Snoozing peacefully in his hotel room, wide receiver Lance Rentzel was jolted awake by a phone call from a Dallas Cowboys teammate that early morning of Dec. 31, 1967, in Green Bay, Wis.
“Look outside,” the teammate said.
“What is it?” Rentzel asked, thinking it must have been an emergency call from home. He hadn’t asked the front desk for a wake-up call.
“Siberia,” came the answer.
The stats that morning, 40 years and five days ago: minus 13 degrees, minus 49 with the wind chill.
And the Cowboys were to play the Green Bay Packers that afternoon for the NFL Championship.
It’s referred to as the “Ice Bowl.” NFL historians say it did more to turn the NFL into today’s multi-bajillion-dollar conglomerate than any other event. It brought even those indifferent to football in general and the NFL in particular into the game.
This was before the moon landing, before luxury suites and before the NFL-AFL merger. No one had heard of wild-card playoffs. The Super Bowl wasn’t even yet The Super Bowl, as we now know it.
It was a simpler time. The Ice Bowl was about to permanently change that.
The kid flipping through his three TV channels that day couldn’t help but glom onto the screen once he saw players slipping and sliding on the frozen turf. Wow, the kid thought, this beats “Rocky and Bullwinkle.”
The fringe fan madly adjusting the rabbit ears on his Motorola realized that it was, contrary to his first thought, an accurate picture of Lambeau Field, snow drifts piled along the sidelines, the field a great plate of ice and puffs of mist billowing out the players’ face masks.
The Ice Bowl did much to spring the NFL into what it is today, not only because it was a great game (football writers later voted it the greatest game in pro football history), but also because some most peculiar twists left even the most casual fan faithful for life.
Tension. Courage. Weather conditions beyond horrible. This was the stuff of legends.
The morning of the game, Packers free safety Willie Wood stood next to his dead car, shivering, convinced that even if his frozen battery would come back to life, he wasn’t going anywhere.
“It’s just too cold to play,” Wood said. “They’re going to call this game off. They’re not going to play in this.”
Wood was wrong. The league declared it on and a capacity crowd, 50,861, paid $10 a head to see it.
Weather forecasts the previous day predicted 20 to 25 degrees, but that was before an arctic blast blew in from the north.
It was so cold:
n Officials could not use their whistles to stop play. They screamed plays dead.
n In the press box, coffee was served, but if people didn’t drink it fast enough, it froze in the plastic cup. Then-CBS commentator Frank Gifford got off the best line of the day when he said on the air: “I think I’ll take another bite of coffee.”
n Reporters used the Sunday newspaper as a floor mat to keep their feet from freezing. Typewriters placed too close to the window ledge froze up, as did the stadium’s toilets.
n The field’s $80,000 electric underground heating system — a grid of coils six inches under the turf to prevent the field from freezing — froze. Some say Packers coach Vince Lombardi turned it off, looking for an advantage over a warm-weather team.
n Several times, Packers fans seated in the front rows unplugged the Cowboys’ heated benches.
n The Packers canceled marching band performances because several musicians suffered bloody mouths while trying to tear their instruments’ mouthpieces from their lips.
n Cowboys receiver and Olympic gold-medal sprinter Bob Hayes tipped off the Packer defense by shoving his freezing hands down the front of his pants on nonpassing plays.
Despite the weather, the game was a classic. Green Bay went up 14-0, only to see the Cowboys forge ahead 17-14 on a 50-yard halfback pass from Dan Reeves to Rentzel with 4:50 left.
The Packers, though, came back. Quarterback Bart Starr engineered a 68-yard drive that he ended with a quarterback sneak behind guard Jerry Kramer with 13 seconds remaining.
Two things about that play: It was designed to be a handoff to fullback Chuck Mercein, but Starr reasoned that Mercein could slip while trying to get traction, so he kept the ball himself.
Second, replays showed that Kramer, undetected by the officials, jumped from his crouched stance a slim moment before the ball was snapped.
Thousands of fans swarmed the field after the 21-17 Packer victory. They attacked the goalpost, trying to bend it to the ground for souvenirs.
Instead, it crumbled to the frozen turf.
And shattered.
This column includes material from “When All the Laughter Died in Sorrow” by Lance Rentzel; “Instant Replay” by Jerry Kramer; “When Courage Still Mattered” by David Maraniss; packers.com; the Associated Press; Packer Plus; the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; and Cowboys Pride.
Sports columnist John Sleeper: sleeper@heraldnet.com. For Sleeper[`]s blog, go to www.heraldnet.com/ danglingparticiples.
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