Willie Davis, 1934-2020

As I said yesterday, in a post mentioning some sports legends we've recently lost, we can hide ourselves away to avoid the coronavirus, but there is no escape from the progress of life, which always, for each of us, though we may not know when, where, or how, ends in death.

So it is for another of the stars of the team that dominated the NFL in the 1960s. Many of them lived to see the 50th Anniversary of their wins in Super Bowl I and the Ice Bowl, but in the 3 and 2 years, respectively, since, have passed away.

William Delford Davis was born on July 24, 1934 in Lisbon, Louisiana, in the northern part of the State, near the Arkansas line. He grew up in nearby Texarkana, Arkansas (there is an adjoining city of the same name across the State Line in Texas), and became a 2-way lineman at nearby Grambling State University.

In many places in the South, there were colleges and universities set up to be black people's equivalent to nearby white ones. Florida A&M was established in Tallahassee, near Florida State; Tennessee State in Nashville, near Vanderbilt; and, in Louisiana, Southern University in Baton Rouge near LSU, and Grambling State in Grambling, near Louisiana Tech in Ruston.

Along with running back Paul "Tank" Younger and lineman Buck Buchanan, Davis was among the early stars produced by Grambling head coach Eddie Robinson, who went on to win more games than any college football coach, regardless of race or level, before him, and raised the profile of black colleges' football programs in general.

Cleveland Browns head coach and general manager Paul Brown had been a pioneer in re-integrating pro football, so he knew what the top black-college football players were capable of. He selected Davis in the 1956 NFL Draft. But another draft claimed Davis, that of the U.S. Army, and he missed the 1956 and 1957 seasons. In 1958 and 1959, Brown played Davis all over the offensive and defensive lines, to see where he would most help the team.

Davis may not have convinced Brown that he was particularly well-suited for any position. Or, he may have done a better job of convincing Vince Lombardi, head coach and GM of the Green Bay Packers. He traded for Davis, and put him at defensive end, and he became one of the greatest players that position has ever known.

The Packers won the NFL Western Division in 1960, their 1st such title in 16 years. They lost the NFL Championship Game to the Philadelphia Eagles. With a little more tinkering, Lombardi got them to the 1961 Championship Game, and a defense led by Davis and linebacker Ray Nitschke wrecked the high-powered offense of the New York Giants. The offense, quarterbacked by Bart Starr, protected by an offensive line with Jerry Kramer and Forrest Gregg, and with star runners Paul Hornung and Jim Taylor, ran riot through the snow of what would become Lambeau Field on New Year's Eve, and the Packers won 37-0.

The sack was not an official NFL statistic during Davis' time. David "Deacon" Jones of the Los Angeles Rams, Davis' chief competitor for the title of the NFL's best defensive end, created the term for tackling the quarterback behind the line of scrimmage. Football historian John Turney determined that Davis had "possibly more than 120." Davis believed he was the franchise's all-time leader, and when you consider that he was a teammate of Nitschke, and that they later had Reggie White at defensive end (albeit having spent the 1st half of his career with the Eagles), that says something.

Definitely still a team career record is the 21 fumbles that Davis recovered. He would make 5 Pro Bowls, all in a row from 1963 to 1967. He would help the Packers make it back-to-back NFL Championships in 1962, with a 13-1 record, their only loss a nationally-televised Thanksgiving Day shocker to the Detroit Lions.

And he helped them win 3 straight NFL Championships from 1965 to 1967, the last 2 setting up wins in Super Bowl I and Super Bowl II. The last of these NFL Championship Games was the game known as the Ice Bowl. On another New Year's Eve, the game-time temperature was 13 degrees... below zero. That's without the wind-chill factor.

NFL Films footage of the day shows Davis walking into Lambeau Field, in a heavy coat and a fur-lined hat, with a big smile on his face, as if he's sure that his team, used to cold Wisconsin weather (if not quite this cold), would be far more ready to play than their opponents, the Dallas Cowboys, used to the warm South. The Cowboys put up one hell of a fight, but the Packers won, 21-17.

Earlier in the year, on June 4, 1967, what was then called the Cleveland Summit was called by Davis' former Browns teammate Jim Brown, to bring prominent black athletes together in support of Muhammad Ali, who had been stripped of the Heavyweight Championship of the World by the governing bodies for boxing, following his April 28 refusal to be drafted into the Army, and his subsequent indictment for draft evasion.

Davis attended what's now usually called "The Ali Summit," and supported Ali, even though he himself had been drafted and served his 2-year hitch. Also attending was Washington Redskins flanker Bobby Mitchell, who died earlier this month.

Here's who's in the picture. Back row:

* Carl Stokes, Ohio State Representative, running for Mayor of Cleveland. He would be elected, becoming the 1st black Mayor of a major American city.

* Walter Beach, recently retired Browns player, previously an original member of the Boston (later New England) Patriots in 1960.

* Bobby Mitchell, the 1st black player for the Washington Redskins, flanker, later elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

* Sid Williams, Browns linebacker, later U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, husband of Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California.

* Curtis McClinton, running back for the Kansas City Chiefs, who had lost to Davis and the Packers in Super Bowl I, 5 months earlier. He would help the Chiefs win Super Bowl IV.

* Willie Davis.

* Jim Shorter, defensive back for the Redskins, formerly for the Browns.

* John Wooten, guard for the Browns. Front row: Bill Russell, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Front row: 

* Bill Russell, who had just completed his 1st season as head coach of the Boston Celtics, while still playing for them. This made him the 1st black head coach in modern major league sports. He would lead the Celtics to 11 NBA Championships as a player, the last 2 as player-coach.

* Muhammad Ali. He would be permitted to return to boxing in 1970, having his conviction for draft evasion overturned in a unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971, and regain the title in 1974.

* Jim Brown, who retired in 1966 as the NFL's all-time leading rusher, and is still often considered the greatest player in NFL history.

* Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then still using his birth name of Lew Alcindor, and finishing his sophomore year at UCLA, which he had just led to a 30-0 record and the National Championship.

Beach Williams, Wooten, and of course Jim Brown had all played for the Browns on their 1964 NFL Championship team, which got back to the NFL Championship Game in 1965, but lost to Davis and the Packers.

*

Willie Davis retired from football after the 1969 season, having gotten an MBA from the University of Chicago. He ran a distributorship for Schlitz Beer, making a fortune. He later served on its board of directors, and also did so for Dow Chemical, Johnson Controls, K-Mart, MGM Studios, Sara Lee, and other companies. He was hired by NBC as a color commentator on NFL telecasts, one of the earliest black men so hired, and this inspired him to establish All-Pro Broadcasting which operated several radio stations.

He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1981, and later to the NFL's 1960s All-Decade Team, the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame, the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, and the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame. In 1999, The Sporting News listed its 100 Greatest Football Players, and he was ranked 69th. In 2010, the NFL Network ranked its 100 Greatest Players, and he came in 86th.

According to Pro-Football-Reference.com, Willie Davis had the 4th-highest "Approximate Value" of any NFL player in the 1960s. The 3 ahead of him? Johnny Unitas, Jim Brown and Fran Tarkenton.

He and his wife Ann had a son, Duane, and a daughter, Lori. Duane Davis played football at the University of Missouri, but hurt his knee, and turned to acting. He played college football players in the films Necessary Roughness (in which his character "catches" a ball with his face mask) and The Program, but was injured filming both.

He played basketball player Bo Kimble in Final Shot: The Hank Gathers Story, Joe Louis in the TV-movie Rocky Marciano, James "Buster" Douglas in the HBO film Tyson, a fictional right fielder in Little Big League, and a fictional boxer in Diggstown.

His own son, Wyatt Davis, is finishing up his sophomore year at Ohio State, and was named an All-American and All-Conference guard last season.

Wyatt Davis of Ohio State, exercising a Big Ten tradition:

When your team clinches a berth in the Rose Bowl,

clench a rose in your teeth.

Willie Davis lived out his life in the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Monica, California, and died there today, April 15, 2020, after being hospitalized with kidney failure about a month ago. He was 85.

In a weird coincidence, he died on what would have been the 80th birthday of another Willie Davis, the Gold Glove center fielder who helped the Los Angeles Dodgers win the 1963 and 1965 World Series.

Jerry Kramer, Hall of Fame guard on the 1960s Packers: “A principled human being. A beautiful guy. A consistent guy, the same guy at 70 that he was at 42, 35 or whatever. A very special human being.”

Dave Robinson, who was the other defensive end on the 1st 2 Super Bowl winners, and also in the Hall of Fame: "There's only one Willie Davis. I just feel sorry for the people who never got a chance to really meet, sit down & talk to the man... he would've changed your life."

David Maraniss, who interviewed Davis for his biography When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi: We've lost another legend. Willie Davis, great player out of Eddie Robinson's Grambling, defensive captain, better person, Hall of Fame in every respect, one of many Lombardi era Packers as successful off the field as on it, Dr. Feelgood could light up the field, & any room.

Donald Driver, receiver on the Packers' Super Bowl XXXI winners: ’ve had the pleasure of spending time over my 20yrs with some phenomenal icon and legends. Today, we loss one of them. My friend Willie Davis. Our prayers go out to Willie family and friends. #RIPWillieDavis #REST87

Just since October 13, 2018, of last year, the Packers have lost 5 Hall-of-Famers: Bart Starr, Jim Taylor, Forrest Gregg, Willie Wood and Willie Davis. With Davis' death:

* There are 10 surviving players from the 1961 NFL Champion Green Bay Packers: Paul Hornung, Herb Adderley, Jerry Kramer, John Roach, Tom Moore, Dale Hackbart, Nelson Toburen, Lee Folkins, Gary Knafelc and Boyd Dowler.

* There are 12 surviving players from the 1962 NFL Champion Packers: Hornung, Adderley, Kramer, Roach, Moore, Toburen, Knafelc, Dowler, Howie Williams, Ed Blaine, Ron Gassert and Gary Barnes.

* There are 14 surviving players from the 1965 NFL Champion Packers: Hornung, Adderley, Kramer, Moore, Dowler, Tom Brown, Junior Coffey, Bill Curry, Ken Bowman, Steve Wright, Bob Long, Marv Fleming, Carroll Dale and Dave Robinson.

* There 18 surviving players from the Packer team that won Super Bowl I: Hornung, Adderley, Kramer, Dowler, Tom Brown, Curry, Bowman, Wright, Long, Fleming, Dale, Robinson, Red Mack, Jim Grabowski, Phil Vandersea, Donny Anderson, Dave Hathcock and Jim Weatherwax.

* There are 20 surviving players from the Packer team that won Super Bowl II: Adderley, Kramer, Dowler, Tom Brown, Bowman, Wright, Long, Fleming, Dale, Robinson, Grabowski, Anderson, Weatherwax, Don Horn, Chuck Mercein, Ben Wilson, John Rowser, Bob Hyland, Jim Flanigan and Dick Capp.

* And there are 7 living participants in the 1967 Cleveland (Ali) Summit: Jim Brown, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Curtis McClinton, Jim Shorter, John Wooten and Walter Beach.

Willie Wood, 1936-2020

William Vernell Wood was born on December 23, 1936 in Washington, D.C. In a 2017 post, I named him the greatest athlete ever to come from the District of Columbia. In 1956, he graduated from Samuel Chapman Armstrong Technical High School, now Friendship Armstrong Academy. It also produced another Pro Football Hall-of-Famer, Len Ford; and music legends Duke Ellington and Billy Eckstine.

(By a weird turn of events, the building it still uses was designed by architect Waddy Butler Wood -- but, being white, he was almost certainly not related to Willie.)

His prospects limited by segregation, Wood went to Coalinga Junior College outside Fresno, California. Its motto is, "Once you go here, you can go anywhere." He went to the Junior College All-America Team. Then he went to the University of Southern California (USC), becoming the 1st black quarterback in the history of he Pacific Coast Conference, the forerunner of the current Pacific-12 Conference.

In 1959, he and Ron Mix, an offensive tackle who would become a Hall-of-Famer with the San Diego Chargers, were named USC's co-captains -- one black, one Jewish. In a 2007 interview, Mix said that they received hate mail, and that, "99 percent of the fraternities on campus would not allow either of us to become members."

Shoulder injuries limited Wood's playing time. As a result, he was not selected in the 1960 NFL Draft, or the 1960 AFL Draft. So he wrote letters to the teams in each league, asking for a tryout. Only one man answered: Vince Lombardi, head coach and general manager of the Green Bay Packers. Lombardi must have seen something in the letter, or perhaps he got some game film from USC and saw something in that, because he brought Wood to Green Bay, and signed him as a free agent.

If Lombardi was making a guess, it was a great one. Wood may also have made a guess: Seeing Bart Starr as the Packers' quarterback, he requested a switch to defense, and was made a free safety. This was also a great move: Wood ranks with his contemporary Larry Wilson, and later players Ronnie Lott, Steve Atwater and Ed Reed as one of the best free safeties in NFL history.

He was named to 8 Pro Bowls. He helped the Packers reach the NFL Championship Game in his rookie year, but they lost to the Philadelphia Eagles. They won the Championship Game against the New York Giants in 1961, and did that again in 1962. In 1962, he led the NFL in interceptions and punt return yards.

Lombardi once said, "Pound-for-pound, Willie was the best tackler in the game." He said this even though he also coached Hall-of-Fame defensive players Willie Davis, Henry Jordan, Ray Nitschke and Herb Adderley.

After missing the Western Division title in 1963 and 1964, they beat the Cleveland Browns in the 1965 NFL Championship Game, then beat the Dallas Cowboys in the 1966 and 1967 editions, the latter remembered as the legendary "Ice Bowl."

These last 2 title games led to the Packers qualifying for the 1st 2 Super Bowls, in which they beat the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl I, and the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl II. In Super Bowl I, he made a key 2nd half interception, returning it for 50 yards, and Elijah Pitts scored a win-securing touchdown on the next play. Chiefs coach Hank Stram said, "That interception by Wood changed the complexion of the game." (It was not a racial comment: The Chiefs had plenty of black players.) In Super Bowl II, Wood returned a punt return for 31 yards, the longest in a Super Bowl for 16 years.

With the Packer dynasty aging, they didn't make the Playoffs again until after he retired, following the 1971 season. He finished with 48 interceptions, which he returned for 699 yards and 2 touchdowns. He had 1,391 yards on punt returns, which also included 2 touchdowns. In spite of the shoulder injuries that curtailed his college career, he made more consecutive starts than any free safety in NFL history: 154. He became a starter in his 2nd season, but played every game the year before, so that he not only never missed a game in his playing career, ready for all 166.

Right after his retirement, he became the defensive backs coach for the San Diego Chargers. In 1975, the Philadelphia Bell of the World Football League named him their defensive coordinator. During training camp, before their 1st regular season game, head coach Ron Waller was fired, and Wood became the 1st head coach of a professional football team, with the sole exception of Fritz Pollard of the Akron Pros in 1921, at a time when the NFL could hardly have been called a "major league." The Bell were 4-7 when the WFL folded on October 21, 1975.

In 1979, Forrest Gregg, a former Packer teammate, was coaching the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League. He brought Wood onto his staff, and left after the season to take the head job with the Cincinnati Bengals. Wood was then named the CFL's 1st black head coach. They went 6-10 in 1980, but lost their 1st 10 games in 1981, and he was fired. (Tommy Hudspeth, former head coach at Brigham Young and Texas-El Paso, coached them the rest of the way, and they finished 2-14, so whatever was wrong, it wasn't just Wood's coaching.)

Wood was elected to the NFL's 1960s All-Decade Team in 1969, the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame in 1977, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1989. The following year, he was selected for the ceremonial coin toss before Super Bowl XXIV. However, Wood was not selected either to The Sporting News' 100 Greatest Football Players in 1999 or the NFL Network's 100 Greatest Players in 2010.

By 2007, he was already confined to an assisted living facility in Washington. He was one of the many former players whose head trauma led to dementia. In 2012, the District of Columbia named the zero block of N Street NW, between North Capital Street and 1st Street, "Willie Wood Way." He was able to attend the dedication in a wheelchair. By 2016, he said he could no longer recall even having played football.

He died yesterday, February 3, 2020, at the age of 83. He was predeceased by his wife, and survived by his sons Willie Jr. and Andre, and his daughter LaJuane.

Willie Wood Jr. played and coached in the Arena Football League. As his father's decline began, he took a job coaching at D.C.'s Woodrow Wilson High School, in order to stay close to him.

Bart Starr, 1934-2019

First things can happen only once. There will only ever be one Super Bowl I, and it will only ever have one winning team, one winning quarterback, and one Most Valuable Player. The Green Bay Packers were that team, Bart Starr was that quarterback, and he was that MVP.

Bryan Bartlett Starr was born on January 9, 1934 in Montgomery, Alabama. He had a difficult relationship with his father. He quit the football team at Sidney Lanier High School in Montgomery 2 weeks into his sophomore year. His father told him he could play football, or he could drop out of high school and work in the family garden. Bart went back to football.

In his junior year, he led Lanier to an undefeated season. He went to the University of Alabama -- before Bear Bryant became its head coach. At the time, the Southeastern Conference allowed freshmen to play varsity football, and Starr played enough to earn a varsity letter, even throwing a touchdown pass in the 1953 Orange Bowl -- which was completely unnecessary, as Alabama inundated Syracuse 61-6.

He became the starter the next year, and got Alabama into the 1954 Cotton Bowl, where they lost to Rice, in a game remembered for Rice being awarded a touchdown when Alabama's Tommy Lewis jumped off the bench, becoming an ineligible player, and tackled Dickey Moegle to prevent him from scoring a touchdown.

In the off-season, Starr eloped with his girlfriend, Cherry Morton -- an Auburn student. The fact that she went to 'Bama's arch-rival wasn't nearly as much of a problem as their marriage happening at all: In those days, colleges often revoked the scholarships of married athletes. So they kept it a secret, and Bart stayed in Tuscaloosa the University, while Cherry returned to her hometown of Jackson, Alabama.

A few weeks later, he suffered a back injury, which nagged him for the rest of his life, but also made him 4-F and ineligible for the military draft. A new coach, J.B. Whitworth, went with a youth movement, and benched Starr, resulting in poor seasons that led to Whtiworth's firing and Bryant's hiring.

*

Starr's chances of a pro career seemed over: No NFL team seemed likely to draft him, and the AFL wasn't even an idea at this point. But Alabama basketball coach Johnny Dee was a friend of Jack Vainisi, the personnel director of the Green Bay Packers. Vainisi drafted Starr in the 17th Round of the 1956 NFL Draft.

These are the quarterbacks who were selected ahead of Starr in that draft: Earl Morrall of Michigan State, by the San Francisco 49ers; John Roach of Southern Methodist, by the Chicago Cardinals; Jerry Reichow of Iowa, by the Detroit Lions; Em Lindebeck of Illinois, by the Los Angeles Rams; John Polzer of Virginia, by the Baltimore Colts; Tom Spiers of Arkansas State, by the Cardinals; George Herring of Mississippi Southern, by the 49ers; and George Welsh of the Naval Academy, by the Cardinals. Of these, only Morrall had much of a pro career, although Welsh went on to be elected to the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach, winning 2 Atlantic Coast Conference titles at Virginia. (He died earlier this year, age 85.)

In Starr's 1st 3 seasons, he split playing time, first with Tobin Rote, then with Babe Parilli -- both of whom would become bigger stars in the AFL. The Packers were terrible, bottoming out at 1-10-1 in 1958.

In 1959, they hired Vince Lombardi as head coach. Lombardi had 2 messages for his players: "We may not win, but we won't be losing with the same people"; and, "Those who stay will be champions." He cleared out the talented underperformers, showing everyone else that no one's job was safe if they didn't work hard enough and smart enough.

Starr worked hard and smart, and Lombardi loved him for it. And Lombardi built an offense for Starr to work with, including Hall-of-Fame running backs Paul Hornung and Jim Taylor, and Hall-of-Fame linemen Jim Ringo, Jerry Kramer and Forrest Gregg; and a great defense that included Hall-of-Famers Willie Davis, Henry Jordan, Ray Nitschke, Herb Adderley and Willie Wood.

Together, they would dominate the NFL in the 1960s. In 1959, they improved to 7-5. In 1960, they won the NFL Eastern Division, losing the NFL Championship Game to the Philadelphia Eagles. In 1961, they won the NFL Championship. In 1962, they did it again. Both times, they defeated the New York Giants in the title game. After missing the Division title in 1963 and 1964, they won 3 straight NFL Championships Games -- the only time it's ever been done -- against the Cleveland Browns in 1965, and the Dallas Cowboys in 1966 and 1967.

Starr and Lombardi

Along the way, in a league that then included Johnny Unitas of the Baltimore Colts, Sonny Jurgensen of the Philadelphia Eagles and then the Washington Redskins, Y.A. Tittle of the Giants, and Fran Tarkenton of the Minnesota Vikings, Starr led the NFL in passer rating 5 times, made 4 Pro Bowls, and was named NFL Most Valuable Player for the 1966 season. He wasn't just a guy benefiting from being on a great team: He directed that great team. Lombardi may be thought of today as a "micromanager," but he let Starr call his own plays.

Nowhere was that more important than at the end of the 1967 NFL Championship Game, at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, a game so cold it was known as the Ice Bowl. The Packers trailed the Cowboys 17-14 with 16 seconds left, and had a 3rd-and-goal on the 1-yard line. Run the ball and fail, and they wouldn't be able to stop the clock in time to kick the tying field goal. Pass the ball, and it could fall incomplete, leaving 4th down with the clock stopped with a few seconds left, and you could still kick the field goal -- but it could also be intercepted. Kick it now, on 3rd down, and it could be missed, and even if it's made, the game is still only tied.

Starr recommended a play called "31-Wedge" to Lombardi: "Coach, the linemen can get their footing on the wedge, but the backs are slipping. I'm right there. I can just shuffle my feet and lunge in."

At this point, Lombardi was as cold and as tired as anyone, and was not looking forward to overtime, so he told Starr, "Run it, and let's get the hell out of here!"

Starr called the play. It required guard Kramer and center Ken Bowman to double-team Cowboys defensive tackle Jethro Pugh. Bowman snapped the ball, Starr took it, lowered his head, and followed the block. Touchdown. Packers win, 21-17.

Starr (15) over the goal line. Mercein (30) with his hands up.

Kramer (64) having blocked Pugh (75).

This is Walter Iooss Jr.'s photo for Sports Illustrated.

The most familiar shot of the touchdown is in black & white,

and I wanted a color photo.

In his 1980 book Pro Football's 10 Greatest Games, sports historian (usually specializing in baseball) John Thorn wrote, "It is the most famous touchdown in football history." This was before the 1982 Dwight Clark "The Catch," but Thorn put it ahead of the 1958 Alan Ameche overtime score (he included that title game in the book), and the 1974 Clarence Davis "Sea of Hands" catch (he included that game, too), and apparently ahead of the 1972 Franco Harris "Immaculate Reception" (he did not include that game).

Bart Starr quarterbacked 5 NFL Championships. To this day, no other man has ever done that, except Tom Brady, and he doesn't count. Can you imagine Vince Lombardi putting up with his quarterback -- or, as general manager, with his head coach -- cheating? No you can't. Don't even try. Maybe Brady would have won a title or two with Lombardi running things, but it would have been honestly. Not the 5 that Starr won, or the 6 that Brady has won, all of them questionable.

The 1966 and 1967 seasons were the 1st 2 in which the Champions of the 2 Leagues would face each other, in what was then named "The AFL-NFL World Championship Game." It would begin to be officially called the Super Bowl for the 3rd one, and the Roman numerals were added 2 years after that, for Super Bowl V. So the title games played on January 15, 1967 and January 14, 1968 were retroactively renamed "Super Bowl I" and "Super Bowl II."

In Super Bowl I, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Starr completed 16 of 23 passes, for 250 yards, 2 touchdowns and an interception. The Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10. In Super Bowl II, at the Orange Bowl in Miami, Starr completed 13 of 24, for 202 yards, a touchdown, and no interceptions. The Packers beat the Oakland Raiders 33-14.

Both times, Starr was named the game's MVP. The award was presented by the now-defunct SPORT magazine, and the prize was a new Chevrolet Corvette. Starr donated his Super Bowl II Corvette to Rawhide Boys Ranch in New London, Wisconsin, which he had co-founded to help troubled boys in Wisconsin.

But Super Bowl II was Lombardi's last game with the Packers. The dynasty players were getting old, and Lombardi's successors on the sideline and in the front office were not up to the task. Starr retired during training camp in 1972, at age 38.

*

He immediately went into coaching, becoming the Packers' quarterbacks coach, under head coach Dan Devine. In 1972, with Starr advising Scott Hunter, the Packers won the NFC Central Division. Then he left football, to pursue private business interest, and broadcast some games for CBS.

After the 1974 season, Devine was hired by Notre Dame -- interestingly, the alma mater of Packers founder Earl "Curly" Lambeau -- and Starr was hired. He only made the Playoffs once, in 1982, and got them to a Playoff win over the St. Louis Cardinals, before losing to the Dallas Cowboys. He was fired after the next season.

Almost immediately, a group looking to gain an expansion team for Phoenix, hired Starr to coach the team they wanted to call the Arizona Firebirds. But the NFL put expansion plans on hold due to legal issues. Once they were resolved, St. Louis Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill moved his team to Phoenix for the 1988 season, and the Firebirds' group disbanded.

Starr never worked in football again. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame, the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame, and the NFL's 1960s All-Decade Team. The Packers retired his Number 15. In 1999, The Sporting News ranked him 41st on their list of the 100 Greatest Football Players. In 2010, the NFL Network ranked him 51st on their list of the 100 Greatest Players.

Brett Favre, Bart Starr and Aaron Rodgers

In 1989, the NFL instituted the Bart Starr Award, given annually to a player of outstanding character. The 1st winner was Steve Largent. Most of the players who've won it have gone on to the Hall of Fame, or will, including Anthony Munoz, Mike Singletary, Reggie White, Warren Moon, Darrell Green, Bruce Matthews, LaDainian Tomlinson, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers and Peyton Manning. Only 1 player for a New York team has won it: Curtis Martin of the 2006 Jets. The 2019 winner is Calais Campbell, defensive end for the Jacksonville Jaguars.

The last few years of his life were not kind to Bart Starr, as he was always ill. He had a heart attack, 2 strokes, and a broken hip. In 2015, he was able to attend a ceremony at Lambeau Field, for the retirement of Brett Favre's Number 4. But he was not able to attend the pregame ceremony of Super Bowl 50, honoring all previous Super Bowl MVPs. He was the only one unable to attend, and instead sent a videotaped greeting from his home in Birmingham, Alabama.

The strokes affected his memory. When Ian O'Connor of ESPN visited him in 2015, O'Connor mentioned that he was a graduate of St. Cecilia High School in Englewood, Bergen County, New Jersey, where Vince Lombardi had coached in the 1940s. (The school closed in 1986.) Starr said he couldn't even remember Lombardi.

We often say things like, "I will never forget (notable person or event)." Certainly, one would think that Vince Lombardi was unforgettable. But that's not always true. Stem-cell treatments helped, and, in 2017, he was able to attend a 50th Anniversary ceremony honoring the Ice Bowl, his memory of that game restored.

Toward the end, Cherry found him listening to Il Divo's rendition of "Unchained Melody." Bart asked her to play it at his wedding. He meant "funeral," of course, but the treatments that were helping his brain to work could only do so much. Cherry believes that he was one of the many football players for whom the game led to brain damage.

Bart and Cherry Starr

Bart and Cherry had 2 sons, Bart Jr., and Bret. The former gave them 3 granddaughters. The latter died in 1988, of a cocaine overdose, only 24 years old.

Bart Starr died yesterday, May 26, 2019, at his home in Birmingham. He was 85 years old.

In his ESPN.com obituary for Starr, O'Connor wrote that when he left Starr's house that day, he told Starr that he was the toughest man to play in the NFL. Starr said, "Well, I've been the luckiest football player ever."

"Go look at the film of the Ice Bowl," O'Connor says. "When it came to Bryan Bartlett Starr, luck had absolutely nothing to do with it."

UPDATE: His final resting place is not publicly known.

*

With Starr's death, there are now 12 surviving players from the 1961 NFL Champion Green Bay Packers: Paul Hornung, Willie Wood, Herb Adderley, Willie Davis, Jerry Kramer, John Roach, Tom Moore, Dale Hackbart, Nelson Toburen, Lee Folkins, Gary Knafelc and Boyd Dowler.

There are 14 surviving players from the 1962 NFL Champion Packers: Hornung, Wood, Adderley, Davis, Kramer, Roach, Moore, Toburen, Knafelc, Dowler, Howie Williams, Ed Blaine, Ron Gassert and Gary Barnes.

There are 18 surviving players from the 1965 NFL Champion Packers: Hornung, Wood, Adderley, Davis, Kramer, Moore, Dowler, Zeke Bratkowski, Tom Brown, Junior Coffey, Doug Hart, Bill Curry, Ken Bowman, Steve Wright, Bob Long, Marv Fleming, Carroll Dale and Dave Robinson.

There are 24 surviving players from the 1966 NFL Champion Packers: Hornung, Wood, Adderley, Davis, Kramer, Dowler, Bratkowski, Tom Brown, Hart, Curry, Bowman, Wright, Long, Fleming, Dale, Robinson, Red Mack, Jim Grabowski, Phil Vandersea, Donny Anderson, Dave Hathcock, Jim Weatherwax and Allen Brown.

And there are 25 surviving players from the 1967 NFL Champion Packers: Wood, Adderley, Davis, Kramer, Dowler, Bratkowski, Tom Brown, Hart, Bowman, Wright, Long, Fleming, Dale, Robinson, Grabowski, Anderson, Weatherwax, Allen Brown, Don Horn, Chuck Mercein, Ben Wilson, John Rowser, Bob Hyland, Jim Flanigan and Dick Capp.

December 31, 1967: The Ice Bowl

Lambeau Field as it appeared in 1967.

Note the shadow cast by the scoreboard

at the south end. This will matter later on.

December 31, 1967, 50 years ago today:

Narrator: On a day savage enough to make a Saint Bernard whimper, they played the 1967 NFL Championship Game.

Lance Rentzel, Dallas Cowboys wide receiver: The phone rings in my hotel room, and the voice on the other end says, "Good morning, Mr. Rentzel. It's 8 AM. It's 15 degrees below zero outside, and there's a 30 mile-an-hour wind. Have a nice day."

Narrator: It is called "Russian Winter." The kind of cold that made Napoleon and Hitler flee in terror from the doorstep of Moscow. But, in Green Bay, it is known as "Packer Weather."

That was the opening narration to a short film on the game known as "The Ice Bowl," for NFL Films' special The NFL's Greatest Games.

I don't know who the narrator was -- the Internet has failed me in this regard -- but the film was made in 1987, in time for the game's 20th Anniversary, so it wasn't John Facenda, the voice of NFL Films from 1966 until his death in 1984. Let the record show that Facenda never actually spoke the words "the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field." ESPN's Chris Berman, imitating Facenda, made that up.

The 1967 NFL Championship Game wasn't the 1st event to be nicknamed the Ice Bowl. Ironically, given who the Packers' opponents were in that game, the name was first given to an event in Dallas, the 1947 Cotton Bowl. A storm had dumped rain, sleet and snow on North Texas, and the Louisiana State players put oil drums filled with charcoal on their sideline, to use as makeshift heaters. In front of 38,000 chilled customers, LSU played the University of Arkansas to a 0-0 tie.

After 1967, the 1977 Grey Cup, the championship of the Canadian Football League, was also called the Ice Bowl. The Olympic Stadium in Montreal was supposed to have a retractable roof, but it wasn't yet in place, and the Montreal Alouettes, playing on their home field, pounded the Edmonton Eskimos 41-6. The Esks shouldn't have been too fazed, though, as (if you count the CFL as "major league") no major league sports team in North America is further north.

There have been a few football games known as the Snow Bowl: The 1950 Michigan-Ohio State game, a 1984 game between the Packers and the Denver Broncos, a 1985 game between the Packers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the 1996 Grey Cup between the Eskimos and the Toronto Argonauts, the 2000 Independence Bowl between Mississippi State and Texas A&M, the 2002 "Tuck Rule Game" between the New England Patriots and the Oakland Raiders, and a game this season between the Buffalo Bills and the Indianapolis Colts.

Oddly, that 1984 Green Bay-Denver game was played on October 15, very early for snow, even in those cities. It was in Denver, but neither that nor the location should have bothered the Packers. But, uncharacteristically, they couldn't handle it, fumbling away their 1st 2 possessions deep in their own territory, and the Broncos took a quick 14-0 lead, and held off a Pack comeback to win 17-14.

The Ice Bowl isn't even the coldest game in NFL history anymore. The 1981 AFC Championship Game, played at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati on January 10, 1982, was 9 degrees below zero without the wind chill factor, and 37 below with it. The San Diego Chargers, used to warm weather, had played one of the hottest games in NFL history just 8 days earlier, against the Miami Dolphins at the Orange Bowl, and were totally unused to this kind of cold. The Bengals won, 27-7. This one is known as the Freezer Bowl.

*

This is what the world was like on December 31, 1967: 

The Packers were the only team playing in the same stadium then as they are now. This is sort of true for the Los Angeles Rams, but they left and returned. There was an NFL team in Baltimore, but it was the Colts, not the Ravens. There was an AFL team in Houston, but it was the Oilers, not the Texans. 

The Packers were looking to succeed themselves as World Champions. The other titleholders at the time were the St. Louis Cardinals, the Philadelphia 76ers, and the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Heavyweight Championship of the World was officially vacant, as Muhammad Ali had been stripped of the title on the preceding April 29, for refusing to be inducted into the U.S. Army. 

Such now-iconic franchises as the Dallas Cowboys, the Miami Dolphins, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Oakland Raiders, the San Francisco 49ers, the Denver Broncos and the New England (then "Boston") Patriots had yet to win their 1st titles. 

The defining players of my youth? Mean Joe Greene, Larry Csonka, O.J. Simpson and Terry Bradshaw were in college. Lyle Alzado, Joe Thiesmann, Ron Jaworski and Randy White were in high school. Tony Dorsett and Walter Payton were 13 years old. Earl Campbell was 12. Joe Montana was 11. Lawrence Taylor was 8. John Elway was 7. Dan Marino was 6. Jerry Rice was 5. 

Current Packers coach Mike McCarthy was 4. So was current Jets coach Todd Bowles. Current Cowboys coach Jason Garrett was a year and a half old. Current Giants coach Ben McAdoo wasn't born yet. 

The Olympics have since been held in America 4 times; Canada 3 times; twice each in France, Japan and Russia; and once each in Mexico, Germany, Austria, Bosnia, Korea, Spain, Norway, Australia, Greece, Italy, China, Britain and Brazil. The World Cup has since been held twice each in Mexico and Germany, and once each in America, Argentina, Spain, Italy, France, Japan, Korea, South Africa and Brazil.

The President of the United States was Lyndon Baines Johnson. Former Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, and their wives, were still alive. Richard Nixon was preparing his 2nd run for the Presidency. Gerald Ford was House Minority Leader. Jimmy Carter was preparing his 2nd run for the Governorship of Georgia. Ronald Reagan was in his 1st year as Governor of California. George H.W. Bush was a Congressman from Texas, and his son was at Yale University. Bill Clinton was at Georgetown University. Barack Obama was 6 years old. Donald Trump was at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, getting both medical and collegiate deferments to keep him out of serving in the Vietnam War.

The Prime Minister of Canada was Lester Pearson, for whom Toronto's airport is now named; and of Britain, Harold Wilson. Queen Elizabeth II was Britain's monarch -- that hasn't changed. The titleholders of England's Football League were Manchester United, and the holders of the FA Cup, Tottenham Hotspur of North London. The European Cup was held by Celtic of Glasgow, Scotland, the 1st British team to win it. 

The Governor of Wisconsin was Warren Knowles; of Texas, John Connally; of New York, Nelson Rockefeller; and of New Jersey, Richard J. Hughes. The Mayor of Green Bay was Donald Tilleman; of Dallas, J. Erik Johnsson; and of New York, John Lindsay. 

The current holders of those offices? Respectively: Tony Evers was in high school, Eric Greitens wasn't born yet, Andrew Cuomo was 10, Chris Christie was 5, Jim Schmitt was 9, Mike Rawlings was 13, and Bill de Blasio was 6.

The Nobel Committee did not award a Peace Prize for 1967 -- and didn't for 1966, either -- so the 1965 honoree was still the holder: UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund. 

The Pope was Paul VI. The current Pope, Francis, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was teaching literature and psychology at a university in Buenos Aires. There have since been 10 Presidents of the United States, 9 Prime Ministers of Britain, and 5 Popes.

Major novels of 1967 included The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron.

In non-fiction, Desmond Morris published The Naked Ape, and Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore published a book about the effects of mass media: Trading on McLuhan's earlier saying, "The medium is the message," they titled it The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. William Manchester released his study of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, The Death of a President. JFK's brother, Robert F. Kennedy, published To Seek a Newer World, and Martin Luther King wrote Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?  

Major films debuting in the Autumn and early Winter of 1967 included I Am Curious, Reflections in a Golden Eye, Far from the Madding Crowd, the animated version of The Jungle Book, Camelot, Cool Hand Luke, Tony Rome, The Producers, Bedazzled, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, In Cold Blood, Valley of the Dolls, Doctor Dolittle, and The Graduate. 

Color television had recently debuted in France, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in America. Sean Connery was appearing in the James Bond film You Only Live Twice, and Patrick Troughton was playing The Doctor. Bob Holiday had recently starred in the Broadway musical It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman, and Adam West was playing Batman. 

The Fugitive had recently become the 1st TV show to come to a planned finale episode, and it set a new record for most-watched series episode in the history of American television. Cult classics Get Smart and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour were still on the air. The Carol Burnett Show, Mannix, Ironside, The Flying Nun, a cartoon version of Spider-Man (introducing the "does whatever a spider can" theme song) and The Prisoner had recently debuted. Laugh-In was a few days away.

No one had yet heard of Hawkeye Pierce, Lieutenant Columbo, Michael Corleone, HAL 900, Scooby-Doo, Big Bird, Monty Python, Mary Richards, Archie Bunker, Dirty Harry, John Shaft, The Fonz, Rocky Balboa, Luke Skywalker, J.R. Ewing, Hannibal Lecter, Marty McFly, Jon Snow, Harry Potter, Jed Bartlet, Tony Soprano, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, Lisbeth Salander, Katniss Everdeen, Richard Castle, Leslie Knope, Jane "Eleven" Hopper or Maggie Bell.

The Number 1 song in America was "I'm a Believer," performed by The Monkees, and written by Neil Diamond. The Beatles were rewriting the rules of rock and roll album-making, as they had recording Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. But they had also just had their 1st flop, the TV-movie Magical Mystery Tour. Separate from the others, John Lennon appeared in the World War II-themed film How I Won the War. 

The Doors were about to release their self-titled debut album, including "Light My Fire" and the even more controversial "The End." Lead singer Jim Morrison didn't actually say the F-word on the album, but he sure as hell implied it. On December 9, onstage at the New Haven Arena, he became the 1st rock star ever arrested onstage, for obscenity. The charges did not stick. 

The Velvet Underground released The Velvet Underground & Nico, with its cover of a banana painted by their patron, Andy Warhol. It introduced the world not just to Nico, the German chanteuse, but also the voice, guitar, and, most importantly, lyrics of Lou Reed, including "Waiting for the Man" and "Heroin." As Brian Eno later said, "Not very many people bought The Velvet Underground & Nico. But, of everybody who did, nearly everybody went out and formed a band."

Jimi Hendrix, with The Jimi Hendrix Experience, released the album Axis: Bold As Love. The Jefferson Airplane released Surrealistic Pillow, which included "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit." The Grateful Dead released their self-titled debut album, which was mostly covers of blues songs. The Youngbloods released their self-titled debut album, which included "Get Together."

Otis Redding and Carla Thomas released King & Queen, which included "Tramp." Aretha Franklin released I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, which included the title track and Otis' song "Respect."

Laura Nyro released her debut album, More Than a New Discovery, which included "Wedding Bell Blues" (later a Number 1 hit for the 5th Dimension), "And When I Die" (later a hit for Blood, Sweat & Tears) and "Stoney End" (later a hit for Barbra Streisand). Dolly Parton released her debut album, Hello, I'm Dolly. Tom Jones went country with The Green, Green Grass of Home, including the already-known title track.

The Turtles released Happy Together. The 5th Dimension released Up, Up and Away. David Bowie released his self-titled debut album, although it gave no hint as to the innovation and shock value that would come later.

Elvis Presley married his longtime girlfriend Priscillia Beaulieu. He was still making weak music and weaker movies, including the recently-released Clambake. He really needed a change of direction.  Within a year, he would get it, and remind everyone just who was King around here, anyway. The Jackson 5 had begun performing on "the chitlin circuit," and would soon debut at New York's Apollo Theater. 

There were still living veterans of America's "Indian Wars" of the 19th Century, the Spanish-American War, the Boer War, and the British Army from the Battle of Omdurman.

Inflation was such that what $1.00 bought then, $7.34 would buy now. A postage stamps cost 5 cents, and a New York Subway ride was 20 cents. The average prices of a gallon of gas was 33 cents, a cup of coffee 38 cents, a McDonald's meal (cheeseburger, fries, shake -- the Big Mac was introduced the next year) 75 cents, a movie ticket $1.25, a new car $2,750, and a new house $14,250. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the preceding Friday at 835.13.

Computers were huge, and most certainly did not fit on top of a desk, never mind a lap, or in a pocket. Cars were available with telephones, but a cordless phone was still something seen in science fiction. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Tim Berners-Lee were 12 years old.

The Moon landing program had stalled as a result of the Apollo 1 fire, earlier in the year. Man had not yet broken Earth orbit, and there was considerable doubt as to whether NASA would meet President John F. Kennedy's 1961 "goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon, and returning him safely to the Earth." The Soviets had their own space-program problems, with Vladimir Komarov unable to open the parachute of Soyuz 1, and crashing, becoming the 1st person to die as the result of a spaceflight.

There were artificial kidneys, but no artificial hearts. Transplanting a kidney or a lung was possible, and doing it with a heart and a liver had each just happened for the 1st time. There were birth control pills, but no Viagra. 

Toward the end of 1967, the near-civil war between Greece and Cyprus broke out. Fed up with the military control of his country, King Constantine II launched a coup. When it failed, he and the royal family fled to London. He had been on the throne for 3 years. He has now lived in exile for 50 years. 

Pakistan moved its capital from Karachi to Islamabad. Floods in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon killed 462 people. The People's Republic of South Yemen, which was north of Yemen, declared independence from Britain. Nicolae Ceausescu was named dictator of Romania by the country's State Council. The Concorde was unveiled in Toulouse, France. And Prime Minister Harold Holt of Australia disappeared while swimming. His body was never found. And Hyundai Motor was founded in Korea.

In America, the nation's population passed the 200 million mark. Carl Stokes was elected Mayor of Cleveland, the 1st black person elected Mayor of a large American city. The Silver Bridge over the Ohio River, connecting Gallipolis, Ohio and Point Pleasant, West Virginia collapsed, killing 46 people. (It was replaced 2 years later.) Soul singer Otis Redding, and all but 1 member of his band, The Bar-Kays, were killed in a plane crash in Wisconsion. 

And on New Year's Eve, the same day as the Ice Bowl, motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel tried his 1st major jump, over the fountains at Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip. He failed, and was badly hurt. 

John Nance Garner, and Bert Lahr, and Paul Whiteman died. Jamie Foxx, and Boris Becker, and Tino Martinez were born.

That's what the world was like on December 31, 1967, when the game that became known as the Ice Bowl was played.

*

Many NFL Championship Games, nearly all played in December to that point, had been plagued by cold weather. The 1934 game at the Polo Grounds in New York became known as "The Sneaker Game," when the Giants switched from cleats to sneakers, and got a better footing than the Chicago Bears, whose undefeated season went down the drain. This would now be an illegal change of equipment.

It was bitterly cold, with frozen fields, at Cleveland Municipal Stadium in 1950, at Yankee Stadium in 1956 and 1962, at Baltimore's Memorial Stadium in 1959, at Wrigley Field in 1963, and at Green Bay's Lambeau Field (then still named City Stadium, as was its predecessor) in 1961, and snowing to boot, when the Packers beat the Giants 37-0. And the Lambeau Field grass had to get the snow plowed off it for the 1965 NFL Championship Game -- the 1st to be played in January, on January 2, 1966.

Packer coach Vince Lombardi was born and raised in Brooklyn, played at Fordham University in The Bronx, and had spent his entire coaching career in the New York Tri-State Area before going to Green Bay: Head coach at the now-defunct St. Cecilia's High School in Kearny, an assistant coach at West Point, and what we would now call the offensive coordinator at the Giants -- while what we would now call their defensive coordinator was Tom Landry.

So Lombardi could handle cold weather. But from having coached in the title games of 1956, 1959, 1961, 1962 and 1965, he knew that cold weather could be a problem for football. Fortunately, since the Packers' unusual ownership structure, and his role as both head coach and general manager, left him a virtual dictator, he had the field torn up, and heating coils placed under the field. When resodded, the idea was that the coils would keep the field from freezing. It became known as "Lombardi's Electric Blanket."

Lombardi and Landry were opposites: Landry was a great stone face, never showing emotion during the game; while Lombardi was, in the words of his All-Pro guard Jerry Kramer, "a raving Italian lunatic!"

But the teams were the other way around: The Cowboys -- not yet the dominant team that they would become -- were braggarts, while the Packers let their performance do the talking for them. The exception was Hall of Fame running back Paul Hornung, but he was retired by this point.

Cowboy quarterback Don Meredith posed for a picture with some of his teammates, holding their hands out, saying, "Easy money!" This flew in the face of the fact that they were going on the road -- the Eastern Division and Western Division Champions alternated hosting in those days -- and the fact that, on January 1, 1967, the Packers went into the Cotton Bowl and beat the Cowboys 34-27 for the 1966 NFL Championship.

That was the 1st time the Cowboy franchise, begun in 1960, had gotten that far. The Packers were going for their 5th NFL Championship in 7 years, which included ending the previous season by winning "The AFL-NFL World Championship Game," retroactively named "Super Bowl I."

The Las Vegas oddsmakers installed the Packers as 6 1/2-point favorites. Given their experience, including winning the previous year's title game on the road, and the home-field advantage, which is traditionally said in football to be worth 3 points, this should not have surprised anyone, then or now.

The day before the game, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle made some phone calls, and was told that the game-time temperature would be about 5 degrees above zero. (All temperatures mentioned in this post will be in degrees Fahrenheit.)

Rozelle didn't like that, and began to consider postponing the game to the next day, Monday, New Year's Day 1968, despite the fact that it would compete for TV ratings with the college bowl games. But he was told that the oncoming cold front would make it even colder on Monday. So, already in Green Bay, he called Lombardi at his house, and Landry at his hotel, and told them the game would go on as scheduled.

But the cold front arrived sooner, and was worse than expected. As Cowboy receiver Rentzel reported, he was told that it was 15 degrees below zero. The official NFL Films record of the game shows a rotating bank clock backing that up, reading "-15°."

That film shows Hall of Fame defensive end Willie Davis walking into Lambeau Field wearing a heavy coat, a fur-lined hat, earmuffs, a big scarf, and a big smile, as if he expected the Cowboys to be affected by it far more than the Packers.

What it doesn't show is how much trouble Hall of Fame safety Willie Wood had getting there, because he later said his car wouldn't start. When the service-station guy came to help him get it started, Wood told him, "It's just too cold to play. They're going to call this game off."

When Lombardi got to Lambeau Field, he discovered that it was so cold (This was before comedians began doing things like, "How cold was it?"), the mechanism for the heating coils broke. The field was frozen. To make matters worse, when the tarp was taken off the field, it had left moisture on it, which froze. The field was an ice rink. The Chicago Blackhawks were hosting the Oakland Seals at Chicago Stadium that night (and won 3-0), and could have moved the game to Lambeau Field, 205 miles to the north, and played on it.

(That same day, the Rangers hosted the Toronto Maple Leafs, in one of the last events at the old Madison Square Garden, and won 4-0. The Knicks were not scheduled. Nor were the New Jersey Americans, forerunners of the Brooklyn Nets. The Islanders and Devils did not yet exist. And, of course, the Yankees, the Mets, the Giants and the Jets were not scheduled.)

The marching band of the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse (not the main campus, in Madison) was scheduled to perform the pregame and halftime shows. But during -- pardon the choice of words -- the warmups, the spit inside their woodwind instruments froze, rendering them impossible to play. The mouthpieces of brass instruments stuck to their players' lips. Seven members were taken to the hospital for hypothermia.

The officials' whistles also had the spit freeze inside, and, during the pregame midfield meeting with the team captains, they said that play would be stopped by the officials putting their hands on the backs of players who, due to concentrating on the ballcarrier, couldn't otherwise see that play had stopped.

Frank Gifford, the Hall of Fame running back for the Giants who was serving as one of the CBS announcers for the game, said, on the air, "I'm going to take a bite of my coffee."

At the time, Lambeau Field held 50,861 people. That was the official attendance: In spite of the cold, there was not an empty seat in the house -- until an elderly spectator died from exposure. Yes, only one fan died from the cold. Among those in attendance was a 12-year-old boy from Appleton, Wisconsin, who went on to become a renowned actor: Willem Dafoe. Two days ago, NFL Films released a 50th Anniversary documentary on the Ice Bowl, with Dafoe narrating.

The game was played anyway. When it kicked off at 1:00 PM Central Standard Time -- 2:00 Eastern -- it was 13 below, with a wind-chill factor, on the since-changed current scale, of -36.

Note the ticket price: $10. That's about $73 in today's money.

For the Championship Game. Today, a regular-season game

would almost certainly cost you much more.

*

The game did affect the Cowboys more than the Packers. The film shows Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke running onto the field in short sleeves, with no gloves. He was from Chicago. He could handle it.

But Meredith's face froze, to the point where he couldn't make his words understood in the huddle unless he pressed on his cheeks. Bob Hayes, the Olympic sprinting champion who'd hauled in so many of Meredith's passes, had to run with his hands tucked in a hole cut in his jersey.

The Packers opened the game with a 9-minute drive that ended with a touchdown pass from Bart Starr to Boyd Dowler. Starr connected with Dowler again in the 2nd quarter, giving the Packers a 14-0 lead. It would then have been very easy to guess that the Cowboys were finished.

They weren't. They showed a tremendous amount of courage, and came back. They didn't get a single 1st down in the 2nd quarter, but fumbles by Starr and of a punt return by Wood led to Cowboy scores, making it 14-10 Green Bay at the half.

In the 3rd quarter, the Packers stopped a Cowboy drive with a fumble, and ended another that resulted in a missed field goal by Danny Villanueva. At the start of the 4th quarter, Landry gambled, and called an option pass for Dan Reeves -- later to coach the Denver Broncos, the Giants and the Atlanta Falcons -- to Rentzel. It went for 50 yards and a touchdown.

Despite seemingly everything going against them, the Cowboys led 17-14. The Packers' Don Chandler missed a field goal, and it looked like the Packers would be dethroned.

With 4 minutes and 50 seconds left, the Packers took over on their own 32-yard line. Since the goalposts would be on the goal line until the 1974 season, but Chandler had already missed a 40-yard attempt, this meant that they probably needed to get the ball to the Dallas 30-yard line for a field goal -- but that would only have tied it, and sent this already-miserable experience to overtime.

Starr advanced the Packers with short passes to Dowler and Donny Anderson. But a hit knocked Dowler down, and his head hit the frozen turf. Even with the protection of a football helmet, he was knocked unconscious. As with the Super Bowl nearly a year earlier, Max McGee came in to replace him. Unlike that Super Bowl, McGee would not turn out to be the hero this time.

Lombardi's most famous play was the "power sweep": Both guards, Kramer and Fred "Fuzzy" Thurston, would pull out of the line at the snap, and run in the same direction (either left or right), and Starr would pitch to a running back, who would then run behind the guards. This had worked so many times with Hornung and Jim Taylor, and now with Anderson and Elijah Pitts.

This time, Lombardi had a trick up his sleeve, a play known in the Packer playbook as "54-Give." He called it the "sucker play": It was a fake power sweep, with Gale Gillingham, having replaced Thurston, pulling to the right. This caught the attention of the Cowboys' Hall of Fame defensive tackle, Bob Lilly, and he followed. This left a hole up the middle, and running back Chuck Mercein got to the 3-yard line.

The Packers then needed to get to the 1-yard line for a 1st down, and did. Some of the Cowboys thought Anderson had scored. Had there been a rule at the time, allowing a coach to challenge a call via instant replay, what happened next might not have happened, and Anderson would have been the big hero of the game. But the officials didn't see the ball cross the plane of the goal line, and so it was 1st and goal on the 1.

It was getting late. Lambeau Field did have lights, so darkness was not going to be an issue. But a lack of sunlight was. To make matters worse, the action was now at the south end of the field, where the shadow of the scoreboard loomed, making it even colder. I've seen sources say that, with the wind chill factor (on the old scale), it was as low as 48, or even 55, degrees below zero.

There was less than a minute left. On 1st down, Starr handed off to Anderson, but he slipped on the icy field. On 2nd down, Anderson slipped even before Starr could get the ball to him. Now, it was 3rd and goal on the 1. The Packers called their last timeout. There were 16 seconds left.

On the film, Lilly can be shown kicking the field, and he kicks up specks of frost. The Cowboys actually considered getting a drill, and drilling holes in the field, to get a better footing. I don't know if that was legal, or if they would have had time for it, even if they took all their remaining timeouts.

The Packers' dilemma was equally tricky. Run the ball and fail, and they wouldn't be able to stop the clock in time to kick the tying field goal. Pass the ball, and it could fall incomplete, leaving 4th down with the clock stopped with a few seconds left, and you could still kick the field goal -- but it could also be intercepted, as was Meredith's desperation pass that clinched the Packer victory the year before. Kick it now, on 3rd down, and Chandler could miss again; and, even if he makes it, the game is still only tied.

Pat Summerall, the CBS sideline reporter, whose last game as a player was on this very field, as a Giants lineman and kicker, losing the 1961 title game to the Packers, told the CBS control truck to set the cameramen up for a rollout pass, thinking it was the Packers' best choice. Landry later said that he also expected a rollout pass.

Starr wasn't as good a passer as his contemporaries Johnny Unitas, Sonny Jurgensen and Joe Namath, but he was smarter than any of them. He recommended a play called "31-Wedge," telling Lombardi, "Coach, the linemen can get their footing on the wedge, but the backs are slipping. I'm right there. I can just shuffle my feet and lunge in."

At this point, Lombardi was as cold and as tired as anyone, and was not looking forward to overtime, so he told Starr, "Run it, and let's get the hell out of here!"

Starr called the play. It required guard Kramer and center Ken Bowman to double-team the Cowboys' other tackle, Jethro Pugh. Bowman snapped the ball, Starr took it, lowered his head, and followed the block.

Touchdown. On the film, Mercein can be shown raising his hands. He's not signaling, "Touchdown!" He's showing the referee that he's not illegally helping Starr. To this day, Cowboy fans insist that Kramer was offside. As if the Cowboys wouldn't win a whole slew of games due to cheating in the years to come.

Starr (15) over the goal line. Mercein (30) with his hands up.

This is Walter Iooss Jr.'s photo for Sports Illustrated.

The most familiar shot of the touchdown is in black & white,

and I wanted a color photo.

In his 1980 book Pro Football's 10 Greatest Games, sports historian (usually specializing in baseball) John Thorn wrote, "It is the most famous touchdown in football history." This was before the 1982 Dwight Clark "The Catch," but Thorn put it ahead of the 1958 Alan Ameche overtime score (he included that title game in the book), and the 1974 Clarence Davis "Sea of Hands" catch (he included that game, too), and apparently ahead of the 1972 Franco Harris "Immaculate Reception" (he did not include that game).

Chandler kicked the extra point to make it 21-17. There were still 13 seconds left. The Packers kicked off, and the Cowboys let it go into the end zone. Meredith threw 2 incompletions, and, at 3:44 PM Central Time (4:44 Eastern), the game was over.

How anybody still had any desire to remain outside

long enough to tear down the goalposts, I'll never know.

*

The Packers went on to beat the AFL Champion Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl II. Lombardi retired as head coach after that game, but stayed on as general manager. As with the 1964-65 Yankees, the team seemed to get old all at once, and the dynasty collapsed. The team wouldn't reach the title game again for 29 years, winning Super Bowl XXXI in the 1996-97 season.

After the 1968 season, Lombardi accepted Edward Bennett Williams' offer to be head coach and general manager of the Washington Redskins, and began to rebuild them in 1969. But he developed colon cancer -- much more easily treatable now, but fatal then. He died on September 3, 1970, only 57 years old. The Redskins hired George Allen away from the Los Angeles Rams, and reached Super Bowl VII 3 seasons later.

The Cowboys got tagged as a team that "can't win the big one." They reached Super Bowl V, but lost to the Baltimore Colts. Finally, they came to dominate the NFC in the 1970s, reaching 5 Super Bowls, winning Super Bowls VI and XII. They began calling themselves "America's Team." They were featured on TV so much that people joked that CBS stood for "Cowboys Broadcasting System." Landry remained head coach until 1989, and died in 2000.

Of the Cowboys' starting lineup: Receiver Bob Hayes died in 2002, quarterback Don Meredith in 2010; defensive tackle Jethro Pugh, safety Mike Gaechter, and placekicker-punter Danny Villanueva in 2015; guard Leon Donohue and linebacker Dave Edwards in 2016, and offensive tackle Tony Liscio and defensive end Willie Townes both died earlier this year.

Still alive: Center Mike Connelly is 82 years old, linebacker Chuck Howley is 81, running back Don Perkins is 79, defensive tackle Bob Lilly is 78, tight end Pettis Norman is about to turn 78, defensive end George Andrie and cornerback Cornell Green are 77, linebacker Lee Roy Jordan and safety Mel Renfro are 76, offensive tackle Ralph Neely and cornerback Mike Johnson are 74, running back Dan Reeves is about to turn 74, and guard John Niland is 73.

Of the Packers' starting lineup: Defensive tackle Henry Jordan died in 1977, defensive tackle Ron Kostelnik in 1993, linebacker Lee Roy Caffey in 1994; running back Elijah Pitts, defensive end Lionel Aldridge and linebacker Ray Nitschke in 1998; receiver Max McGee in 2007, cornerback Bob Jeter in 2008; guard Gale Gillingham and placekicker and punter Don Chandler in 2011, and guard Fred "Fuzzy" Thurston in 2014.

* Still alive: Offensive tackle Forrest Gregg is 84, quarterback Bart Starr is about to turn 84, offensive tackle Bob Skoronski and defensive end Willie Davis are 83; guard Jerry Kramer is about to turn 82; safety Willie Wood is 81; receiver Boyd Dowler is 80, tight end Carroll Dale is 79, cornerback Herb Adderley is 78; safety Tom Brown is 77, linebacker Dave Robinson is 76; tight end Marv Fleming is about to turn 76, center Ken Bowman is 75, running back Donny Anderson is 74.

A recent photo of Bart Starr, with his wife, Cherry

So that's 27 men -- 14 Packers and 13 Cowboys -- still alive who played in the Ice Bowl.

Referee Norm Schachter, who had also officiated at Super Bowl I, would also officiate at the 1st Monday Night Football game in 1970, and at Super Bowls V and X, after which he retired. He lived until 2004.

Of the broadcasters: Ray Scott, long the voice of the Packers, announced the 1st half for CBS, and lived until 1998. Jack Buck, the voice of baseball's St. Louis Cardinals, announced the 2nd half, and lived until 2002. Frank Gifford was the color commentator throughout, and lived until 2015. The sideline reporters were Pat Summerall and Tom Brookshier, who became CBS' top NFL unit in 1974, until 1980, with John Madden taking over as Summerall's color commentator and Brookshier being moved to play-by-play on their Number 2 team. Brookshier lived until 2010, Summerall until 2013.

Lambeau Field still stands. Along with the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (which the Rams will leave after the 2019 season for a new stadium) and the Oakland Coliseum (which the Raiders will leave, probably after the 2018 season, for Las Vegas), it is the only stadium in the combined NFL and AFL of 1967 that is being used here in the 2017 NFL season.

A recent photo of Lambeau Field

The Ice Bowl lives on in sports memory. It still gives chills, even to people like me who weren't even born yet.

How to Be a Giant Fan In Green Bay -- 2016 Edition

On Sunday, October 9, the Giants will be in Wisconsin to play the Green Bay Packers. This is a rarity in the NFL: These two teams have been trying to crush each other since 1925.

Before You Go. You've heard the legends of how cold it gets in Green Bay -- and, indeed, it is further north than Toronto, roughly as far north as Plattsburgh, New York and Burlington, Vermont, which are about 300 miles north of Midtown Manhattan. However, this is the middle of September, so the bitterly cold weather they sometimes get will not be a factor.

By the way, John Facenda, the longtime Voice of NFL Films, never said, on any highlight reel, the words "the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field." (They've checked.) It is now believed that ESPN's Chris Berman, doing an impression of Facenda, made it up. Though I did hear another announcer, talking about the 1967 NFL Championship Game, the legendary Ice Bowl, say it was "a day savage enough to make a Saint Bernard whimper," and add, "It is called Russian Winter: The kind of cold that made Napoleon and Hitler flee in terror from the doorstep of Moscow. But, in Green Bay, it is known as Packer Weather."

(In fact, Hitler's troops never quite got that far, and he didn't go with them. Napoleon, to his credit, did share his troops' hardships, and they did reach Moscow, but the locals had burned it, leaving it not worth keeping, and Napoleon and his Grand Army left.)

According to the Green Bay Press Gazette, on Sunday afternoon, the temperatures should be in the high 50s. But the game will be played on Saturday night, at 7:30 PM local time, when it is projected to be in the low 40s, maybe the high 30s. So while you might not need a winter jacket in daylight, you will need one at night, during the game.

Green Bay is in the Central Time Zone, 1 hour behind New York. Adjust your timepieces accordingly.

Tickets. Unless you've already got them, or want to pay through the nose to a scalper, forget it. Last season, the Packers averaged 78,413 fans per home game -- a sellout. These people loved their football even before Vince Lombardi came along. Once he did, well... The Ice Bowl? Attendance that day was 50,861. That was the capacity of Lambeau Field at the time. So, for the coldest game in football history (or so it's been said), there was not one empty seat in the house.

Having sold out every seat since Lambeau opened nearly 60 years ago, and having a waiting list that makes the traffic backup at the Meadowlands seem small by comparison, tickets are simply not available at the stadium window or on the team website. I do see tickets available from the NFL Ticket Exchange on Ticketmaster, but most seem to come in pairs (in other words, you'll have to buy both seats), and they're starting at around $100. Most of them are in the $150-250 range.

Getting There. Downtown Green Bay is an even 1,000 miles from Midtown Manhattan, and Lambeau Field is 990 miles from MetLife Stadium. If you don't want to take most of a day to get there, you'll want to fly.

Yeah, good luck with that. There is an airport in Green Bay, Austin Straubel International Airport, but it doesn't have nonstop flights from New York or Newark. In fact, getting a nonstop flight from home just to General Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee is something you're probably not going to be able to do. Your best bet may be to fly to Chicago and rent a car for the last... 194 miles. That's right: Instead of flying or driving, you'd have to do both.

(Billy Mitchell was an Army General from the Milwaukee suburbs, and an early advocate for air power. Austin Straubel was an Army Air Force Major from Green Bay who was killed in action in World War II.)

Forget the train: Amtrak goes to Milwaukee, but not to Green Bay, and there's no secondary service such as New Jersey Transit, Metro-North or the Long Island Rail Road to connect Wisconsin's major city with its football city.

Bus? Greyhound does go there, but you'd have to leave Port Authority, change buses in Chicago and again in Milwaukee. And, the way the schedules work out, you'll probably need 2 nights in a hotel. I don't know what your chance is of getting a hotel room within a 50-mile radius of Green Bay on an Autumn weekend is, but I'm not optimistic. Round-trip bus fare: $198. The Greyhound station is at 800 Cedar Street, at Main and Van Buren Streets.

So your best bet really is to drive. It's far enough that it will help to get someone to go with you and split the duties, and to trade off driving and sleeping. You'll need to get into New Jersey, and take Interstate 80 West. You'll be on I-80 for the vast majority of the trip, through New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio. In Ohio, in the western suburbs of Cleveland, I-80 will merge with Interstate 90. From this point onward, you won’t need to think about I-80 until you head home; I-90 is the key, until it merges with Interstate 94, which will merge with Interstate 43.

I-94 will split off from I-43 at downtown Milwaukee. Stay on I-43 North. Take Exit 180 to State Route 172 West. Exit onto State Route 32, and turn left on Pilgrim Way. You'll see a sign for Holmgren Way, named for the former Packer coach. On your right will be the Bay Park Square Mall. Turn right on Oneida Street. Before you reach Lombardi Avenue, you will see Lambeau Field on your left, and on your right, Green Bay's arenas: The old one, the Brown County Veterans Memorial Arena; and the new one, the Resch Center (named for a local businessman, not Devils goalie-turned-broadcaster Chico Resch). The official address for the stadium is 1265 Lombardi Avenue.

The Brown County Arena, Shopko Hall (a concert venue)

and the Resch Center

If you do it right, you should spend about an hour and a half in New Jersey, 5 hours and 15 minutes in Pennsylvania, 4 hours in Ohio, 2 hours and 30 minutes in Indiana, an hour and a half in Illinois, and about 3 hours in Wisconsin. That's about 17 hours and 45 minutes. Counting rest stops, and accounting for traffic in both New York and Chicago, it should be no more than 23 hours, which would save you time on Greyhound, if not on flying.

Once In the City. As you might guess, Green Bay -- named for the body of water it's on, and incorporated as a French fur-trading village in 1754, making it older than most of the big Midwestern cities -- is by far the smallest city in any of the 4 major North American sports: 104,057 people at the time of the 2010 Census, making it the 3rd-largest city in Wisconsin after Milwaukee and the State capital of Madison. The city is about 75 percent white, 13 percent Hispanic, 4 percent black, 4 percent Native American, and 4 percent Asian.

Its "metropolitan area" (if you don't count it as part of Milwaukee's) has about 300,000 people -- by comparison, Milwaukee has a little over 2 million in its area, making it the smallest in Major League Baseball. If you combine the 2 into one "market," in the NFL, they'd still be 26th out of 32, ahead of only Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Nashville, Jacksonville, Buffalo and New Orleans.

So why did Green Bay survive as an NFL city, when larger, but still not big, cities didn't get out of the NFL's founding era (1920-32)? Cities like Providence, Rhode Island; Rochester, New York; Pottsville, Pennsylvania; Canton, Ohio; Muncie, Indiana; Rock Island, Illinois; and Duluth, Minnesota? At one point, after a rocky beginning to their relationship, starting a rivalry between the teams that continues to this day, Chicago Bears boss and NFL co-founder George Halas stepped in and had his fellow team owners chip in to bail the team out of a serious debt. Between this, and the fact that the Packers are publicly owned through stock sales (the only such team in the big 4 North American sports), and the expansion of Lambeau Field, means the Packers will never have to move -- not to "nearby" Milwaukee, not anywhere else.

Walnut Street divides Green Bay addresses into North and South, but the only major road dividing into an East and West is Walnut, divided at the Fox River, which bisects the city. While the Fox flows into the body of water named Green Bay, a New Yorker might appreciate this: The city also has an East River, which flows into the Fox, downtown.

The sales tax in Wisconsin is 5 percent. As you might guess, a city as small as Green Bay doesn't have a subway. Public buses are $1.50. ZIP Codes in Wisconsin start with the digits 53 and 54, and for the Green Bay area, 541, 542 and 543. The Area Code is 920. Green Bay does not have a "beltway." Wisconsin Public Service Corporation runs the city's electricity.

Going In. Green Bay Metro buses offer free rides from downtown to the stadium, which is 3 miles southwest. Lambeau is an island in a sea of parking, which costs $18. Not surprising, considering that this is the Midwest, Big Ten County, tailgating is encouraged.

When it opened, 1957

All stadium gates open 2 hours prior to kickoff, and are accessible to fans with disabilities. Fans with seats in the South End (i.e. section numbers ending with the letter "S") must enter through the Shopko Gate on the south side of the stadium, which is for the exclusive use of South End ticket holders. Fans sitting elsewhere in the stadium are encouraged to use the gate suggested on their ticket for the most direct route to their seats.

Expanded by 1965, it looked like this through

the Vince Lombardi era.

For most of its history, Lambeau Field was not an architectural marvel. It looked like a typical American sports stadium of the post-World War II era: Functional, but nothing special. It was the Packers who provided the glory, but how the stadium looked was not a factor.

1996, the season the Packers won the Super Bowl

with Mike Holmgren, Brett Favre and Reggie White.

A recent renovation, which expanded capacity to 78,200 (officially, it's 80,735, however 78,200 is listed as the record attendance), also changed the exterior. Whereas it was built in 1957 as looking like an oversized high school football stadium -- with an appropriate name, City Stadium -- and by the 1980s had a green exterior on the sides that held up the luxury boxes, now it's surrounded by a red brick exterior, trying to copy the look of lots of "Memorial Stadiums" throughout the country, especially in the Midwest, built in the 1920s as memorials to World War I.

(These include those at the universities of Illinois, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma, and the former stadium in Minnesota -- but not Indiana, as their Memorial Stadium was built after World War II and isn't nearly as classic-looking.)

This added exterior includes a new facility for the Packers Hall of Fame, and a bar called Curly's Pub, named for Earl "Curly" Lambeau, the Green Bay native and Notre Dame football star who founded the team, as a "company team" from co-workers at the Indian Packing Company, which was the team's initial sponsor.

(English soccer fans would call a company team a "works side." The arch-rival Chicago Bears were also originally a company team, based at the A.E. Staley Starch Company of Decatur, Illinois, and were known as the Decatur Staleys before moving upstate to Chicago.)

Lambeau played for the team from its 1919 founding until 1929, and coached it from 1919 to 1949. Like Bears founder George Halas, he was a good player, a very good coach, and, most importantly in the long run, a great administrator. The team wouldn't have gotten through the Depression, let alone to the post-merger era, without him, and without help from his rival Halas, who stood up for the NFL's last small-city team when that help was needed most. When Lambeau died in 1965, the new stadium was renamed for him.

(Halas stepped in again in 1955 to convince the other owners to chip in to build Lambeau Field. Perhaps this was his way of making up for almost killing the team in 1921, when he blew the whistle on them for using ineligible players.)

Stadium Tours are not available on game days. If you do stay overnight, you can take a tour on Saturday before the Sunday game. The Classic Tour includes the locker room, the field level, and a luxury box, lasts about an hour, and costs $11. The Champion's Tour includes the preceding, plus other amenities, lasts an hour and a half, and costs $19. The Legendary Tour offers more, takes 2 hours, and costs $28.

Don't scoff: The Packers are one of the few NFL teams that can legitimately do this, especially since they're 1 of only 2 teams that currently has a stadium that was in use, let alone hosting a championship team, prior to the start of the Super Bowl era in the 1966 season.

For the next 3 seasons, the only other NFL stadium that's played host to Sammy Baugh, Sid Luckman, Steve Van Buren, Otto Graham, Norm Van Brocklin, Doak Walker, Chuck Bednarik and even Giants legend Frank Gifford, and the only one older than Lambeau (built in 1923 but not hosting an NFL game until 1937) is the Los Angeles Coliseum, which the returned Rams will use until their new stadium opens in 2019. (The next-oldest active NFL stadium is the Oakland Coliseum, which opened in 1966.)

Like most football stadiums, Lambeau is aligned north-to-south. Despite the cold weather, the field is natural grass. Knowing that the field tended to freeze, in 1967, Lombardi had a system of heating coils installed underneath. It was nicknamed Lombardi's Electric Blanket.

But on New Year's Eve, the morning of the NFL Championship Game, it was so cold (How cold was it?) that the heating coils' control system broke, and the field froze anyway, resulting in the Ice Bowl, and one of the greatest and most iconic football games ever played, pro or college -- and, as it turned out, Lombardi's last game at Lambeau, as he retired after the Super Bowl.

In his 1981 book Pro Football's Ten Greatest Games, John Thorn, who usually writes about baseball, called Bart Starr's winning quarterback sneak "the most famous touchdown in football history." He ranked it ahead of the 1972 Franco Harris "Immaculate Reception," although the Joe Montana to Dwight Clark "The Catch" happened a few months after that book's publication.

A better system was installed, and now, no matter how cold the air gets, the field is fine. Something for Canada to think about: Green Bay is further north than Toronto and Hamilton, and not much further south than Montreal and Ottawa, yet all 9 Canadian Football League stadiums have artificial turf, for the sole purpose of combating the cold.

UPDATE: On September 12, 2017, Thrillist had an article ranking all 31 NFL stadiums. Lambeau came in 4th, behind only Dallas (no way), Seattle (possibly) and Pittsburgh (possibly):

Through updates over the years, the basic structure of the original bowl and field location have remained. It doesn’t feel quite like anyplace else, occupying that Wrigley/Fenway space in the collective imagination of football fans...

As much as the small town "we're not just fans, we're OWNERS" vibe of Packers fans can grate against outsiders, even the most hardened Bears or Vikings fan will (perhaps grudgingly) tell you that a visit to Lambeau is a must for any football -- hell, any sports -- fan. It starts with the town-consuming tailgating: generations of fans cooking up beer brats in the same spot they've staked out for years, who are nonetheless remarkably welcoming to outsiders (pregame, that is -- if the Packers lose, the postgame reception is a different story). It continues with your visit into a stadium that has managed to stay sufficiently updated with the times (including a shiny, glass-fronted atrium facing Lombardi Avenue) without sacrificing its time-earned gravitas.

And if you happen to visit on a snowy December day, staring out into the sea of fans keeping warm in orange hunting gear as you pound beers and eat cheese curds by the handful just to keep your jaw from chattering, and watch the place go absolutely bonkers for the Lambeau Leap and ensuing Todd Rundgren soundtrack, you'll find yourself a little less irritated next time Chris Berman grumbles about "the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field." A little less.

UPDATE: On June 24, 2019, Scott Nordlund wrote an article on NFL stadiums for Moneywise, and rated Lambeau Field Number 1: "Fans are guaranteed a good experience."

Food. Tailgating not enough for you? As I said, Curly's Pub is now open, on the 2nd floor of the Lambeau Field Atrium. On game days, it is accessible only via a game ticket, from the inside of the stadium. The Atrium also offers Goin' Deep Pizza and, in a nod to the team's beginnings, the Meat Packing Company, a restaurant concept developed exclusively for Lambeau Field, featuring overstuffed sandwiches, giant bratwursts and desserts.

There are other concession stands throughout the stadium, but they stop serving entirely -- not just beer -- at the end of the 3rd quarter.

Team History Displays. No team has won more NFL Championships than the Packers, with 13: 1929, 1930, 1931, 1936, 1939, 1944, 1961, 1962, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1996 and 2010. (The Chicago Bears are next with 9, the Giants next with 8.) This includes 2 of the only 3 threepeats in NFL history: 1929-31 and 1965-67. (The other is the 1922-24 Canton Bulldogs.) It also includes Super Bowls I, II, XXXI and XLV (1, 2, 31 and 45). These titles, which gave rise to Green Bay's nickname of Titletown, are shown in yellow lettering on the green background of the scoreboard.

On the other sideline's skyboxes are the team's officially retired numbers: 3, Tony Canadeo, running back, 1941-52; 4, Brett Favre, quarterback, 1992-2007; 14, Don Hutson, receiver-defensive back, 1935-45; 15, Bart Starr, quarterback, 1956-71; 66, Ray Nitschke, linebacker, 1958-72; and 92, Reggie White, defensive end, 1993-98. The Number 5 of Paul Hornung, running back, 1957-66, has not been officially retired, but it is rarely given out.

Outside the stadium are statues of the coaches (also general managers) who brought the 1st 11 titles, Lambeau (1929 through 1944) and Lombardi (1961 through 1967); and also of Starr, the only man to quarterback 5 NFL Championships. (And if Tom Brady becomes the 2nd, Starr will remain the only one to have done it honestly.)

Curly's hair wasn't all that curly. Then again,

he wasn't bald like Curly of the Three Stooges, either.

In addition to the preceding, the Packers have had the following players elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame: Quarterback Arnie Herber; running backs Johnny "Blood" McNally, Clarke Hinkle and Jim Taylor; receiver James Lofton; center Jim Ringo, guard Mike Michalske, and offensive tackles Cal Hubbard and Forrest Gregg; defensive tackle Henry Jordan, defensive end Willie Davis, linebacker Dave Robinson, cornerback Herb Adderley, safety Willie Wood, and kicker Jan Stenerud. Other Hall-of-Famers have played for the Packers, but these are the players generally considered "Packer Hall-of-Famers."

Lombardi's statue, based on what was

clearly a rare photo of him with his mouth closed.

The Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame has, along with a recreation of Lombardi's office, more inductees than any other team hall of fame in North American sports, 157. It recently reopened after its part of the continuing renovation of Lambeau Field. Members include:

* From the 1929-36 titles: Lambeau; backs McNally, Herber, Hinkle, Charlie Mathys, Verne Lewellen, Red Dunn, Swede Johnston, Hank Bruder and Bob Monnett; linemen Hubbard, Michalske, Cub Buck, Whitey Woodin, Jug Earp, Boob Darling, Lavvie Dilweg, Nate Barragar, Milt Gantenbein and Lon Evans. (Swede? Cub? Jug? Boob? Lavvie? Johnny Blood?They knew how to give athletes nicknames back then.)

Lambeau, McNally, Herber, Hinkle, Lewellen, Dunn, Michalske, Buck and Dilweg have also been elected to the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame, located at the UW-Panther Arena in Milwaukee, formerly known as the MECCA.

* From the 1939 and 1944 titles: Lambeau; backs Canadeo, Joe Laws, Ed Jankowski, Cecil Isbell, Andy Uram, Charley Brock, Lou Brock (related to Charley but not to the baseball star), Larry Craig (no relation to the scandalous Senator), Ted Fritsch and Irv Comp; receiver Hutson; linemen Charles "Buckets" Goldenberg, Tiny Engebretsen, brothers George and Earl "Bud" Svendsen, Russ Letlow, Pete Tinsley, Carl Mulleneaux and Harry Jacunski. Hutson, Canadeo and Goldenberg have also been elected to the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame.

(A personal note: The Jacunskis are from Connecticut, and Harry's son Dick moved to New Jersey. He, his wife, and their daughters lived next door to my parents when I was born, and what remains of each family is still close. I got to meet Harry a couple of times: Although football left him physically debilitated, and I never saw the man stand up, he was still mentally sharp into his 80s.)

* Between the Lambeau and Lombardi eras: Quarterback Tobin Rote, running backs Bob Forte, Fred Cone, Al Carmichael and Howie Ferguson; ends Bob Mann, John Martinkovic and Billy Howton; offensive tackle Dick Wildung; linebacker Deral Teteak, and defensive back Bobby Dillon. Lisle Blackbourn, who coached the Packers in this era, has also been elected to the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame.

* From the 1961-67 titles: Lombardi, assistant coaches Red Cochran and (Lombardi's much less successful successor as head coach) Phil Bengtson; quarterbacks Starr and Zeke Bratkowski; running backs Hornung, Taylor, Elijah Pitts, Donny Anderson and Travis Williams; receivers Gary Knafelc, Max McGee, Ron Kramer, Bowd Dowler, Marv Fleming and Carroll Dale; centers Ringo and Ken Bowman; guards Jerry Kramer, Fred "Fuzzy" Thurston and Gale Gillingham; offensive tackles Gregg and Bob Skoronski; defensive tackles Jordan, Dave Hanner and Ron Kostelnik; defensive ends Davis and Lionel Aldridge; linebackers Nitschke, Bill Forester, Dan Currie, Dave Robinson and Lee Roy Caffey; cornerbacks Adderley, Hank Gremminger and Bob Jeter; safeties Wood and Jesse Whittenton; and placekicker-punter Don Chandler.

Hornung and Anderson also did some kicking in this era. Thurston also played for the 1958, but not 1959, Baltimore Colts, while Gregg and Adderley also played for the 1971 Dallas Cowboys, making them the only 3 players ever to play on 6 NFL Championship teams. Lombardi called Gregg "the finest player I ever coached." It's not surprising, therefore, that he went on to become a successful coach, taking the Cincinnati Bengals to their 1st Super Bowl in 1982 (but losing), and then restoring the honor of his alma mater, Southern Methodist University, after their 1987 "death penalty.")

Lombardi, Starr, Hornung, Taylor, Kramer, Thurson, Davis and Nitschke have also been elected to the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame.

* Between the Lombardi and Holmgren eras: Quarterbacks Lynn Dickey and Don Majkowski; running backs John Brockington and Gerry Ellis; receivers Lofton and Sterling Sharpe; tight end Paul Coffman; center Larry McCarren; offensive tackle Greg Koch; defensive end Ezra Johnson; linebackers Fred Carr, Mike Douglass, John Anderson and Johnny Holland; cornerbacks Ken Ellis and Willie Buchanon; safeties Johnnie Gray and Mark Murphy; and kickers Stenerud and Chester Marcol.

(UPDATE: In 2017, cornerback Mark Lee was elected.)

* From the 1996 title: Coach Holmgren, general manager Ron Wolf, and team president Bob Harlan; Favre; running backs Edgar Bennett, Dorsey Levens and William Henderson; receivers Robert Brooks and Antonio Freeman; tight end Mark Chmura; center Frank Winters; guard Marco Rivera; offensive tackle Ken Ruettgers; defensive end White; defensive tackle Gilbert Brown; safety Leroy Butler; and placekicker Chris Jacke. Harlan and White have also been elected to the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame.

* Between the Holmgren and McCarthy eras: Running back Ahman Green and defensive end Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila. (UPDATE: In 2018, kicker Ryan Longwell was elected. He was a member of the 1997 NFC Champions, but not the 1996 World Champions.)

* From the 2010 title: Offensive tackle Chad Clifton and safety Nick Collins. Quarterback Aaron Rodgers and anyone else will have to wait a while; since Clifton and Collins both retired in 2011 and got elected this year, it looks like 5 years after retirement is the eligibility, as with most sports halls of fame. Receiver Donald Driver has been elected to the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame. (UPDATE: In 2017, Driver was elected to the Packers Hall of Fame. So was offensive tackle Mark Tauscher.)

* Spanning the eras: Team executives George Calhoun, Frank Jonet, A.B. Turnbull, Fred Leicht, Emil Fischer, Lee Joannes, Lee Remmel (a sportswriter turned team executive who'd been involved with the club from 1944 until his death in 2015, linking the Lambeau, Lombardi, Holmgren and McCarthy eras), Jack Vainisi, F.N. Trowbridge, Jerry Atkinson, Dominic Olejniczak, Tom Miller and Robert Parins; team doctors Webber Kelly and E.S. Brusky, and trainer Carl Jorgensen; broadcasters Russ Winnie, Ray Scott and Jim Irwin; team attorney Gerald Clifford; team photographer Vernon Biever and video director Al Treml; journalist Art Daley; longtime band director Wilner Burke; team Hall of Fame founder William Brault; and one longtime fan, Al Schneider.

Hutson, Gregg, Nitschke and White were named to the NFL's 75th Anniversary Team in 1994. They, Starr, Adderley, Davis and Favre were named to The Sporting News' 100 Greatest Football Players in 1999. All of those men were named to the NFL Network's 100 Greatest Players in 2010.

Starr's statue, with the city's new arena,

the Resch Center, in the background

The Packers have had 7 Heisman Trophy winners play for them: Bruce Smith (running back and defensive back, 1941 Minnesota, 1945-48 with the Packers, and not to be confused with the later Buffalo Bills defensive end), Paul Hornung (quarterback, running back and placekicker, 1956 Notre Dame, 1957-66), Ty Detmer (quarterback, 1990 Brigham Young, 1992-95), Desmond Howard (receiver, 1991 Michigan, 1996 and 1999), Rashaan Salaam (running back, 1994 Colorado, 1999), Danny Wuerffel (quarterback, 1996 Florida, 2000), and Charles Woodson (cornerback, 1997 Michigan, 2006-12).

The Packers' 2 biggest rivals, for geographical reasons, are the Chicago Bears and the Minnesota Vikings. If the Vikings had also been one of the NFL's oldest teams -- or if, say, the 1920s' Minneapolis Redjackets had survived -- they might be a bigger rival to the Packers than the Bears. After all, while Chicago and Milwaukee are rivals, Illinois and Wisconsin are not, at least not to the same extent as Wisconsin and Minnesota. After all, Cubs-Brewers (and, before that, White Sox-Brewers), Bulls-Bucks, Illini-Badgers and DePaul-Marquette are not major rivalries.

The Bears and Packers have played each other more than any other pair of teams. The Bears currently lead the rivalry, but it's close: 94-92-6. The Packers do, however, lead the Vikings, 59-51-2.

UPDATE: Through the 2017 season, the Packers have taken the lead over the Bears, 97-94-6; and lead the Vikings 60-53-2.

Stuff. Lambeau Field opened a new Pro Shop in 2015, and, along with smaller souvenir stands, it includes the usual items you'll find at a football game. What you won't find anywhere else is one of those big yellow triangular foam "cheeseheads." "Cheesehead" has been a nickname for a Wisconsan for many years, and when the Packers got good again in the 1990s, someone decided to capitalize on the nickname, and it stuck. It's been copied by the archrival Bears (a triangular foam wedge made to look like a slice of deep-dish pizza) and the Philadelphia Eagles (a cheesesteak head, naturally), among others. (Could lobsterheads be far away for New England, or crabheads for Baltimore?)

There are lots of books about the Packers, most of them focusing on the Lombardi era. For a general look at the team's history, Lew Freedman (author of a lot of sports history books, mainly baseball) published The Packers Experience: A Year-by-Year Chronicle of the Green Bay Packers in 2014. Leroy Butler, inventor of the Lambeau Leap (more about that in a moment), wrote Packers Pride: Green Bay Greats Share Their Favorite Moments.

The 2 biggest names in Packer history -- and, no, they're not Paul Hornung and Brett Favre -- have recent biographies about them: Lambeau: The Man Behind the Mystique, by David Zimmerman; and When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi, by David Maraniss (who has also written superb bios of President Bill Clinton and baseball legend Roberto Clemente).

On the lighter side -- and I doubt that the very Catholic "Saint Vincent" Lombardi would have allowed this -- Judy DuCharme recently published The Cheesehead Devotional: Daily Meditations for Green Bay Packers, Their Fans, and NFL Football Fanatics.

Available DVDs include The Complete History of the Green Bay Packers (not so complete anymore, it came out in 2003, before the most recent title), the Packers' entry into the NFL's Greatest Games series (6 games, including Super Bowl XXXI, but none prior to 1992), and the official Super Bowl XLV highlight film.

I expect that, as the year 2019 approaches, the team will begin preparations for their 100th Anniversary (the first NFL team to reach that milestone -- sort of, the Arizona Cardinals began as a Chicago social club in 1898), and more and better items connected with the Centennial will be released.

During the Game. A recent Thrillist article on "The Most Obnoxious Fans In the NFL" ranked Packer fans 9th, just outside the top quarter, saying:

Ah, Green Bay. The model franchise. Not owned by some money-grubbing autocrat but by THE PEOPLE, and you’ll gladly remind anybody and everybody of that as you break out your certificate that proves you, too, own a piece of the team! Never mind that those certificates are about as valuable as that “share of a gold mine” you got on a family trip to South Dakota. Packers fans like to present a welcoming aura of friendliness (tailgating at Lambeau pre-game is actually a fantastic time), but make no mistake, they will turn (on you or anything around you) in a HEARTBEAT if things go south for the Pack. Just look what happened to Brett Favre when he dared play for the Vikings. Which Green Bay now collectively pretends never happened. 

Hey, Jet fans would like to pretend Favre never played for them.

You do not have to worry about your safety at Lambeau Field. Maybe if you were a Bears fan, with the NFL's oldest rivalry taking hold; or possibly a Vikings fan, with the natural Wisconsin-Minnesota rivalry kicking in. While the Packers have been playing the Giants since 1925, and the Giants have laid 2 famous Playoff knockouts at Lambeau on the Packers (they almost never lose at home in the postseason), the Packer Backers don't consider the Giants to be an enemy, either. Feel free to wear whatever Big Blue team gear you want.

UPDATE: From September 1 to 7, 2017, during the NFL National Anthem protest controversy,

FiveThirtyEight.com polled fans of the 32 NFL teams, to see where they leaned politically. Wisconsin has a reputation for liberal Democrats and progressive Republicans, but Green Bay is in the more conservative part of the State, which produced right-wing Senator Joseph McCarthy. Nevertheless, Packer fans were found to be 8.7 percent more liberal than conservative, in the top 1/3rd of liberal fanbases. 

The Packers hold auditions for National Anthem singers, instead of having a regular. When the Packers receive their pregame introductions, and after every Packer extra point, their traditional fight song is played: "Go! You Packers! Go!" It was written in 1931, but the current recording is from 1992. When the Packers score a touchdown, instead of the fight song, they play Todd Rundgren's 1983 classic "Bang the Drum All Day." The usual Packer Backer cheer is "Go, Pack, Go," rather than the old-timey "Go, You Packers, Go."

Speaking of drums: The Packers now have a Tundra Line, a percussion group (not an entire band) that plays throughout the game. But the Lumberjack Band, so named for their flannel jackets, which entertained at Packer games starting in 1921, was disbanded in 1997. At least they got to play for the Holmgren/Favre/White title.

The Packers are one of 5 NFL teams that does not currently have a mascot. The others are the Giants, the Jets, the Washington Redskins and the San Diego Chargers. The Packers are also 1 of 6 NFL teams that doesn't have cheerleaders. The others are the the Giants, the Buffalo Bills, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Cleveland Browns and the Chicago Bears.

In 1993, Leroy Butler returned a fumble for a touchdown. Seeing a fan in the south stands who had his arms out and, as Butler put it, seemed to be saying, "Hug me," he jumped into the stands. Thus was born the Lambeau Leap. I don't know what Curly or Lombardi would have thought of it, but Holmgren and his boys loved it. It became a Packer tradition, and, last season, outside the Pro Shop (outside the stadium), with Butler invited back to recreate the moment, the Packers dedicated the Leap Wall, a padded green wall with statues of 4 fans behind it (one waving a big foam "We're Number 1" finger).

Butler at the dedication

After the Game. You should be safe going out. As I said, Lambeau Field is in the middle of a parking lot, not in a neighborhood, good or bad. You might have a traffic issue, but not a safety issue.

The Stadium View, calling itself "Not Just a Bar & Grill," is a block away from the stadium, at 1963 Holmgren Way at Tony Canadeo Run. Shenanigans Pub, long owned by the late 1960s Packer guard Fred "Fuzzy" Thurston, is probably the most famous eatery or bar in town. 1279 Main Street at Irwin Avenue, almost right across the river from the site of City Stadium. A bar named Hagemeister Park, festooned with Packer memorabilia, now stands at 325 N. Washington Street between Main and Pine.

It's unlikely a city as small as Green Bay will have many expatriate New Yorkers, and would thus be a good place for visitors to take in. I also haven't been able to find a reference to any Milwaukee bar or restaurant that caters to New Yorkers.

If you visit during the European soccer season, believe it or not, despite being a small city, Green Bay has a place that shows the games: Gipper's Sports Bar & Grill, 1860 University Avenue, about 2 1/2 miles east of downtown. Unfortunately, there's no bus service at that time of the morning on the weekend.

Sidelights. Green Bay is a big town, but a small city. Aside from Packer-connected stuff, there isn't a whole lot to see there.

UPDATE: On February 3, 2017, Thrillist made a list ranking the 30 NFL cities (New York and Los Angeles each having 2 teams), and, due to its small size and comparative lack of options, Green Bay did indeed finish 30th and last:

This really isn't fair. Green Bay wouldn't even perform all that well on a ranking of cities IN WISCONSIN. Pitting it against the nation's great metropolises is like pitting opposing defenses against Aaron Rodgers. So yeah, it's a good thing the team is generally successful, because the town has all the personality of an AutoZone parking lot.

They're wrong about the personality. There are some things in town worth visiting:

* Site of Bellevue Park. The Packers played the 1923 and 1924 seasons at this minor-league baseball park. It seated just 5,000, and was east of downtown, across the East River. Although it probably saved the Packers in the short term -- any professional football team playing at a professional baseball park was considered to be of a higher class than one playing on a simple sandlot such as Hagemeister Park -- it was not a football stadium, and the Packers needed a real one. 1600 block of Main Street, by Franz Avenue.

The Brewers are the closest MLB team, 119 miles away; the Chicago Cubs, 204 miles; the Chicago White Sox, 209 miles; the Minnesota Twins, 278 miles. And the Brewers have a 75 percent stranglehold on Green Bay area baseball fans.

There are currently 2 minor-league baseball teams in Wisconsin, both in the Class A Midwest League, 3 steps below the majors. The Wisconsin Timber Rattlers play at Neuroscience Group Field at Fox Cities Stadium, in Appleton, 32 miles southwest of Green Bay, 106 miles north of Milwaukee, and 106 miles northeast of Madison. And the Beloit Snappers (their logo is a turtle) play at Harry C. Pohlman Field, 2301 Skyline Drive in Beloit, 50 miles southeast of Madison and 75 miles southwest of Milwaukee, and 168 miles southwest of Green Bay.

* Hagemeister Park and City Stadium. Owned by the long-gone Hagemeister brewery, Hagemeister Park was the Packers' first home, from 1919 to 1922. There wasn't much in the way of seating, and fans would often sit in their cars to watch games. George Calhoun, who founded the team with Lambeau, would get out and pass a hat for contributions at halftime, and that's the main reason the team lasted long enough to get a proper home stadium.

The park was cleared for the construction of a new building for East High School -- oddly enough, Curly Lambeau's alma mater. When the new East High School opened in 1923, on a triangle bordered by Walnut Street, Baird Street and the East River, City Stadium was built behind it. Originally seating 6,000, it was expanded into a 25,000-seat horseshoe, open at the south end.

Although the Packers won 6 titles there, it was seen as too small for the bigger game that pro football was becoming after World War II. Just as George Halas of the Bears saved them with the velvet glove 25 years earlier, in the mid-1950s he saved them with the iron fist, talking the other NFL owners into providing the funds to build a new stadium, or they would order the moving of the team, to Milwaukee or somewhere else. In 1956, the City Council voted to build new City Stadium, which opened the next year.

City Stadium, renamed East Stadium until the new one was renamed for Lambeau, remained the home field of East High School, and in 2008 was renovated, leaving no part of the original structure remaining. 1415 E. Walnut Street. It's within walking distance of downtown, unlike Lambeau Field.

* Brown County Veterans Memorial Arena. Across the street from Lambeau Field, this 5,248-seat arena opened in 1958, and from 1968 to 2002 was the home court of the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay basketball team. It's also hosted minor-league basketball and hockey (the Green Bay Bobcats played from 1958 to 1981, winning league titles in 1959, '60, '63 and '72), and pro wrestling. Elvis Presley gave one of his last concerts here, on April 28, 1977.

Other Wisconsin arenas to have been played by Elvis were the Mary E. Sawyer Auditorium in La Crosse on May 14, 1956; the Milwaukee Auditorium on June 14 and 15, 1972; the Milwaukee Arena (the MECCA) on June 28, 1974 and April 27, 1977; and the Dane County Coliseum in Madison on October 19, 1976 and June 24, 1977. (The Beatles played in Milwaukee, but not in Green Bay.)

The nearest NBA team is the Milwaukee Bucks, 115 miles away, easily beating the Chicago Bulls (206) and the Minnesota Timberwolves (278). The nearest NHL teams are the Chicago Blackhawks (206) and the Minnesota Wild (268). And the nearest MLS team is the Chicago Fire (216). However, due to (fairly) recent success for the Bulls, but not for the Bucks, the Bucks lead in popularity isn't as much as it is in nearby cities like Oshkosh and Sheboygan. Indeed, in Madison, the seat of the University of Wisconsin, the Bulls are more popular.

What else is there to do in Green Bay? Well, there's Bay Beach Amusement Park: 1313 Bay Beach Road at Irwin Avenue. There's a Botanical Garden: 2600 Larsen Road, off Packerland Drive. There's a zoo: 4378 Reforestation Road of Sunrise Road. And a National Railroad Museum, 2285 S. Broadway at Bosar Avenue -- ironic, considering that Amtrak doesn't go to Green Bay.

There have been plenty of TV shows and movies set in Wisconsin, but never in Green Bay. You would think that, by now, someone would have made a movie out of the Ice Bowl. In 1973, 3 years after Lombardi's death from cancer (like Babe Ruth, his funeral was at St. Patrick's Cathedral), ABC aired a TV-movie titled Etched In Granite, with Ernest Borgnine playing Lombardi. Eric Simonson wrote Lombardi, a play based on Maraniss' book, that ran on Broadway from October 2010 to May 2011, and while it got some good reviews, it failed to capitalize on the Pack's Super Bowl XLV win in February. Dan Lauria, best known as the father on The Wonder Years, played the coach; Judith Light, best known as the mother on Who's the Boss?, played his wife Marie.

And if you'd like to pay your respects at Lombardi's grave, surprise: You can do that almost anytime, because he's buried in New Jersey. He is so identified with Green Bay that a lot of people forget his New York Tri-State Area roots. He was from Brooklyn, went to Fordham, coached at the now-defunct St. Cecilia's High School in Englewood, at West Point and with the Giants, before becoming the Packers' head coach. Marie was from Red Bank, and they are buried across the Navesink River, at Mount Olivet Cemetery, on Chapel Hill Road off State Route 35 in Middletown. Lambeau, however, is buried in Green Bay, at Allouez Catholic Cemetery, 2121 Riverside Drive at Allouez Avenue. (The late Jets and Madison Square Garden boss Sonny Werblin is buried at a Jewish cemetery, almost right across Route 35.)

For Milwaukee sites, here's my 2016 guide for that city. The Packers played a game at Borchert Field (home of the old minor-league Milwaukee Brewers) in 1933, 2 games a year at State Fair Park in suburban West Allis from 1934 to 1951, 2 at Marquette Stadium in 1952, 2 at Milwaukee County Stadium from 1953 to 1977, and then 3 at County Stadium from 1978 to 1994. It was only in 1995 that they've played all their home games in Green Bay, save for 1 exhibition game at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, home of the University of Wisconsin, 136 miles southwest of Green Bay.

Horlick Field opened in 1907, and hosted the Racine Legion from 1919 to 1924 (including 1922 to '24 in the NFL), the NFL's Racine Tornadoes in 1926, and the Racine Belles of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League from 1943 to 1950. The current 8,500-seat stadium on the site hosts high school sports. 1648 N. Memorial Drive in Racine, Wisconsin, 29 miles south of downtown Milwaukee, and 70 miles north of Chicago's Loop. Amtrak from either to Sturtevant, then Bus 8.

The Kenosha Maroons played in the NFL in 1924, at Nash Field. The 5,000-seat stadium also hosts high school sports. 5909 56th Street in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Even though it's closer to Milwaukee (34 miles as opposed to 60), it can only be reached by public transportation from Chicago, riding the train from the Ogilvie Transportation Center (the former Northwestern Station) to Kenosha, then Bus 2.

The Sheboygan Red Skins played pro basketball from 1933 to 1952, winning the National Basketball League title in 1943 (making them, technically, if not officially recognized by the NBA, World Champions in the sport), and were merged into the NBA for the 1949-50 season.

Due to Sheboygan's small size (about 50,000 people, smaller even than since-abandoned NBA cities Syracuse, Rochester and Fort Wayne), the rest of the league wanted them out, and got their wish. They lasted only 2 years in their new league, and folded. But they are still winners of a World Championship. They played at the 3,974-seat Sheboygan Municipal Auditorium and Armory, 58 miles north of Milwaukee (Bus 916) and 67 miles south of Green Bay.

Wisconsin was the location of 3 famous nostalgia-based TV shows: Happy Days, airing 1974 to 1984, but set from 1955 to 1965, in Milwaukee; that show's spinoff, Laverne & Shirley, running from 1976 to 1983, and set in Milwaukee from 1957 to 1964, before moving to Los Angeles for 1965 to 1967; and That '70s Show, airing 1998 to 2006, but set from 1976 to 1979, in fictional Point Place, a name that may have been based on the real town of Stevens Point, but said to be a suburb of Green Bay.

The Dairy State/Badger State was also the location of the 1990s CBS drama Picket Fences, set in the small town of Rome, which is the name of a real town in Wisconsin; the 1990s ABC sitcom Step By Step, set in a fictionalized version of a real Wisconsin town, Port Washington; and the longtime CBS soap opera The Young and the Restless, set in Genoa City, which is the name of a small town on the Wisconsin-Illinois State Line, but, on the show, we are led to believe it is a much larger city.

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Essentially, the reason to go to Green Bay is for the Green Bay Packers. They are the most storied franchise in the National Football League. The Giants have many stories, some of them great, but the Packers have the most stories, and some of the best.

But, seeing as how it won't be "Green Bay cold," you should be able to have fun watching the Giants play the Packers at Lambeau Field.