’67 Ice Bowl had its share of cool times
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Ice Bowl — the 1967 meeting at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis., between the Packers and the Dallas Cowboys for the NFL championship.
It’s one of the defining games of the NFL, a contest played on tundra that truly was frozen by men who really weren’t prepared for the conditions.
The game that became known as the Ice Bowl joined the 1958 NFL Championship Game and the 1969 Super Bowl as one of three iconic contests in the span of a decade that cemented the league into the consciousness of America’s sports fans.
How cold was it? The reading at game time was 15 below, with the wind chill measured in today’s calculations at minus-48.
It was so cold that when referee Norm Schachter blew the metal whistle to start play, it froze to his lips.
When he tried to pry it off, it tore a chunk of his lip off with it.
“He bled most of the game,” Cowboys linebacker Lee Roy Jordan said. “After that, the NFL went to plastic whistles so it wouldn’t freeze to [their] lips.”
Add Lambeau Field
Cowboys executive Gil Brandt wasn’t thinking of history the morning of the Ice Bowl as he stood in the lobby of the Holiday Inn in Appleton, Wis.
He just wanted something to keep his feet warm as the Cowboys waited for the buses to take them to Lambeau Field.
He found them on the feet of one of the bus drivers.
“I asked if somebody would rent me their boots for $20,” Brandt said. “They said they weren’t boots but galoshes. But one guy rented me his.”
Players were just as ill prepared. They had long underwear and heaters on the sidelines but little else.
For the Cowboys, that meant no gloves for their hands.
“Our [defensive] coach, Ernie Stautner, told our defense that we weren’t going to wear gloves. Said, ‘Gloves are for sissies,’” Cowboys lineman Bob Lilly said. “Well, we go out to warm up and all the Packers had gloves on.”
The final insult
An Ohio man’s tongue-incheek obituary blames the winless Cleveland Browns for contributing to his demise.
The obituary published in the Sandusky Register said Paul Stark died Wednesday at a hospice facility after a brief illness “exacerbated by the hopeless condition of the Cleveland Browns.”
The football team was 1-15 last season and 0-15 this year ahead of today’s finale in Pittsburgh.
Even so, Stark’s obituary included a nugget of the optimism voiced by some longsuffering fans.
It said the 80-year-old Mansfield, Ohio, native “passed just before the Browns were prepared to turn the corner.”