Exploring the intersection between weather and sports, including the 'Ice Bowl,' what some call the greatest and coldest professional football game of all time.
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00:00Welcome to AccuWeather's Ask the Experts. I'm your host Jeff Cornish. We go beyond the
00:16forecast and give you the how and why on all the cool and interesting things you've wondered
00:22about and wanted to ask in weather, space and science. And today we're exploring the
00:26ways and always interesting intersection between weather and sports. Lots of impacts
00:33in this crossover and diving into what some consider one of the greatest and coldest professional
00:39football games of all time, the Ice Bowl of 1967. And joining us now is a man who has
00:46spent a lot of time dissecting all of the interesting stories of that amazing game and
00:51the weather that surrounded it. We have the book here, The Ice Bowl, written by Ed Groover,
00:56award-winning sports writer and author of several sports books, including this very
01:01book, The Ice Bowl, The Cold Truth About Football's Most Unforgettable Game to Ask the Experts.
01:07So Ed, thanks so much for making time for us.
01:09Well, thanks Jeff for having me. I appreciate it.
01:11Well, it's great talking sports and weather and the crossover here on the AccuWeather
01:15Network. It's something that we love to dig into. And this is a legendary event that you
01:21have written about. So as a sports fan and someone with a passion for the weather, it's
01:24always interesting to see how the weather can play a role in sports, especially football
01:29more than most others, and even beyond the gridiron. Certainly you've covered everything
01:33from baseball to hockey. It seems to me there was obvious interest in writing about the
01:37game here with the brutal weather and the importance of the game. You were only seven
01:41years old at the time the game was played. Was there another reason you wanted to look
01:46at this more closely?
01:48Yeah, actually, my older brother, Mike, was a big Packers fan in the mid-60s. Even though
01:55we grew up in North Jersey, just outside New York City, the Packers in the Labardi era
02:02were the team that was featured the most on national television. And he became a Packers
02:08fan. And he was watching the game. And he called me into the living room where the TV
02:14was on. And he said, hey, Ed, you've got to see this. And I went in there, and it was
02:18the first pro football game that I ever watched from start to finish. And like I've said many
02:23times, it was a great one to grow up on, because it's arguably the greatest NFL game ever played.
02:30That's great. That's fantastic. And as a fan from home, from the comfort of home, the worse
02:35the weather is, the more interesting it is to watch sometimes. But there was a lot going
02:39on with this particular game, obviously, beyond that. So before we get into the amazing cold
02:43and the weather stories of this game, this was a significant game in football history
02:46for many reasons. So how important was this game in terms of the building blocks of what
02:51we now know to be the National Football League?
02:54It was very important for a lot of reasons. Number one, the Lombardi Packers had won the
03:01previous two NFL championships and the first Super Bowl in January of 67, when they beat
03:07the AFL champion Kansas City Chiefs. And Lombardi was going for an unprecedented third NFL championship.
03:17And he was going against the Cowboys and going against a former colleague, Tom Landry, who
03:23was head coach of the Cowboys. And they had coached together on the great New York Giants
03:28teams of the mid and late 1950s, and had won an NFL championship together in 1956 with
03:34the Giants. So things kind of came full circle for Lombardi and Landry in this game. They
03:40had met the year before in the NFL championship game to decide who would go to the first Super
03:45Bowl, who would represent the NFL. And that game was played in Dallas in the Cotton Bowl.
03:50The Packers won, but it was very close. They only won by a touchdown. So they rematched
03:55for this game in Green Bay, in Lambeau Field. And again, Lombardi had intimated to many
04:03in his circle that, you know, win or lose, this is probably going to be his final year
04:08in Green Bay. And so there was a lot riding on this game.
04:12And how fearful were the officials and players of the impending cold? And were some of those
04:17fears mitigated by a system that Green Bay had installed to keep the field maybe a little
04:23warmer or thawed in some form? I understand there's a system used to run warmer water
04:28under the field, supposed to keep the field from freezing. How'd that work out?
04:32Yeah, actually, it worked out well on the surface. Lombardi had installed an electric
04:39grid beneath Lambeau Field for just this purpose. And the interesting thing was that the day
04:44before the game and in the days leading up to the game, you know, the weather in Green
04:50Bay was relatively warm, at least for that part of the country. You know, the Cowboys
04:56were very happy with the weather on Saturday, you know, the eve of the game. And they said,
05:00you know, if it's going to be like this tomorrow, this is going to be great because the Cowboys
05:03were a team built on speed. They were younger than the Packers. And they felt like, you
05:08know, they'd almost beaten Green Bay the year before. And if the weather cooperated, they
05:12would be able to beat them this time around and go to the Super Bowl. What happened was
05:17that you had this Canadian cold front that came in overnight and, you know, basically
05:23froze Green Bay. But Lombardi's electric grid was working. It was heating the fields, keeping
05:30it moist. But the cold was so intense that when they removed the tarpaulin prior to the
05:35game, the field flash froze. So that's why you had this slick, icy surface. And, you
05:43know, basically it turned Lambeau Field into a skating rink.
05:47Pretty incredible. We're going to talk a little bit more in detail about the playing conditions
05:51and how bad they were in our next segment. But there was speculation that field warming
05:56system either broke in the cold weather or was turned off by Green Bay for a competitive
06:00advantage. You know, people talk and sometimes there's some myth. Is there any truth to that?
06:05No, none at all. I know some of the Cowboys have told me through the years that, you know,
06:10it was kind of tongue in cheek that, yeah, you know, we think Lombardi, you know, turned
06:14off his system, you know, the morning of the game. But they knew Lombardi and they knew
06:20that it was completely foreign to him to try to win a game by cheating. I mean, you know,
06:25if he had to do that, he would rather lose the game than win by cheating. So there's
06:30no truth whatsoever to the, you know, this conspiracy theory, so to speak, that Lombardi
06:35turned off his electric heating system. And the Cowboys themselves have told me many times
06:40that, you know, they're basically just joking when they say that they knew what kind of
06:44man Lombardi was, you know, the principles that he had and that he would never resort
06:48to cheating to try to win a game. Okay. Well, Ed, this does lead us to our first viewer
06:54question, which was sent in about the game from Tyler in Indiana. And Tyler writes,
06:59if the field was in such bad shape, the temperatures were that brutal, why not postpone
07:04the game a day or two? You and I talked about a Buffalo game recently being pushed back,
07:08playoff game because the lake affects snow. Society is a little different now compared
07:12to a few decades ago. So why did they not postpone the game? Well, the interesting thing
07:17about this game is that Pete Roselle, who was the commissioner of the NFL, you know,
07:24normally would have been in Green Bay for the game, but the two leagues, the NFL and the AFL
07:28had recently merged and Roselle trying to show partiality to the AFL actually flew to Oakland,
07:34where the Raiders were hosting the Houston Oilers in the AFL championship game that same afternoon.
07:39So he was not in Green Bay, uh, for the ice ball. He was in, uh, Oakland. He was getting
07:46hour by hour reports about the field conditions and the weather. And basically, uh, it was his
07:52call. Um, he left it up to the officials and the coaches to decide. And they said, you know,
07:57let's just go ahead and play the game. It's going to be the same for both sides. Uh, you know,
08:01we don't really feel that either team is going to have an advantage. So let's just play the game,
08:05you know, in the existing conditions. And Eddie, you've been covering, uh,
08:09sports journalism and working as a sports journalist for, for many years. Uh, do you
08:14think that in popular conversation, maybe the climate where a team comes from is overstated
08:21as influential, uh, you know, say Miami is going to be playing Minnesota or maybe a Green Bay and
08:26they're outside at Lambeau again. Um, obviously the athletes are drafted and they're signed from
08:30all over the country, all over the world in some cases. So they're not all coming. They didn't
08:35grow up in Miami and Dade County. Do you think that we generally overstate the influence or is
08:40there a significant, uh, parallel there between where you regularly train, uh, and practice and,
08:45and playing in a different climate? I think there is a parallel, but I think also it can be
08:50overstated. Like you said, you know, uh, players are drafted from all parts of the country.
08:55They played high school ball in one part of the country, college ball, you know? So if
09:00there's certainly, if there's suddenly going to a professional team in another part of the country,
09:05it's not like they haven't been to that area before, um, or they don't know how to play in,
09:09in, you know, heat or cold conditions. Uh, and just briefly, Ed, were there any other stories
09:14about fans who were attending this game or journalists in the press box, uh, that maybe
09:20even the grounds crew, uh, that, uh, face some really difficult conditions, any legendary stories
09:25peripheral to what actually happened on the field in preparation for, during this game?
09:30Yeah, uh, many, many stories. In fact, and, you know, I did a, uh, after the book was published,
09:35um, I did a book tour, went to Green Bay, uh, went to various parts of Wisconsin.
09:41And I don't know how many people I ran into who said, Oh yeah, I was at that game, you know?
09:46And it would have been nice if they were at the game to have interviewed them prior because they
09:49did have some great stories to tell. People covered their sports writers, covering the game,
09:54uh, had a hard time, you know, looking through the glass of the, of the press box because it was
09:58frozen over. They couldn't really see the field that well, or the, or the plays,
10:02um, the officials, uh, that was the, it's the only game in NFL history where the officials
10:07didn't use the whistles. They tried to use a whistle at the kickoff, the opening kickoff.
10:11And, uh, the one official, uh, half of his lower lip got frozen to the whistle and, uh, kind of
10:18pulled off, uh, pull the skin off. So they decided from that point on, you know, no whistles. We're
10:24just going to tell them, Hey, the play's over, you know, everybody, you know, up, uh, back to
10:28the huddles. There were a lot of things going on that day, you know, certainly on the periphery
10:32that affected the, you know, everybody involved and not only the players. Fascinating coming up
10:37here. And after the break, Ed will return to break down some of the specifics of the game itself.
10:42As we continue talking about the December 1967 ice bowl coming up later, the ice bowl was not
10:48the only frigid football game in history in our weather wise segment. We're going to reveal some
10:52of the other top three coldest playoff games when ask the experts returns.
11:05Welcome back to Accuweather's ask the experts. I'm your host, Jeff Cornish, and we're back with
11:09award-winning sports writer and journalist, Ed Groover. He is the author of the book,
11:14the ice bowl, the cold truth about football's most unforgettable game.
11:19Ed, thanks again for being with us here. I love talking to you about how the weather
11:24influenced this spectacular game in the earlier days of the NFL. In this first segment, we talked
11:30about the lead up to the game, and now we want to focus on some of the details of the actual game.
11:34One amazing story centered on the marching band that was supposed to provide some entertainment
11:38that day, but it was so cold, the marching band didn't even get through their pregame practice.
11:43Is that right? Yes, that's true. They took the field,
11:51began trying to play their instruments, at least in the cold weather, but when they put the
11:57instruments up to their lips, they froze there. When they tried to pull them off, some skin went
12:03with them. They decided at that point, the cold is too intense, we just can't do this today.
12:13It's probably one of the few games in NFL history that doesn't have a pregame show or a halftime
12:18show either. Pretty wild. Ed, can you just give us a brief synopsis of how the game played with
12:24that cold and who ended up on top? Green Bay took a quick 14-0 lead. They scored two touchdowns on
12:33two bar star passes, and it looked like they were going to possibly win by a big margin.
12:41But Dallas rallied, they cut their deficit to 14-10 at halftime, and then in the third quarter,
12:49took the lead 17-14 on a surprise play. In fact, it was a play that was in the Lombardi playbook,
12:57a halfback option pass that Lombardi always favored. So the Cowboys kind of used it against
13:02them, scored a touchdown off it, went ahead 17-14, and then it was left up to the Packers with
13:09roughly five minutes left to have to drive the 68 yards in the intense cold on a frozen field
13:19and against a great Dallas defense that was known as Doomsday. They had to score a touchdown at that
13:25point to Packers to win. A field goal would have done them not much good. I mean, they could have
13:31tied it and sent it into overtime, but they were looking to win it in regulation. And a bar star
13:37marched them down the field, and then with just 13 seconds remaining on a third down and one from
13:45the basically just outside the goal line, you know, Bart called an unorthodox for him and for
13:51the Packers a quarterback sneak, and he followed his right guard Jerry Kramer into the end zone
13:57in one of the most iconic plays in pro football history. And you said this was the first complete
14:03football game you ever watched with your older brother Michael, and he's the one who you dedicated
14:07the book to. The players were playing in this dangerous cold the whole way through. Were there
14:12any injuries suffered by players or fans due to the exposure to the extreme cold? Yeah, unfortunately
14:19one gentleman did die in the stands that day. The players themselves, numerous players suffered
14:25frostbite. Players on both sides had all kinds of, you know, cold-related injuries. Some of the
14:34players through the years told me that, you know, their lungs actually were burned. They had doctors
14:39tell them that their lungs were burned from breathing the intense cold for the three hours
14:43that they were out there that day. Because, you know, as the sun dropped, so did the temperature,
14:49and there's estimations that, you know, by the fourth quarter the actual cold in Green Bay that
14:55day was minus 50 with the windshield factor. So it is the coldest game in NFL history,
15:01and it's also one of the greatest games in NFL history because of what the players on both sides,
15:06and there were a lot of Hall of Fame players, a lot of Hall of Fame coaches, and, you know,
15:10they really rose to the occasion and played a tremendous game. And Ed, you know, society has
15:15changed a lot since 1967. One thing that kind of strikes me is about player safety and the
15:22consideration for that. There's a lot of concern these days about player safety. Was that much of
15:29an emphasis back then and compared to now when we have extreme heat or extreme cold like that
15:35Kansas City or Buffalo game that we talked about in recent history of the playoffs?
15:41Yeah, player safety now is a much greater concern than it was back then, and I think if that game
15:48was in today's situation under today's rules, they would have postponed it probably a day
15:56like they have for other recent games because of the intense cold and because not only the
16:01welfare of the players and the coaches, but also the welfare of the fans. They wouldn't want to
16:05subject fans to, you know, those kind of intense conditions. And in fact, you know, Lombardi said
16:11after the game, you know, yeah, I could have gone for a game-tying field goal, but, you know, I didn't
16:15want the fans to suffer any more torture than they already had. So we're going to go for the touchdown
16:19to win it. Very interesting. Ed, we have time for one more viewer question. This comes from Jen
16:24in Missouri, and Jen writes, any interest in a follow-up book on other bad weather games, maybe
16:29from another game in recent history? There are other games out there that have been played in
16:35bad weather, but what makes this game so unique is that not only was it played in, you know,
16:41such, you know, interesting and unprecedented weather, but the players themselves, the kind
16:47of game they played, the number of Hall of Famers on both sides, it's really a game that stands out
16:53as unique. And I can't really think of another game, in fact, there is no other game in pro
16:57football history that has all the elements that the ice ball did. All right, well, there you go.
17:03Award-winning sports writer and author of The Ice Ball, The Cold Truth About Football's Most
17:08Unforgettable Game, Ed Groover. Ed, thank you so much for sharing some time with us and some of the
17:12lore about this game and the historical significance in the NFL history as well. Thanks again, Ed.
17:18Thank you. I appreciate it. That was good talking to you. This is good stuff.
17:22And don't forget, whenever you have a question about weather, space, or science, you can write
17:26us or send us a video question at AskTheExperts at AccuWeather.com. You could also call us at
17:32888-566-6606. And coming up here next, we reveal the other coldest playoff games in football. And
17:41we're going to share some interesting stories behind those games. We're going to be right
17:45back here on Ask the Experts right after the break. So stay with us.
18:04Welcome back to AccuWeather's Ask the Experts. It is now time for WeatherWise. The Green Bay
18:09Dallas Ice Bowl in 1967 is still the coldest professional football game on record. But we're
18:14taking a look at some of the other coldest playoff games in history. We start with what
18:18is known as the Freezer Bowl. In 1982, San Diego left sunny California to face Cincinnati. The
18:25temperature was 9 degrees below zero at game time with an AccuWeather real feel of 48 degrees below
18:31zero. Cincinnati head coach Forrest Gregg had played in the Ice Bowl with Green Bay 15 years
18:36earlier. With wind gusts of 35 miles per hour, San Diego's punter said the frozen football felt like
18:41kicking a cinder block. Cincinnati won 27 to 7. The next coldest game happened in 2016. Minnesota
18:48hosted Seattle in a wild card matchup that began at 6 degrees below zero with an AccuWeather real
18:54feel of 20 below. The game was played outdoors at the University of Minnesota. Both teams
18:59struggled to score. Minnesota missed a 27-yard field goal with just 26 seconds remaining.
19:05The kick went wide left. Seattle left with a 10 to 9 victory. And finally, in January of 2024,
19:12Miami went to Kansas City with a game time temperature of 4 degrees below zero with an
19:17AccuWeather real feel temperature of 27 below. It was so cold, Kansas City quarterback Patrick
19:23Mahomes' helmet cracked and 15 fans were treated for frostbite and hypothermia. Kansas City prevailed
19:3026 to 7. Thanks so much for being with us here on AccuWeather's Ask the Experts. I'm Jeff Cornish.
19:36Don't forget, when you have a question about weather, space, or science, you can write us or
19:41send us a video question at asktheexperts at accuweather.com. You can also call us at 888-566-6606.
19:49Have a great one.