Black History Month: When Reggie White signed with the Packers

GREEN BAY, Wis. (WBAY) - Before he came to the team, Reggie White was a free agent who said that he would play anywhere except Green Bay.

And he wasn’t the only one - team historians say players in the league called our city the Siberia of the NFL.

Ron Wolf was the general manager of the Green Bay Packers at the time. He decided there was only one way to turn around the fate of the team and that was to convince Reggie White to come to Green Bay,

With a promise that White would become a trailblazer that eventually leads the Packers to the Super Bowl - the team was able to sign him in 1993.

That year, the team made it to the playoffs for the first time in more than 10 years.

Leroy Butler, Packers Safety from 1990 to 2001, remembers: “That’s why I tear up thinking about Reggie because - he just put his arms around everybody. And it’s almost like he went home and wrote down every negative stereotype of Green Bay, and I’m gonna debunk it.”

The next year White began to recruit black free agents, and in 1997 he helped the team win Super Bowl XXXI.

They never missed the playoffs in White’s six seasons with the Packers.