask? Paul was the quarterback and I was a wide receiver on the high school football team and our favorite play was the “fake 26 cross buck, box pass right”. I would line up a few yards off the tight end, he would run a 10 yard down and out and as soon as he made his cut right I would cut left and angle towards the goal post. The name box pass is essentially a post pattern, and thus the name of our new newsletter. That was our humble beginning and quite frankly when you look back now it’s quite amazing how big this venture got. I don’t know for sure but I would guess there were probably close to 75 people that sent their picks in every week. The Post Pattern had an annual banquet every year and our guest speakers were Lee Remmel and Cliff Crystal to name a few. And Floyd R. Turbo even made a couple appearances. Truly amazing!

By Doug Buboltz

In the words of Clark Griswold...