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On game day at the Points After North bar and restaurant in Flower Mound, Texas, manager Shannon Johnson knows the drill.

As many as 75 Green Bay Packers fans will show up to watch the Green and Gold play on the big screen inside the joint.

The fans will stream in, decked out in their Packers gear, and begin to plaster the bar walls with Packers pennants, flags and posters.

"They all know each other. They come every week and they've been coming for years. And they always get the biggest TV screen in our place," Johnson said.

"We have a much better Packers following here than a Dallas Cowboys following," said Johnson, whose bar is just outside Dallas.

That's just one bar full of Packers fans, but it happens every weekend in thousands of places around the country. The Packers even have a website, www.PackersEverywhere.com, which helps fans find a place anywhere in the country to cheer on their favorite team.

For years, the Cowboys have been called America's Team, as if they were the most popular team in the most popular sport. The moniker has stuck even though the Cowboys' record since 2000 is 88-88 and they've been to the playoffs during that period only four times.

Which raises this question: Are the Packers really America's Team?

"I think so," said Packers president and CEO Mark Murphy. He said the team's publicly owned status and its cultivation of the small town vs. big market image combine to make the Packers the team America loves.

"For a lot of fans around the country, we are their second favorite team," Murphy said.

And Packers fans love to hit the road.

During the Packers-San Diego Chargers game Nov. 6 in San Diego, a Chargers spokesman estimated that 40% to 50% of the fans inside Qualcomm Stadium were Packers fans. It was so loud the Chargers had to go to a silent count to run a play.

On their own field.

"It was an unbelievable crowd," Murphy said. "At every stop we make, there are fans at the hotel, fans at the stadium, fans at the pep rallies."

In Los Angeles and New York, the TV network bosses' eyes glisten when the Packers are on national TV, and especially when it snows at Lambeau Field. It seems snowbirds down south, even ones who don't much care about pro football, will tune in to see the Packers play.

Unbeaten

Halfway through the season, the defending Super Bowl champions are undefeated with an 8-0 record. On Monday night, they will be on national television again when they meet the Minnesota Vikings at Lambeau Field.

The Packers have been more successful since 2000. They've been 105-71 in that period, with seven playoff appearances and a Super Bowl. The team is hopeful they'll be playing in this season's Super Bowl in Indianapolis.

It's fruitless to ask fans who follow the Packers, Cowboys, New Orleans Saints, Pittsburgh Steelers or New England Patriots which team is America's Team. Subjectivity and blind loyalty get in the way.

In interviews with NFL officials, sports-business experts, pollsters, network executives and public relations consultants, the consensus is the Packers at the very least can call themselves contenders to the throne.

"There is no doubt the small-town, community-owned Green Bay Packers are the new darlings of the NFL," said Michael Neuman, managing partner of Scout Sports and Entertainment in New York. "In the ever-growing disparity between small-market and big-market teams across professional sports, the Packers are becoming the team America is rooting for."

On a strictly financial basis, there is no comparison between the Packers and the Cowboys. The Cowboys are tops in the league in terms of team revenue, at $406 million last year, according to Forbes magazine. The Cowboys are valued at $1.75 billion.

The Packers were ranked ninth in team revenue, according to Forbes, with $259 million. Although the franchise is publicly owned, the Packers are valued at $1.02 billion.

David vs. Goliath

But there's a difference. The Cowboys operate in the fifth largest media market in the country. Green Bay-Appleton is the 69th largest media market.

The Cowboys also operate in a metropolitan area of nearly 6.5 million people. The Packers' market is just over 300,000. Throw in Milwaukee and it still doesn't come close to the Cowboys' reach.

A recent Harris Interactive Poll said the Cowboys were the favorite NFL team. It was the fifth straight year the Cowboys ranked first.

The Packers were third behind the Steelers and the Cowboys, although they have been trending higher since 2008.

In terms of merchandise, the Packers rule.

From April through October, the Packers led the league in team merchandise sold on NFLShop.com. Quarterback Aaron Rodgers has the top-selling jersey on the site; Clay Matthews has the third-most selling jersey.

That is convincing evidence, said Shawn McBride, a vice president at Ketchum Sports & Entertainment, a major sports marketing firm in New York.

"Relative to the size of their respective markets, coupled with the momentum the Packers have enjoyed on the field as well as glowing television ratings and league-leading merchandise sales, Green Bay is supplanting the Cowboys, especially for a new generation of football fans, as America's Team," McBride said.

Patrick Stiegman, a former Wisconsin journalist and now vice president and editor-in-chief of ESPN.com, agrees that both the Cowboys and the Packers have a tremendous number of followers.

"Over the past year, in fact, Dallas and Green Bay are 1-2 in terms of the most trafficked teams on ESPN.com, not including ESPNDallas.com, which obviously has significant reach with Cowboys fans," Stiegman said. "Both drive tens of millions of page views to our national site, and stories on the two teams consistently rank among the most commented upon pieces across all of our NFL coverage."

Stiegman used to cover games at Lambeau, so he knows the fan base well.

"It is clear Green Bay's remarkable success over the past two seasons has vaulted the Packers into a premier position in the battle of mindshare among national fans," he said.

On television, the networks love the Packers. So far this season, NFL games account for 13 of television's 15 most-watched shows.

At the top of the heap was the Oct. 16 game between the Cowboys and Patriots, which drew an average of 28.4 million viewers, the most watched sporting event since Super Bowl XLV.

But the Packers are a huge draw, too. Beginning with the season-opening game against the Saints (27.1 million), the Packers also drew huge audiences in three other games - Packers-Minnesota Vikings, 24.3 million; Packers-Chicago Bears, 24 million; and Packers-Denver Broncos, 23 million.

Big on Sunday night

A better means of comparison might be the two games both the Packers and the Cowboys have each played on NBC. Of the two games the Cowboys played on Sunday night, against the Philadelphia Eagles and the New York Jets, the average combined viewership was 24.5 million.

In the two games the Packers played on NBC, against the Saints and the Falcons, the average combined viewership was 24.7 million.

As successful franchises, the Packers and Cowboys enjoy the luxury of landing major corporate partners. Both have long-term deals with MillerCoors. And both have major deals with soft-drink companies (Cowboys and PepsiCo and the Packers with Coca-Cola) and wireless carriers (Cowboys with AT&T and the Packers with Verizon).

"We're obviously huge fans of both teams," MillerCoors spokesman Pete Marino said diplomatically. "We think they are two of the power franchises, not just in football, but in all of sports."

There should be no disagreement there.