Lance Rentzel, Dallas Cowboys wide receiver: The phone rings in my hotel room, and the voice on the other end says, "Good morning, Mr. Rentzel. It's 8 AM. It's 15 degrees below zero outside, and there's a 30 mile-an-hour wind. Have a nice day."
Narrator: It is called "Russian Winter." The kind of cold that made Napoleon and Hitler flee in terror from the doorstep of Moscow. But, in Green Bay, it is known as "Packer Weather."
That was the opening narration to a short film on the game known as "The Ice Bowl," for NFL Films' special The NFL's Greatest Games.
I don't know who the narrator was -- the Internet has failed me in this regard -- but the film was made in 1987, so it wasn't John Facenda, the voice of NFL Films from 1966 until his death in 1984. Let the record show that Facenda never actually spoke the words "the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field." ESPN's Chris Berman, imitating Facenda, made that up.
The 1967 NFL Championship Game wasn't the 1st event to be nicknamed the Ice Bowl. Ironically, given who the Packers' opponents were in that game, the name was first given to an event in Dallas, the 1947 Cotton Bowl. A storm had dumped rain, sleet and snow on North Texas, and the Louisiana State players put oil drums filled with charcoal on their sideline, to use as makeshift heaters. In front of 38,000 chilled customers, LSU played the University of Arkansas to a 0-0 tie.
After 1967, the 1977 Grey Cup, the championship of the Canadian Football League, was also called the Ice Bowl. The Olympic Stadium in Montreal was supposed to have a retractable roof, but it wasn't in place, and the Montreal Alouettes, playing on their home field, pounded the Edmonton Eskimos 41-6. The Esks shouldn't have been too fazed, though, as (if you count the CFL as "major league") no major league sports team in North America is further north.
There have been a few football games known as the Snow Bowl: The 1950 Michigan-Ohio State game, a 1984 game between the Packers and the Broncos, a 1985 game between the Packers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the 1996 Grey Cup between the Eskimos and the Toronto Argonauts, the 2002 "Tuck Rule Game" between the New England Patriots and the Oakland Raiders, the 2000 Independence Bowl between Mississippi State and Texas A&M, and a game this season between the Buffalo Bills and the Indianapolis Colts.
Oddly, that 1984 Green Bay-Denver game was played on October 15, very early for snow, even in those cities. It was in Denver, but neither that nor the location should have bothered the Packers. But, uncharacteristically, they couldn't handle it, fumbling away their 1st 2 possessions deep in their own territory, and the Broncos took a quick 14-0 lead, and held off a Pack comeback to win 17-14.
The Ice Bowl isn't even the coldest game in NFL history anymore. The 1981 AFC Championship Game, played at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati on January 10, 1982, was 9 degrees below zero without the wind chill factor, and 37 below with it. The San Diego Chargers, used to warm weather, had played one of the hottest games in NFL history just 8 days earlier, against the Miami Dolphins at the Orange Bowl, and were totally unused to this kind of cold. The Bengals won, 27-7.
*
Many NFL Championship Games, nearly all played in December to that point, had been plagued by cold weather. The 1934 game at the Polo Grounds in New York became known as "The Sneaker Game," when the Giants switched from cleats to sneakers, and got a better footing than the Chicago Bears, whose undefeated season went down the drain.
It was bitterly cold, with frozen fields, in Cleveland in 1950, at Yankee Stadium in 1956 and 1962, at Baltimore's Memorial Stadium in 1959, at Wrigley Field in 1963, and at Green Bay's Lambeau Field (then still named City Stadium, as was its predecessor) in 1961, and snowing to boot, when the Packers beat the Giants 37-0. And the Lambeau Field grass had to get the snow plowed off it for the 1965 NFL Championship Game -- the 1st to be played in January, on January 2, 1966.
Packer coach Vince Lombardi was born and raised in Brooklyn, played at Fordham University in The Bronx, and had spent his entire coaching career in the New York Tri-State Area before going to Green Bay: Head coach at a now-defunct high school in Kearny, assistant coach at West Point, and what we would now call the offensive coordinator at the Giants -- while what we would now call their defensive coordinator was Tom Landry.
So Lombardi could handle cold weather. But from having coached in the title games of 1956, 1959, 1961, 1962 and 1965, he knew that cold weather could be a problem for football. Fortunately, since the Packers' unusual ownership structure, and his role as both head coach and general manager, left him a virtual dictator, he had the field torn up, and heating coils placed under the field. When resodded, the idea was that the coils would keep the field from freezing. It became known as "Lombardi's Electric Blanket."
Lambeau Field as it appeared in 1967.
Note the shadow cast by the scoreboard
at the south end. This will matter later on.
Lombardi and Landry were opposites: Landry was a great stone face, never showing emotion during the game; while Lombardi was, in the words of his All-Pro guard Jerry Kramer, "a raving Italian lunatic!"
But the teams were the other way around: The Cowboys -- not yet the dominant team that they would become -- were braggarts, while the Packers let their performance to the talking for them. The exception was Hall of Fame running back Paul Hornung, but he was retired by this point.
Cowboy quarterback Don Meredith posed with his teammates, holding their hands out, saying, "Easy money!" This flew in the face of the fact that they were going on the road -- the Eastern Division and Western Division Champions alternated hosting in those days -- and the fact that, on January 1, 1967, the Packers went into the Cotton Bowl and beat the Cowboys 34-27 for the 1966 NFL Championship.
That was the 1st time the Cowboy franchise, begun in 1960, had gotten that far. The Packers were going for their 5th NFL Championship in 7 years, which included ending the previous season by winning "The AFL-NFL World Championship Game," retroactively named "Super Bowl I."
The Las Vegas oddsmakers installed the Packers as 6 1/2-point favorites. Given their experience, including winning the previous year's title game on the road, and the home-field advantage, which is traditionally said in football to be worth 3 points, this should not have surprised anyone, then or now.
The day before the game, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle made some phone calls, and was told that the game-time temperature would be about 5 degrees above zero. (All temperatures mentioned in this post will be in Fahrenheit.)
Rozelle didn't like that, and began to consider postponing the game to the next day, Monday, New Year's Day 1968, despite the fact that it would compete for TV ratings with the college bowl games. But he was told that the oncoming cold front would make it even colder. So, already in Green Bay, he called Lombardi and Landry, and told them the game would go on as scheduled.
But the cold front arrived sooner, and was worse than expected. As Cowboy receiver Rentzel reported, he was told that it was 15 degrees below zero. The official NFL Films record of the game shows a rotating back clock backing that up, reading "-15°."
That film shows Hall of Fame safety Willie Wood walking into Lambeau Field wearing with a heavy coat, a fur-lined hat, earmuffs, a big scarf, and a big smile, as if he expected the Cowboys to be affected by it far more than the Packers. What it doesn't show is how much trouble he had getting there, because he later said his car wouldn't start. When the service-station guy came to help him get it started, he told the guy, "It's just too cold to play. They're going to call this game off."
(That same day, the Rangers hosted the Toronto Maple Leafs, in one of the last events at the old Madison Square Garden, and won 4-0. The Knicks were not scheduled. Nor were the New Jersey Americans, forerunners of the Brooklyn Nets. The Islanders and Devils did not yet exist. And, of course, the Yankees, the Mets, the Giants and the Jets were not scheduled.)
The marching band of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse was scheduled to perform the pregame and halftime shows. But during -- pardon the choice of words -- the warmups, the spit inside their woodwind instruments froze, rendering them impossible to play. The mouthpieces of brass instruments stuck to their players' lips. Seven members were taken to the hospital for hypothermia.
The officials' whistles also had the spit freeze inside, and they ended up telling the team captains that play would be stopped by the officials putting their hands on the backs of players who, due to concentrating on the ballcarrier, couldn't otherwise see that play had stopped.
Frank Gifford, the Hall of Fame Giants running back who was serving as one of the CBS announcers for the game, said, on the air, "I'm going to take a bite of my coffee."
At the time, Lambeau Field held 50,861 people. That was the official attendance: In spite of the cold, there was not an empty seat in the house -- until an elderly spectator died from exposure. Yes, only one fan died from the cold.
The game was played anyway. When it kicked off at 1:00 PM Central Standard Time -- 2:00 Eastern -- it was 13 below, with a wind-chill factor, on the since-changed current scale, of -36.
Note the ticket price: $10. That's about $73 in today's money.
For the Championship Game. Today, a regular-season game
would almost certainly cost you much more.
The game did affect the Cowboys more than the Packers. The film shows Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke running onto the field in short sleeves, with no gloves. He was from Chicago. He could handle it.
But Meredith's face froze, to the point where he couldn't make his words understood in the huddle unless he pressed on his cheeks. Bob Hayes, the Olympic sprinting champion who'd hauled in so many of Meredith's passes, had to run with his hands tucked in a hole cut in his jersey.
The Packers opened the game with a 9-minute drive that ended with a touchdown pass from Bart Starr to Boyd Dowler. Starr connected with Dowler again in the 2nd quarter, giving the Packers a 14-0 lead. It would have been very easy to guess then that the Cowboys were finished.
They weren't. They showed a tremendous amount of courage, and came back. They didn't get a single 1st down in the 2nd quarter, but fumbles by Starr and of a punt return by Wood led to Cowboy scores, making it 14-10 Green Bay at the half.
In the 3rd quarter, the Packers stopped a Cowboy drive with a fumble, and ended another that resulted in a missed field goal by Danny Villanueva. At the start of the 4th quarter, Landry gambled, and called an option pass for Dan Reeves -- later to coach the Denver Broncos, the Giants and the Atlanta Falcons -- to Rentzel. It went for 50 yards and a touchdown.
Despite seemingly everything going against them, the Cowboys led 17-14. The Packers' Don Chandler missed a field goal, and it looked like the Packers would be dethroned.
With 4 minutes and 50 seconds left, the Packers took over on their own 32 yard line. Since the goalposts would be on the goal line until the 1974 season, but Chandler had already missed a 40-yard attempt, this meant that they probably needed to get the ball to the Dallas 30-yard line for a field goal -- but that would only have tied it, and sent this already-miserable game to overtime.
Starr advanced the Packers with short passes to Dowler and Donny Anderson. But a hit knocked Dowler down, and his head hit the frozen turf, knocking him unconscious. As with the Super Bowl nearly a year earlier, Max McGee came in to replace him. Unlike that Super Bowl, McGee would not turn out to be the hero this time.
Lombardi's most famous play was the "power sweep": Both guards, Kramer and Fred "Fuzzy" Thurston, would pull out of the line at the snap, and run in the same direction (either left or right), and Starr would pitch to a running back, who would then run behind the guards. This had worked so many times with Hornung and Jim Taylor, and now with Anderson and Elijah Pitts.
This time, Lombardi had a trick up his sleeve, a play known in the Packer playbook as "54-Give." He called it the "sucker play": It was a fake power sweep, with Gale Gillingham, having replaced Thurston, pulling to the right. This caught the attention of the Cowboys' Hall of Fame defensive tackle, Bob Lilly, and he followed. This left a hole up the middle, and running back Chuck Mercein got to the 3-yard line.
The Packers then needed to get to the 1-yard line for a 1st down, and did. Some of the Cowboys thought he'd scored. Had there been instant replay at the time, what happened next might not have happened, and Anderson would have been the big hero of the game. But the officials didn't see the ball cross the plane of the goal line, and so it was 1st and goal on the 1.
It was getting late. Lambeau Field did have lights, so darkness was not going to be an issue. But a lack of sunlight was. To make matters worse, the action was now at the south end of the field, where the shadow of the scoreboard loomed, making it even colder. I've seen sources say that, with the wind chill (on the old scale), it was as low as 48, or even 55, degrees below zero.
This is not a photo from that game,
but you can see how big the scoreboard was,
and imagine the shadow it would have cast.
There was less than a minute left. On 1st down, Starr handed off to Anderson, but he slipped on the icy field. On 2nd down, Anderson slipped even before Starr could get the ball to him. 3rd and goal on the 1. The Packers called their last timeout. There were 16 seconds left.
On the film, Lilly can be shown kicking the field, and he kicks up specks of frost. The Cowboys actually considered getting a drill, and drilling holes in the field, to get a better footing. I don't know if that was legal, or if they would have had time for it, even if they took all their remaining timeouts.
The Packers' dilemma was equally tricky. Run the ball and fail, and they wouldn't be able to stop the clock in time to kick the tying field goal. Pass the ball, and it could fall incomplete, leaving 4th down with the clock stopped with a few seconds left, and you could still kick the field goal -- but it could also be intercepted, as was Meredith's desperation pass that clinched the Packer victory the year before. Kick it now, on 3rd down, and Chandler could miss again, and even if he makes it, the game is still only tied.
Pat Summerall, the CBS sideline reporter, whose last game as a player was on this very field, as a Giants lineman and kicker, losing the 1961 title game to the Packers, told the CBS control truck to set the cameramen up for a rollout pass, thinking it was the Packers' best choice. Landry later said that he also expected a rollout pass.
Starr wasn't as good a passer as his contemporaries Johnny Unitas, Sonny Jurgensen and Joe Namath, but he was smarter than any of them. He recommended a play called "31-Wedge": "Coach, the linemen can get their footing on the wedge, but the backs are slipping. I'm right there. I can just shuffle my feet and lunge in."
At this point, Lombardi was as cold and as tired as anyone, and was not looking forward to overtime, so he told Starr, "Run it, and let's get the hell out of here!"
Starr called the play. It required guard Kramer and center Ken Bowman to double-team the Cowboys' other tackle, Jethro Pugh. Bowman snapped the ball, Starr took it, lowered his head, and followed the block.
Touchdown. On the film, Mercein can be shown raising his hands. He's not signaling, "Touchdown!" He's showing the referee that he's not illegally helping Starr. To this day, Cowboy fans insist that Kramer was offside. As if the Cowboys wouldn't win a whole slew of games due to cheating in the years to come.
Starr (15) over the goal line. Mercein (30) with his hands up.
This is Walter Iooss Jr.'s photo for Sports Illustrated.
The most familiar shot of the touchdown is in black & white,
and I wanted a color photo.
In his 1980 book Pro Football's 10 Greatest Games, sports historian (usually specializing in baseball) John Thorn wrote, "It is the most famous touchdown in football history." This was before the 1982 Dwight Clark "The Catch," but Thorn put it ahead of the 1958 Alan Ameche overtime score (he included that title game in the book), and the 1974 Clarence Davis "Sea of Hands" catch (he included that game, too), and apparently ahead of the 1972 Franco Harris "Immaculate Reception" (he did not include that game).
Chandler kicked the extra point to make it 21-17. There were still 13 seconds left. The Packers kicked off, and the Cowboys let it go into the end zone. Meredith threw 2 incompletions, and the game was over.
The Packers went on to beat the AFL Champion Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl II. Lombardi retired as head coach after that game, but stayed on as general manager. As with the 1964-65 Yankees, the team seemed to get old all at once, and the dynasty collapsed. The team wouldn't reach the title game again for 29 years, winning Super Bowl XXXI in the 1996-97 season.
After the 1968 season, Lombardi accepted Edward Bennett Williams' offer to be head coach and general manager of the Washington Redskins, and began to rebuild them in 1969. But he developed colon cancer -- much more easily treatable now, but fatal then. He died on September 3, 1970, only 57 years old. The Redskins hired George Allen away from the Los Angeles Rams, and reached Super Bowl VII 3 seasons later.
The Cowboys got tagged as a team that "can't win the big one." They reached Super Bowl V, but lost to the Baltimore Colts. Finally, they came to dominate the NFC in the 1970s, reaching 5 Super Bowls, winning Super Bowls VI and XII. They began calling themselves "America's Team." They were featured on TV so much that people joked that CBS stood for Cowboys Broadcasting System. Landry remained head coach until 1989, and died in 2000.
Of the Cowboys' starting lineup: Receiver Bob Hayes died in 2002, quarterback Don Meredith in 2010; defensive tackle Jethro Pugh, safety Mike Gaechter, and placekicker-punter Danny Villanueva in 2015; guard Leon Donohue and linebacker Dave Edwards in 2016, and offensive tackle Tony Liscio and defensive end Willie Townes both died earlier this year.
Still alive: Center Mike Connelly is 82 years old, linebacker Chuck Howley is 81, running back Don Perkins is 79, defensive tackle Bob Lilly is 78, tight end Pettis Norman is about to turn 78, defensive end George Andrie and cornerback Cornell Green are 77, linebacker Lee Roy Jordan and safety Mel Renfro are 76, offensive tackle Ralph Neely and cornerback Mike Johnson are 74, running back Dan Reeves is about to turn 74, and guard John Niland is 73.
Of the Packers' starting lineup: Defensive tackle Henry Jordan died in 1977, defensive tackle Ron Kostelnik in 1993, linebacker Lee Roy Caffey in 1994; running back Elijah Pitts, defensive end Lionel Aldridge and linebacker Ray Nitschke in 1998; receiver Max McGee in 2007, cornerback Bob Jeter in 2008; guard Gale Gillingham and placekicker and punter Don Chandler in 2011, and guard Fred "Fuzzy" Thurston in 2014.
* Still alive: Offensive tackle Forrest Gregg is 84, quarterback Bart Starr is about to turn 84, offensive tackle Bob Skoronski and defensive end Willie Davis are 83; guard Jerry Kramer is about to turn 82; safety Willie Wood is 81; receiver Boyd Dowler is 80, tight end Carroll Dale is 79, cornerback Herb Adderley is 78; safety Tom Brown is 77, linebacker Dave Robinson is 76; tight end Marv Fleming is about to turn 76, center Ken Bowman is 75, running back Donny Anderson is 74.
A recent photo of Bart Starr
So that's 27 men -- 14 Packers and 13 Cowboys -- still alive who played in the Ice Bowl.
Referee Norm Schachter, who had also officiated at Super Bowl I, would also officiate at the 1st Monday Night Football game in 1970, and at Super Bowls V and X, after which he retired. He lived until 2004.
Of the broadcasters: Ray Scott, long the voice of the Packers, announced the 1st half for CBS, and lived until 1998. Jack Buck, the voice of baseball's St. Louis Cardinals, announced the 2nd half, and lived until 2002. Frank Gifford was the color commentator throughout, and lived until 2015. The sideline reporters were Pat Summerall and Tom Brookshier, who became CBS' top NFL unit in 1974, until 1980, with John Madden taking over as Summerall's color commentator and Brookshier being moved to play-by-play on their Number 2 team. Brookshier lived until 2010, Summerall until 2013.
Lambeau Field still stands. Along with the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (which the Rams will leave after the 2019 season for a new stadium) and the Oakland Coliseum (which the Raiders will leave, probably after the 2018 season, for Las Vegas), it is the only stadium in the combined NFL and AFL of 1967 that is being used here in the 2017 NFL season.
A recent photo of Lambeau Field
The Ice Bowl lives on in sports memory. It still gives chills, even to people like me who weren't even born yet.
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