KEEPING FRIENDLY RELATIONS ON THE STATE LINE.

During the off-season, Packer quarterback Aaron Rodgers and State Line race car driver Danica Patrick became an item, and that makes for interesting times in Roscoe, Illinois.

Walk into Hononegah Community High School in nearby Rockton, where Patrick was a student until she left as a junior to pursue her racing career in Europe, and the receptionist will tell you — in the nicest of ways — that she doesn’t even know who Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is, much less that he’s dating the retired race car driver who once walked the halls as a cheerleader.

The yearbook adviser sitting next to her, with a Packers lanyard around her neck, is a Marshfield native whose parents had Packers season tickets in the 1980s but got rid of them. And then Brett Favre showed up.

Pop by Louie’s Tap House and Neil Lusmann of Rockford talks about how he’s been cheering for the Packers for 51 years, ever since he watched the Ice Bowl at his grandparents’ house in 1967. Yet somehow, of his five sons, he ended up with three Packers fans, one Cowboys fan and, in a cruel twist of football fate, a Bears fan.

As for the lady, well, she's switched allegiances.

Patrick, Roscoe’s most famous export, confirmed in January she was dating Rodgers. A lifelong Bears fan, she announced she’ll be cheering not just for the Packers quarterback, but “I’m going to cheer for the whole team.” In July, she put the exclamation point on it by telling late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel: “I’m the biggest Packers fan.”

It sparked a flurry of national headlines but no hard feelings back home.

The Packers commence their hundredth season this evening, hosting the Bears in Green Bay.