Thursday, January 1, 1998

Ice Bowl Anniversary: Frigid game left indelible imprint

By ARNIE STAPLETON AP Sports Writer

GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) - Thirty years ago, the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers awakened to the shock of their lives.

"The operator said, 'It's 7:30 a.m. and 19 below,' " Cowboys linebacker Lee Roy Jordan recalled. "I got up out of bed, looked out the window and saw 40 other guys staring out in disbelief."

"My dad and I went to an early morning church service and neither one of us chose to talk about the weather," said Bart Starr, who would lift the Packers past the Cowboys in what will forever be known as the "Ice Bowl."

"I think we were afraid to bring it up," Starr said. "We knew it was going to be a bitter day."

With a temperature of minus-14 and a wind-chill of minus-49, it was the coldest NFL game ever recorded.

The wind chill had dipped another 20 degrees by the time Starr knifed into the end zone behind guard Jerry Kramer and center Ken Bowman with 16 seconds left to defeat Dallas 21-17 on New Year's Eve 1967.

"It was very emotional to have won it with just a few seconds left," said Starr, now a businessman in Birmingham, Ala. "I guess, without attempting to make a pun, that we were numb."

Nobody expected it to be that cold that day.

Green Bay coach Vince Lombardi spent $80,000 for a heating coil system that was to have kept the field soft and warm, and forecasters said not to worry because the approaching cold front wouldn't arrive until after the game.

"It was 20 degrees the day before," said Tom Landry, whose Cowboys lost to Green Bay in the 1966 NFL championship. "It was great. Vince and I were together that night and we talked about how good the conditions were and what a great game it would be."

They were half-right.

The cold front picked up steam overnight and arrived by morning, freezing Lombardi's heating coils.

Some Packers had trouble starting their cars and had to hitch a ride to the game. The doors at the Cowboys' hotel were frozen shut and had to be kicked in.

The officiating crew got store owners out of bed to load up on thermal underwear and gloves.

"It was like being at the North Pole," Landry said. "I'd have frozen if it weren't for one of our owners giving me a fur coat and hat."

And what about the 50,861 shivering fans at Lambeau Field?

"I don't know how those people stayed up in the stands," Bowman said. "When you're down on the field, you're moving around, burning some energy, building up heat. To sit in the stands must have been sheer torture."

The halftime show was canceled when a band member's lip froze to his horn during rehearsal.

When the grounds crew rolled up the tarpaulin, a layer of condensation had formed underneath and, with 40 mph winds, the field promptly froze like an ice rink.

"AstroTurf was like a pillow compared to this," Packers running back Chuck Mercein said. "This was like falling on jagged concrete."

Referee Norm Schacter's whistle froze to his lip on the first play of the game, after which plays were simply yelled dead.

Heaters on the sideline were of little use. One even exploded.

The Packers jumped ahead early on two TD catches by Boyd Dowler, but Dallas trailed just 14-10 at halftime after two Packers turnovers.

The Cowboys went ahead 17-14 when running back Dan Reeves hit Lance Rentzel for a 50-yard TD pass eight seconds into the fourth quarter.

The Packers got the ball at their 32 with five minutes left, one last chance for the aging dynasty to win a fifth NFL title in seven seasons.

Starr took the field as linebacker Ray Nitschke hollered, "Don't let me down!"

Starr wouldn't, completing all five of his passes and directing one of the most memorable drives in NFL history.

"We all have a capacity to focus and to concentrate to a unique degree when we're called upon to do it," Starr said. "That's exactly what I did that day.

"And I think the same was true of the Cowboys. Let's face it, they obviously were not accustomed to something like that and yet they were the team which had surged and come back in the second half and were in a position to win it."

But with 1:11 remaining, tackle Bob Skoronski opened a hole and Mercein charged through the middle for 8 yards to the Dallas 3.

"Had the turf been better, I think Mercein might have scored," Starr said. "So the rest of it would have been moot."

Halfback Donny Anderson slipped twice on handoffs, so Starr called timeout, went to the sideline and suggested a sneak because of the poor traction.

The play was called "31 Wedge." It was put into the Packers' playbook that week when Kramer noticed a weakness in Dallas' short-yardage defense.

"Then run it and let's get the hell out of here," Lombardi said.

The play worked perfectly, a flawless finish to that coldest of games so frozen in time.