Chuck Carlson - Ice Bowl 67: The Packers, the Cowboys, and the Game that Changed the NFL

Copyright 2017 by Chuck Carlson

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Tom Lau

Cover photo credit: Associated Press

All photos in the insert courtesy of Associated Press

ISBN: 978-1-68358-097-3

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-68358-101-7

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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D O A SIMPLE Google search on the term Ice Bowl and prepare to be amazed. Thanks to the wonderful world of digital technology where no information is too far away, more than three million results will be available to you in less than a second. And thats just Ice Bowl too. Not Green Bay Packers and Ice Bowl or Dallas Cowboys and Ice Bowl or NFL and Ice Bowl or Tom Landry and Ice Bowl. You can fill the Lambeau Field stands with all the results of a game played before a fair portion of the population of the United States was even born.

Everybody, it seems, has written or commented or viewed or analyzed what remains the most famous, and infamous game, in NFL history. And it was fifty years ago.

Just think about that for a moment. Fifty years later and that football game continues to hold sway. And why not?

There have been books, TV specials, magazine articles, newspaper analyses, blogs, and personal remembrances written about the game played between the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys on December 31, 1967, when the greatest foe was not the opposing team but the elements.

The stories would flow, and still flow, from those who played and watched what is still considered the NFLs most memorable contest.

Yes, there were candidates before and after the Packers and Cowboys played each other on that crystalline Sunday afternoon.

Only nine years earlier, the Baltimore Colts had beaten the New York Giants when running back Alan Ameche smashed into the end zone at Yankee Stadium to carve out a rugged 2317 overtime win that sealed the NFL championship and was dubbed by the hyperbolic media of the day the greatest game ever played.

There were games that followed, such as the incredible Pittsburgh Steelers victory in the AFC playoffs over the Oakland Raiders in 1972 when Franco Harris plucked a seemingly incomplete pass off his shoetops for the game-winning score.

Or the 1981 season classic when the San Diego Chargers, exhausted and battered, held off the Miami Dolphins in an AFC divisional playoff win.

There have been other games that toyed with the title of the greatest ever but soon were seen as lacking, at least when placed in comparison to the 1967 battle in Green Bay.

True, pro footballs two best teams were also playing each other that afternoon and had the weather been simply Wisconsin-in-the-middle-of-winter cold, it might have been, it should have been, a classic. But sometime overnight, the rules changed and Wisconsin cold became Antarctic cold and winning took on a whole different meaning.

And what should have been a classic became immortal.

It was a game that has settled into the American sporting psyche and has not been dislodged to this day. And when another football game is played in cold weather, the references to the Ice Bowl flow back as a reference point and source of pride.

But there was only one Ice Bowl, and everyone, all these years later, knows it.

Interestingly enough, in researching this book, those who took part in the event never seem to tire of talking about it. They can still see a frozen Lambeau Field and recall how taking a deep breath was like a knife in their lungs and how they were beaten up physically, emotionally and every other way a football player could be tested.

They still remember everything about that game because, even as they played it, they knew they were part of something special.

So I wish to thank the players from both the Packers and Cowboys, most of them happily ensconced in retirement and someplace warm, for taking time to, yet again, relive the game that needs no introduction.

As well, Id like to acknowledge the work of three other books that brought the Ice Bowl back to life Ice Bowl: The Cold Truth About Footballs Most Unforgettable Game by Ed Gruver; The Ice Bowl: The Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys Season of 1967 by Mike Shropshire, and David Maranisss peerless biography of Vince Lombardi, When Still Pride Mattered .

Obviously, much has been written about the game and the men who played in it. But even all these decades later, there is always something more to learn, something more to analyze, something more to reveal.

But even with all the words that have been written about it, they can never tell the whole story. The fifty years that have followed have made icons of players such as Jerry Kramer, Bart Starr, Dan Reeves, Chuck Mercein, and Don Meredith.

Some have told their stories time and again, happy to relive it. Others have not. And maybe thats because the re-telling can never capture what truly happened.

Those memories are stored away, safe from prying eyes and misunderstandings.

And, perhaps, maybe thats the way it should be.

FOREWORD

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S TARTING IN 1981, I had the privilege of being a head coach in the National Football League. I coached the Denver Broncos for 13 seasons, helping take them to three Super Bowls. I coached four seasons for the New York Giants, and then I concluded my coaching career with the Atlanta Falcons, returning to the Super Bowl in 1999.

Before that, I played and was an assistant coach for the Dallas Cowboys.

And along the way, I was part of many memorable games and had the good fortune to coach and watch more great players than I can name.

But its a game I was involved in fifty years ago that people still ask me about all the time, maybe more than any other. They want to know what it was like and what I remember about the NFL Championship Game played on December 31, 1967 in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

It became known as the Ice Bowl and it has become a part of pro football history and, I suppose, a part of American history, too. No one who played in that game thought about that at the timeI know I didnt. But as the years have gone by, the significance of that game, and everything that went with it, has become clear.

We have watched replays of the games on TV over the years. We have replayed it in our minds. We remembered, as we walked outside for the first time that Sunday morning, that none of us, on either team, had been as cold as were then and we never would be again. And more than a few of us wondered if it was insanity to play football in that kind of weather.

But we did and both the Packers and Cowboys produced a game that would never be forgotten.

So when people ask me about the Ice Bowl, Im always happy to answer because Ive learned it was much more than a football game. It was about survival and perseverance and making the best of a bad situation, and that was another lesson those of us involved didnt understand at the time but eventually would.