The Icebowl
by
Mike Shropshire


Donald I. Fine Books

New York


Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane,
London W8 5TZ, England

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood,
Victoria, Australia

Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

Penguin Books (N Z )Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road,
Auckland 10, New Zealand

Penguin Books Lid, legistered Ofces:
Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England


First published by Donald I Fine Books,
an imprint of Penguin Putnam Inc


First Printing, October, 1997
10987654321


Copyright © Mike Shropshire, 1997
All rights reserved


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Shropshire, Mike.

The ice bowl : the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers
season of 1967 / Mike Shropshire


ISBN 1-55611-532-6

1. National Football League--History. 2. Dallas Cowboys (Football
team)--History. 3, Green Bay Packers (Football team)--History.

I. Ttle.

GV955.5.N35S57 1997

	796.332'64'09046dc21
	97-17801

			CIP


Printed in the United States of America
Set in I1/13 New Caledonia


Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of
this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otheraqse), without
the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above
publisher of this book


This book is printed on acid-free paper.

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Acknowledgments


Last winter a Green Bay football player from the Vince Lombardi era
told me (off the record), "Every couple of years I go back to a Packers'
reunion. A lot of those guys can't even remember their ex-wife's first
name, but they could tell you what they had for breakfast on the
morning of the Ice Bowl game."

In the course of compiling the research for this book, the topic of
the players' wives, ex or otherwise, never came up. But I was astonished
at how vividly the players of both the Green Bay Packers and the
Dallas Cowboys recalled the details of a day and a football game that
happened almost thirty years earlier. As a historical episode in American
sports culture, the 1967 Green Bay-Dallas NFL championship
clash not only withstands the test of time but in the minds of many
stands out as the most memorable pro football game ever played.

The bulk of the material in this book was assembled from interviews,
some in person but most on the telephone, with a few dozen
individuals who were somehow involved with that game.

Other details and quotes were collected from four books: The
Crunch, by Pat Toomay, Vince Lombardi on Football, The Packer
Scrapbook, by George Flynn, and Vince, by Michael O'Brien.

Additional source material previously appeared in Time, Newsweek,
and Marketplace magazines, and one quote was taken from an
article by Tom Peeler that appeared in D Magazine that he, in turn,
had extracted from a book, The Murchisons, by Jane Wolfe. Also, substantial
information was collected from the following newspapers: Chicago
Tribune, New York Herald-Tribune, Saint Paul Pioneer Press,
Sacramento Bee, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Houston Chronicle, Milwaukee
Journal, Milwaukee Sentinel, Green Bay Press-Gazette, Dallas
Morning News, Dallas Times-Herald, Los Angeles Times, and Fort
Worth Press.

Finally, a few parts of this book were the product of my own
recollections and from several exhibits at the Packer Hall of Fame in
Green Bay.

3N: 1-5


I wish to acknowledge the considerable assistance of personnel at
the public libraries in Green Bay, Milwaukee, and Dallas and offer
special gratitude to Tex Sehramm, fforrest Gregg, Lee Remmel, Bart
Starr, and his administrative assistant, Miehelle Warren, who were
particularly generous with their time. It is important, too, that I thank
my wife and personal trainer, Karen G. Shropshire, whose teehnieal
American language expertise absolutely blows me away.

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PROLOGUE


A SIMPLE DECLARATION of intention--that I planned to view 1997's
Super Bowl XXXI on a big-screen television set from some location in
the saloon district of Green Bay, Wisconsin--attracted gapes and
stares of pure bemusement from colleagues and uninvolved onlookers
in Dallas. They would break off eye contact and shake their heads, as if
I had announced plans to begin elog-dandng lessons.

Why would anybody venture up there to witness this event when
he could experience an on-site viewing down in N'awlins, where the
practitioner of hedonist pursuit can experience the titillation of having
his billfold lifted on a stroll through the French Quarter?

In a year in which the top sports movie of the year, Jerry
Maguire, depicts the story of a sports agent (key line in the movie:
"Show me the money"), that good old Pride of Yankees mentality
continues to prevail in Green Bay. Entry into a time warp like this can
serve only to resuscitate the jaded soul of the city boy.

My desire to journey to Green Bay in January, on the eastern
shore of the No-Frills State, was twofold. First, I felt that I could easily
obtain seating, or at least standing room, in the saloon district of
Green Bay. Information persisted that the entire community was
composed of nothing much other than a saloon district. Some locals
themselves describe Green Bay as "a drinking town with a football

	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


problem." So at least I could get in. The same could not be said for the
actual Packers-Patriots game, the Super Bowl in the Super Dome, and
in recent years, I've been told, that the game itself has become a party
that is harder and harder to crash.

Reason number two for the Green Bay journey: Now that the
Super Bowl annually takes on spiritual implications, the choice seemed
aesthetically realistic. Where would you rather encounter the rapture
of Easter Sunday--Vatican City or Las Vegas?

Because of the long-awaited Packers appearance in pro football's
winter carnival, the spirit of resurrection reigned rich across the land,
or at least in Green Bay, where the holy specter of Vince Lombardi
appeared poised to live again. After a twenty-nine-year hiatus, the
Pack was returning to the January spectacle that it had inaugurated.
Somehow the notion of witnessing something like that emerged as a
pageant more meaningful in the lengthening shadows of Lambeau
Field than amid the sounds of Dixieland clarinets and the smell of
crawfish gumbo.

Beyond that, another and much more profound urge had taken
form. For a football fan (well, let's not use the word "fan"--"keenly interested observer" is closer to the case), a yearning to transfuse the soul with something wholesome was becoming hard to resist.

A stifling soot had settled over life in the football streets of Dallas.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, a man seemingly consumed by a profound
measure of hubris, had attained a new negative popularity
rating. The nature of the cupidity attached to the attainment of the
endorsement contracts with Pepsi and Nike had soured even some
Cowboys fans, and this in a city not exactly renowned for begrudging a
man trying to make a buck.

So when Michael Irvin was indicted and facing trial after being
nailed in a hotel room with a parcel of drugs and two topless dancers,
the civic anthem became: "Didja hear what Jones told Irvin? He said,
'No, no, Michael. I said Pepsi and Nike, not coke and nookie.' Haw.
Haw. Haw." Irvin, alleged national role model and a living end-zone
idol in North Texas, presented himself before a grand jury attired in
furs and baubles that he appeared to have obtained at a Zsa Zsa Gabor
estate sale. One wondered whether the grand jury had leveled its
indictment against an alleged drug offender or his fashion statement.

In July, my job for the month was to cover Irvin's trial for a
Dallas-based sports-talk radio station. Prosecution evidence came de
THE ICE BOWL


livered daily to the courtroom in a brown paper Food Lion grocery
bag. The jury got to see a fair-sized bundle of white powder and some
baggies of dope. After Irvin entered a no-contest plea at midtrial, the
jury was deprived of the chance to inspect other items in the grocery
bag--some sex toys confiscated by the cops on the night of the bust.
Notable among the inventory was a vibrator device that could be operated
via remote control, a tribute to the cutting-edge technology from
Pacific Rim nations.

A member of the battalion of lawyers representing the man
known as the Playmaker informed me: "Michael's problem isn't drugs.
It's women. So finally I told him, 'Look, Wilt Chamberlain has claimed
that he slept with over twenty thousand women. That's the world
record, and not you or anybody else is ever going to break it, so why
try?' Michael looked disappointed at first and said, 'Look, man. I'm
only thirty.' I'll say this for Michael," the lawyer went on, "he's got a
world of pride.'"

It was during the Irvin drug investigation that the public learned
of a facility known as the White House, a small mansion on Tony
Dorsett Avenue near the team's practice area that some players had
rented for recreational purposes. "So they ran a few whores in and out
of there. What's wrong with that?" declared Nate Newton, a guard
regarded as one of the more straitlaced representatives of the modernera
Cowboys. His only mentions in life's universal book of small crimes
and great mistakes include a drunk-driving arrest (no conviction) and a
citation for his presence at an illegal dogfight in East Texas.

By the end of the 1996 season, the Cowboys' coast-to-coast identity
had taken on the aspects of the sidewalks of New York during a
garbage strike. Irvin and a brontosaurus of an offensive tackle named
Erik Williams returned to the headlines and were named in a rape
allegation forwarded by, yes, another topless dancer. Irvin contended
that he was someplace else on the evening of the event in question, a
legal defense plea known in Texas criminal courtrooms as corpus non
premises. Police later determined that the charges had been fabricated.
Apparently the dancer could not comprehend the difference
between rape and rough sex on a billiard table.

Additional troubling subplots for the Dallas-area football fans surrounded
the strange persona of the head coach, Barry Switzer, the man
handpicked by Jerry Jones to replace Jimmy Johnson. With the proud
Cowboys falling into rapid disrepair, Jones's status among the elite and

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	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


effete of the Dallas cotillion set has taken on a jaundiced tint. The
business genius who brought Deion Sanders to Dallas now stands
portrayed as just another refugee from the Hormel provinces. As construction
work was completed on Jones's mansion in Highland Park, the
Dallas equivalent of Nob Hill, neighbors expressed genuine dismay at
the arrival of big trucks from a furniture discount warehouse.

Some of the old Dallas Cowboys, the players who were around in
the Ice Bowl era, express open contempt for the Switzer regime. "The
failure all falls on [Switzer's] shoulders," George Andrie told me two
weeks before the Super Bowl. Andrie was the man who scooped up a
Bart Starr fumble and scored a defensive touchdown for the Cowboys
in that minus-70 degree chill-factor epic played and performed on
New Year's Eve afternoon in 1967. "Don't put the blame on the salary
cap and poor draft positioning, either. What about player development?
What ever happened to that? What really got me was after the
Cowboys lost the playoff game at Carolina and some of the players said
that they were glad they got beat. What does that tell you?" While
many of the Cowboys of the Tom Landry era choose not to comment
on the modern Dallas disaster, George Andrie has spoken out.

So has Pete Gent, a former Cowboys receiver whose essential
claim to immortality happened through his novel entitled North Dallas
40. Gent's description of the backstage world of the National Football
League of the mid- to late 1960s can hardly be described as a work of
warmth with a cheerful ending. Even Gent now claims to be beyond
perplexed by the rapid rise and ricochet fall of the Jerry Jones Cowboys.
"I've got a son up here who is a die-hard Dallas Cowboys fan, to
the max," says Gent, now living in western Michigan. "What do I tell
the boy? This is appalling."

Beyond the obvious and lurid jailhouse headlines and the dubious
on-the-field performance of the team, another malevolent element
bedevils these Cowboys, and I finally identified it while listening to a
radio sports-talk show in Dallas.

Norm Hitzges, the talk-show host, has been described as the
HAL 9000 (the computer in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey) of
sports radio. During the season, with Barry Switzer as his guest,
Hitzges questioned a Cowboys coaching strategy in the previous
week's game. Switzer, who attempts to maintain his manicured selfperception
as a players' coach, a man of the people and a Great Communicator,
suffered a telling lapse on that weekday morning. ,.:.

THE ICE BOWL
	5


"Do you think I give a damn about what Norm Hitzges thinks?"
Switzer demanded. "Do you think I give a damn what the guy pumping
gas at the Texaco station thinks?" In the span of two and a half
seconds Barry Switzer provided the necessary clue as to the genuine
nature of the Cowboys' demise: the virus known as terminal arrogance.

By momentarily dismissing the voice of the fan, Switzer revealed
the one flaw that no coach in the spotlight can hope to overcome.
These fans. They vote with their pocketbooks. Perhaps Switzer should
have been listening to one of those talk shows after his apparent twin
goofs in Philly late in 1995, when two fourth-and-one plunges from his
own 29-yard line handed the game to the Eagles. A guy called in and
talked about how, after the Cowboys had won their first Super Bowl
game a quarter of a century earlier, he had planted a tree in his front
yard. His Cowboys Tree, the guy called it. After the Philly game, the
guy told of stomping into his front yard and chopping down the Cowboys
Tree--"not with a chain saw either. With an ax."

Now the bunker mentality at the team headquarters known as
Valley Ranch has become pervasive, as the Cowboys' owner has imposed
a gag order on the coaching staff, forbidding them to speak to
the media. "Gag order?" says Randy Galloway, a Dallas sports columnist.
"Gag reflex is more like it. The only down side to this is Jones
didn't put a gag on Switzer six months ago."

Frank Luksa, another columnist with close ties to the Valley
Ranch inner sanctum, pondered the impact of Jones's affinity for a
beverage containing vermouth and other optional additives. "Jones, I
heard, had quit drinking at the start of the '96 season, but he said he
did it to lose weight more than anything else," declared Luksa. "'But
from what I've been hearing lately . . ."

This is what has become of America's Team. Of course, that sobriquet
was destined to bite the Cowboys on the ass from day one. The
Cowboys' old regime has been quick to point out that it was NFL
Films, and not the team, that produced that grandiose bit of packaging
after the 1978 season. But it has been my experience in traveling
throughout the land that the public popularity of Dallas---on the roster
of world cities--ranks just ahead of Sodom and slightly behind Gomorrah.

Dallas
Cowboys--America's Team. Why not John Dillinger--
America's Sweetheart? Or Three Mile Island--America's Vacationland?

6
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


So, given the sulfuric nature of the prevailing football atmosphere
in North Texas, my motivation to experience a spiritual reawakening
by watching Super Bowl XXXI from a tavern setting in Green Bay had
become impossible to resist.

The idea received the endorsement of no less a luminary than
Vince Lombardi, Jr. Now fifty-four and living outside Seattle, Lombardi
offered a measure of caution. "It's a good idea as long as you
choose the right saloon," he said. "I'd recommend the Blurry Ears
Tavern in the Northland Hotel."

That settled it. On the Saturday before Super Bowl Sunday, I was
off into the white blue yonder. The most cost-efficient method of
traveling from Dallas to Green Bay (the whole town of Green Bay
could fit inside the D/FW airport, but so could the state of Massachusetts)
was to fly to Chicago, rent a car at O'Hare, and drive the rest of
the way, about three hours.

One thing I learned right away. The Green Bay Packers under
Mike Holmgren might qualify as the new America's Team, but they
sure as hell aren't Chicago's team. On a radio talk show, former Chicago
Bears lineman Jimbo Covert reluctantly predicted that the Pack
would probably beat the New England Patriots but quickly added that
he could never find it in his heart to root for Green Bay. This is
something that people from Dallas need to realize. Long before there
were any football Cowboys, a Bears-Packers rivalry had been in place
for decades, and that runs deeper than any franchise antagonisms that
have sprouted during the television era.

When I finally arrived in Green Bay, the first thing I noticed was
that everything was green and gold. No tree, no standing physical
structure, no living person, and hardly a house pet remained unadorned
with some Packers ornamental display. That involvement included
the medical industry. St. Thomas Hospital on Webster Street
displayed a huge banner: "Packer Fever . . . There Is No Cure." The
Petal Pusher Florist on the same street offered special green and gold
Valentine displays.

As I registered at the Residence Inn on St. Joseph's Street, along
with the other guests, I was requested to sign a "no excessive partying"
agreement in which I promised that during and after the football game
on Sunday I would not attempt to burn the place down or create any
disturbance that would require the presence of the cops.

When I tried to call, I learned that the Northland Hotel was no

THE ICE BOWL


longer operational, meaning that the Blurry Ears Tavern was gone as
well. So now the selection of the right saloon required advance scouting.

The Stadium View Sports Bar, within staggering distance of
Lambeau Field, had been mentioned as a possibility. On the phone,
the manager sounded cordi'al and was helpfully candid. "This place
maintains a seating and standing capacity of 2,400 people, and the re
department stands at the door and counts everybody coming and going.
Kickoff tomorrow afternoon is at 5:18. We're opening at 10:00 in
the morning. If you're not here by 10:10 or 10:15, you won't get in."

A guy at Fuzzy's Shenanigans, another acclaimed beverage outlet,
told me the same story. Fuzzy, naturally, is Fuzzy Thurston, the great
offensive guard on the Lombardi Packers of yore. Unlike me, Fuzz has
seen enough games from Green Bay, both from the football held and
from saloon TV sets, so he, like 26,000 other locals, chose to travel to
New Orleans for this one. All of those who had departed were now
replaced in town by commuters from Rhinelander and Wausau and
everywhere else in the region, eager to capture the moment-even if
on a TV screen--in the shrine. Unified by standards and circumstances
of relentless climate and spartan living, tempered by twenty
nine years' worth of unfullled faith and hope on the gridiron, the
people stood poised for redemption. Emotionally, Mount St. Helens
prepared to blow. In the zero-degree chill factor of the Saturday night
darkness, the visitor could feel the energy.

While the Stadium View Sports Bar would no doubt be impossible
on Sunday, I at least wanted to capture the mood of the joint on
the night before the game. Curiously, those now famous Cheesehead
adornments were nowhere on display in the Stadium View. Green and
gold Mardi Gras beads happened to be the fashion rage on this unforgettable
weekend in Green Bay.

Soon, however, it was time to switch saloons, since the task of
successfully ordering a beer loomed as all but impossible.

Across the street a sign on a Chinese restaurant read LouNcE. I
found inside Dennis Andre, who runs Andre's Penguin City pizza restaurant
in Algoma, celebrating his forty-seventh birthday. Dennis appeared
gratified, although not particularly surprised, when someone
presented him with a shoe box-size cardboard container tlled with
offleial Lambeau Field Frozen Tundra. When the stadium floor had
been covered with new sod for the championship game against the

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	8
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


Carolina Panthers two weeks earlier, the team had boxed up the old
turf and sold it in $10 souvenir packages, with the proceeds forwarded
to charity. "Some teenagers came and tried to steal some of the sacred
sod," one of the party attendees related, "so they brought in the police.
Only in Green Bay will you find heavily armed men guarding
dirt." To me the stuff looked a lot like the smoking material that many
Cowboys fans rely on before games at Texas Stadium.

A man wearing defensive end Reggie White's jersey number 92
sat among the party guests. On a bar napkin he was planning the
Pack's starting lineup for the opening game of the '97 regular season.
By his calculations, the Pack would lose a couple of players via the
free-agent route in the off-season. With the restrictions of the salary
cap in place, he saw no way that the Pack could retain the services of
kick-return magician Desmond Howard. And yet, in lockstep with the
overwhelming consensus of Packers fans everywhere, he felt that as
long as Brett Favre and Reggie White continue to wear the green and
gold, the Pack could recruit the other twenty starters from the nearby
Fort Howard paper mill and repeat as Super Bowl champions.

Mike, the man planning the next season's roster, turned out to be
a Catholic priest. I suggested to him that with the extreme likelihood
that the Pack would prevail on Sunday, his efforts at maintaining spiritual
well-being among his Green Bay flock should be more gratiiing.
Obviously, he had already pondered that possibility. On the flip side,
he pointed out that if, say, Brett Favre broke his leg during the
pregame introductions and the Packers somehow failed to win the
Super Bowl, the local priesthood would radio the home office for
reinforcements. "To so many Green Bay is the Packers, and that's all
they've got," the priest said.

By then I had identified myself as a Texan (but neglected to also
mention that I was writing a book) who had stumbled into the Kingdom
of Sharp Cheddar to watch the football game, and the Packers
fans welcomed me to the birthday party. All of the women at the table
wore green-and-gold earrings shaped like footballs and with the famous
Packer G helmet logo. Dennis's older sister, who was fifty-nine,
owned two season tickets near the top row in one of the end zones, the
same seats she had held since 1957. The waiting list of persons wanting
these or any other seats now extended to over 26,000 names.
Because about three or four tickets conventionally become available
each year, the person at the bottom of the list can expect to hear from

THE ICE BOWL


the Packers' ticket office in what mathematicians now calculate will be
slightly over five thousand years.

Just as Mike the priest might have owned up to occasions when
he questioned the depth of his ecclesiastical commitment, Dennis's
sister confessed that there had been years when she wondered what
those tickets might fetch according to the dictates of a free and open
marketplace. She remembered December 1988 with the same relish
that stockbrokers recall October 1987. The Packers, marching into the
abyss of a 2-14 season, sprang an upset over Arizona in the final game
of the season. That seemingly obscure win gave Dallas, and not the
Pack, first pick in the draft. Dallas used that selection to obtain Troy
Aikman. Green Bay, with the second selection, drafted tackle Tony
Mandarich and paid him $4 million. Mandarich, after he arrived in
training camp, began to shrink and actually disappeared after three
seasons in which he didn't contribute a damn thing.

Membership in the Society of the Cheesehead, whether one
chooses to wear the yellow triangular war bonnet or not, does not
come cheap. To qualify for the council of elders, the apprenticeship
lasts twenty-nine years.

As the party broke up, I ventured back toward the center of town,
on Main Street, and selected a bistro at random for a nightcap. Entry
took place through a side door only, like an old speakeasy, and it was
not until after I was inside that I discovered that I was in the midst of
what is known in Dallas as a gentlemen's club. No, not that kind of
place. Two things that the visitor is certain not to locate in Green Bay
are a gay bar and a Mormon temple. What I'm talking about here is a
showplace for topless female performers, although this appeared to be
a one-woman show. Positioned horizontally on a platform, the artist
performed a dance routine that would be regarded with alarm by
chaperones at a high school senior prom.

Her repertoire, by the way, proceeded entirely to the background
rhythms of Packers marching songs, including one semi-rap-style masterwork
sung by wide receiver Robert Brooks. A woman poked me in
the ribs. "Wanna buy a pretty girl a drink?" She made Dolly Parton
look like Twiggy. She wanted a tequila and tomato juice. I nodded,
then tiptoed past the cigarette machine, out the side door, and into the
brutal nocturnal chill of Green Bay.

Next door, in a more Christian atmosphere, a younger element of
Packers fandom got primed for the big game. Entertainment consisted

	10
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


of a guy who climbed onto the rectangular bar and traveled an obstacle
course at a full sprint without spilling anyone's drink. The stunt attracted
the attention of nobody. I approached the aspiring acrobat.
"'Hey, I'm from, uh, outta state, Texas actually, and wonder what might
be a good place to watch the Super Bowl tomorrow?"

The kid gave me the kind of look that a pot retailer would throw

down on somebody he suspected might be working undercover.
"You're not from Dallas, are you?" he asked.

"Oh, hell, no," I said. "Corpus Christi. Can't stand Dallas. Nobody
down there can."

"'Well, in that case, watch the goddamn game in here!" Then he
shouted, "Go, Pack!" and stumbled backward into a waitress, landing
adroitly on the back of his head.

At that moment I realized that the decision to visit Green Bay on
Super Sunday qualified as divinely inspired. Nowhere on the planet
existed more ardent and more distinctly joyous, uninhibited sports
fans, including those soccer wnssies in Italy and Brazil. Still, with the
kickoff of Super Bowl XXXI then slightly less than seventeen hours
away, common sense told me to retreat to the hotel.

Sunday would bring adrenaline, and Sunday would require stamina.
I had to be ready, because as Vince Lombardi himself so eloquently
pointed out, fatigue makes cowards of us all.


LAMBEAU FIELD, A structure of prodigious dignity that transmits a visceral
sense of grandeur and tradition, appeared to assume a fastidiously
proud posture in the late-morning hours of Super Bowl Sunday.
Beneath the bold lettering, GREEN BAY PACKERS, some college-age folks

played touch football on the snow-and-ice surface of the parking lot.
In this stately setting, a graceful quarterback with flowing golden hair
pitched a touchdown pass. The quarterback was female. This kind of
activity would not be found, or probably allowed, on the parking lot
outside Texas Stadium.

These Dallas-Green Bay contrasts grew more extreme by the
hour. Across the street, hundreds of fans poured into the Green Bay
Packer Hall of Fame, the only hall of fame in the known universe
devoted to only one team. Bob Harlan, the CEO of the nonprofit, fanowned
Packers, regards the essence of his job as "the preservation of a
national treasure." If that's the case, this Packer museum simplifies

THE ICE BOWL


that duty. Other than the Baseball Hall of Fame, I have never toured a
better designed or more complete special museum in the country.
The fan can find every morsel of memorabilia in here except the X rays
of Paul Hornung's neck injury that forced him to retire.

While hundreds of fans toured the Packer Hall of Fame, next
door thousands more streamed through the main entrance of the city
arena. For a set price Pack loyalists received a package deal that ineluded
one free drink and a special Super Bowl edition of the Milwaukee
Journal. Of course, these folks could have poured all the free
drinks they wanted at home. Still, after twenty-nine years of waiting
while the Miamis and the Pittsburghs and San Franciscos, and all
those times they endured the booming baritone of NBC's Dick Enberg:
"Dallas, your Cowboys are once again the champions of the
football world," the cork was about to pop from the bottle, and many
of these Pack fans wanted to be among a crowd to share the gladness.

On the topic of emancipation of corks from the necks of bottles,
the man at the cash register of a spirits emporium revealed that he had
sold more champagne on the morning of Super Bowl Sunday than the
previous nine or ten New Year's Eves combined. Another big hit:
collector bottles of a product called Packer Backer Brau. Someone at a
mierobrewery over in Appleton had rolled the dice before the regular
season and emblazoned SUPER BOWI Xxx across the label. Another
Cheesehead had passed the test of faith.

By Super Sunday even the pulpit professionals confirmed to the
town that, due in no small part to the power of prayer, a Green Bay
victory in New Orleans ranked as a done deal. The message board at
the First United Church of Christ proclaimed: a'we stJE Tmrcs--co)

AND THE PACK.

Particularly the Pack. According to the morning line, Green Bay
remained on the happy end of a 14-point spread over the Patriots,
while God was listed as only a 91/,-point favorite over Original Sin.

By two-thirty, light snow was falling on streets now mostly abandoned.
All oxwgen-breathing life-forms in Wisconsin had settled in to
witness the pregame show now in full swing on the Fox Network.
After touting the town, I had decided to watch the first half from a
typical corner bar--named, in fact, the Korner Bar. Then I planned to
watch the rest of the game from a sports bar right down the street--
Gipper's.

All of the regulars, plus one irregular (me), stood or sat in the

	12
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


Korner Bar, ready for the game, which was due to begin in ninety
minutes. But the minutes ticked past slowly. Outside, the little snowflakes
were becoming huge, and inside, the tension turned to raw
anxiety. The mood of the flight crew on the Enola Gay just before they
dropped the bomb must have been very much like this--the difference
(I presume, at least) being that the boys in the B-29 were not
totally plastered. In the Korner Bar they began to pace, like trial defendants
in a courtroom hallway awaiting a jury verdict. One guy killed
time by reciting the Packers' starting defensive eleven the last time
Green Bay had appeared in a Super Bowl. "Front four, that's easy.
Willie Davis, Henry Jordan, Ron Kostelnik and . . . goddamn. I can't
think of the other guy. I'll get back to the front four in a minute. The
linebackers were Ray Nitschke, of course, and Dave Robinson and
Lee Roy Caffey, and the secondary, that was Bob Jeter and Herb
Adderley on the corners and Tom Brown and Willie Wood at safety.
Now, back to the front four. Who was that other guy? Oh, yeah. Henry
Jordan."

"Nah," says his pal. "You already named Jordan."

"Goddamn, this is gonna drive me nuts," said the trivia expert,
except that in Green Bay this recitation hardly qualified as sports
trivia. Preschoolers are taught this material before they learn the alphabet.
Soon the eleventh name came to mind. "Aldridge! That's it!
Lionel Aldridge!"

Another regular, a man named Randy whom they all called Runner,
watched with amusement. I had been making idle chatter with
Runner, told him I was from Texas. He showed no curiosity whatsoever
in what had brought me to Green Bay today.

So I asked him, "You're a lifelong Packer fan. Were you, by any
chance, at the Ice Bowl game?'"

"No," said Runner. "That year I was in Vietnam. I listened to the
game on Armed Forces radio."

When the game finally began, the Korner Bar became racked
with intense mood swings. Right away, Favre hit Andre Rison with a
54-yard touchdown strike, and the room trembled. Doug Evans accomplished
a swoop-and-dive move that would have done credit to a
trapeze artist and intercepted a Drew Bledsoe pass. Ecstasy in the
Korner Bar.

But, as they like to say at the Wisconsin Academy of Fine Arts,
football imitates life. New England held Green Bay to a field goal,

THE ICE BOWL
	13


then delivered two sudden touchdowns. The Packers trailed by four
points, and every glass of beer in the state of Wisconsin suddenly
tasted flat. Hardly anyone remained seated now, and most of the men
assumed a Ray Nitschke stance on every play, leaning forward with all
the weight on the balls of their feet.

Soon Favre lofted a first-down pass down the right sideline to
Antonio Freeman. Antonio, on cruise control, murmured adieu to the
Patriots secondary on an 81-yard touchdown journey. The Koruer Bar
was mystically changed into an isle of bliss. That play did not happen
solely because of the expertise of the Green Bay offense. The patrons
of the Korner Bar willed it to happen.

For my pal Bunner, the thrill of the moment was embellished
when he won a door-prize raffle, a Packers sweatshirt. "First thing I've
ever won in my life," he said. "And imagine that. A Packer shirt on the
day they win the Super Bowl."

The remainder of the half became a textbook kick-butt exhibition
on the part of the Pack. After two quarters the heroes gained control,
27-14. I told Bunner that I was heading to another spa for the second
half. "Hey," he said, "take the Packer shirt. Take it back to Texas with
you and tell 'em hello from Green Bay."

On the quick drive over to Gipper's sports bar (probably called
that because Curly Lambeau played in the same Notre Dame backfield
with George Gipp), the notion occurred to me that the last thing
the city of Green Bay needed this time of year was about four more
inches of snow. But that was what it would get. On this occasion,
though, the big flakes looked like confetti pouting down in Charles
Lindbergh's welcome-home parade. The rock 'n" roll Super Bowl half
time boomed from the television set. James Brown bellowed out his
old hit "I Feel Good." Hell, James Brown just thought he felt good.
He should have been inside Gipper's.

Festivities hit a lull during the third quarter. On a fourth-and-one
gamble, a Packers running play got stuffed. The ball cartier, Dorsey
Levens, lost seven yards.

Seven plays later, New England's Curtis Martin banged through
the middle of the Packer defense for 18 yards and a touchdown to cut
the Green Bay lead to 27-21. Full glasses reached awaiting mouths in
world record time and grown men swallowed hard. Girlfriends and
Wives looked at their boyfriends and husbands with expressions of


/



	14
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


concern. These women all thought the same thing: "If the Packers
blow this game, I'm in for a long winter."

One commercial later, the crowd's fears evaporated. Desmond
Howard caught the kickoff from the Patriots' Adam Vinatieri, followed
a blocking wedge until he found his lane of escape ("running to daylight,"
Vince Lombardi used to call it), and then seemed propelled into
overdrive by some unseen catapult. Howard completed his 99yard
mission in what seemed like about six seconds fiat. Gipper's sports bar
began to vibrate.

When the Pack had finally won, 35-21, consecrating its season
long compact with its adoring support base, a fan named A1, who had
driven in from New Franken, recalled, "I was in grade school when
they played that Ice Bowl. My family listened to the game on the radio
because in those days the TV home games were blacked out in this
area. When the Cowboys took the lead in the fourth quarter, I started
crying. I guess I've thought about that game maybe every day since. In
some ways," A1 said, "that seems like an eternity ago, and other ways it
seems like only yesterday."

America's Cheeseheads jammed the thoroughfares and tangoed
on the sidewalks. The Fox River, frozen into ivory concrete, would
thaw before the party subsided. On Monday, they packed Lambeau
Field to greet the team, which arrived late. Nobody cared. After
twenty-nine years, what difference did a couple of hours make? In
weather that would have sent Sir Edmund Hillary scurrying off to
Palm Springs, people sat in an arena where no game was taking place
and chanted, "Repeat! Repeat!'"

The "drinking town" aspect of Green Bay's identity may or may
not persist into eternity, but the football problem seems gone forever.
And, you know, it was just what I wanted. A sort of purification process
for this old sinner from Sin Town.

CHAPTER


r


A raise COLLECTIBLE in the archives of NFL Films shows that rarest of
events, one in which the winning determinant of the annual championship
game of the pro football universe teeters on one final climactic
play. It's December 30, 1966, and the Green Bay Packers are playing
the Dallas Cowboys for the National Football League championship.
Here it comes. The Dallas Cowboys, down by seven, can force overtime
by scoring from the Green Bay Packer three-yard line.

Grantland Rice, the poet laureate of American sportswriters, offered
the phrase "braying bedlam" to describe the crowd scene during
the storied "long-count" episode at the Jack Dempsey-Gene Tunney
heavyweight rematch in Chicago in 1926. The nearest approximation
to that, in my experience as a sportswriter, came with the thunder that
echoed on the field at the Cotton Bowl as Don Meredith brought the
Cowboys from the huddle.

Meredith took the snap and rolled to his right. Before the quarterback
could locate an open receiver, Packer linebacker Dave Robinson
surged through a crack in the Dallas offensive line. Instantly,
Robinson found Meredith's skinny East Texas country boy neck in the
grasp of his large left paw. Meredith could only fling the football
sidearm into heavy crisscrossing traffic in the end zone. A Dallas quarterback
who would emerge a decade later, Roger Staubach, would
accomplish sports immortality by scoring miracle touchdowns with
blind heaves like this one.

Don Meredith, more accustomed to a Bloody Mary than a Hail
Mary, experienced no such luck. In the back of the end zone, a player
wearing number 40 for the Packers, Tom Brown, intercepted the pass,
and in the process preserved the historic context of the Green Bay

	16
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


football dynasty. Freeze-frame Tom Brown's interception. Crouched
about eight feet away, just beyond the back of the end zone, there's a
guy in a black London Fog overcoat. That's me. If Brown hadn't
caught the ball, I would have.

My job that afternoon in Dallas was to visit the Packers locker
room and gather postgame comments. Usually, the winning dressing
quarters after the NFL championship game present a show of less
than elegant and completely unbridled exuberance. I could remember
the scene on TV just three years earlier. The Chicago Bears, having
rendered New York Giants quarterback Y. A. Tittle a battered and
broken heap, poured bottled beer over each other's heads and sang an
anthem of praise to their coach, George Halas: "Hooray for George!
Hooray at last! Hooray for George--he's a horse's ass!"

The setting that I encountered in the Packer locker room, located
at the end of a ramp beneath the stands in the south end zone of the
Cotton Bowl, wasn't at all that way. The Pack seemed almost subdued.
Of the entire forty-player roster, the only one not smoking a cigarette
was Bart Starr, the quarterback. They all appeared eager to get the
hell out of Dallas.

You have to remember that the coach of this entourage was Vince
Lombardi, a man with gleaming teeth and a heart allegedly forged of
stainless steel. Toleration of postgame rejoicing did not rank high in
the table of contents of Lombardi's book of disciplines. Not when
some games remained on the Packers' schedule. For the first time in
professional football history, the NFL championship game no longer
stood out as the summit match. Now the winner had to trudge off to
an anticlimactic contest known as the Super Bowl (although in its
inaugural season it was called the NFL-AFL championship game). So
the Pack's mission still not complete, the locker-room disposition presented
something less than unrestrained joy. Also, the fact that the
upstart, fancy-pants Cowboys had pinned them to the ropes at the
finish was not easy to digest.

Offensive guard Jerry Kramer, with dried blood caked on his lips
and teeth, announced that while he was certain the Packer defense
would somehow keep the onrushing Cowboys out of Green Bay's
fourth-quarter end zone, he conceded relief now that it was over.

Paul Hornung, the Green Bay golden boy, reflected on that. Nobody,
including Hornung himself, knew at the time that he had just
played his last game. Nerve damage in his neck would keep him out of

THE ICE BOWL
	17


the game against the ALL champion, and after that doetors would
insist that he retire.

The golden boy, without his pads, presented an upper torso that
defied the Adonis image. To his teammates, in fact, Hornung was
known as Goat Shoulders. Nov Hornung, pulling on a deep drag from
his menthol Salem, remarked on the sensation of absolute anxiety that
he'd felt the instant before Meredith's fourth-down pass sailed awry.
"The Cowboys had all the momentum in the world there at the end
and with all that incredible crowd noise, if the game had gone into
overtime, well . . ."

Earlier that afternoon, Kansas City had beaten the Buffalo Bills
(thus inuring Bills quarterback Jack Kemp to the sensation of major
defeat later in the center ring) and now were set up as the sacrificial
goat in this first ever NFL-AFL championship game. Just before leaving
the press box at the Cotton Bowl to head down to the field and
then into the locker room to gather my quotes, I'd ripped a story from
the old AP teletype. It contained quotes from the Chiefs' Fred Williamson
that predicted, "Whether we play the Packers or the Cowboys,
the NFL is in for a bitter shock when they play KC."

I presented that strip of yellow wire copy to middle linebaeker
Ray Nitsehke and asked him for a comment. From a distance, on TV,
Nitsehke's face looked like something that had been transported down
from the side of Mount Fushmore. Up close, that countenance appeared
as clusters of sear tissue situated around the cheekbones and
eyebrows that surrounded a nose that was a mass of tangled cartilage.

Nitsehke read Williamson's bold and, ultimately, foolhardy comments,
and that face took on an even more sinister aspect. "That
guy"--and here Nitsehke paused ominously--"is getting ready to find
out who the Green Bay Packers are and what we represent."

Lombardi, standing on a chair, presented a cheerful message to
the assembled media: "All right, you guys have had enough time. Clear
out. Get the hell outta here!" Lombardi, for all of his Old World, hard
guy bombast, realized that had it not been for dumb luck, his destiny
as the winning coach in the first ever NFL-AFL ehampionship match
and media gala probably would have been denied him.

On that fourth-and-three crisis and the ensuing Dallas mishap
that decided the game, Tom Landry, the automaton Cowboys coach,
had dispatched the wrong players onto the field, and two of them were
aligned in a formation that did not coincide with the play call. As a

	18
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


result, nobody was in a position to block the blitzing Dave Robinson,
who had waltzed untouched into the Cowboys' backfield. Landry later
would speculate that Bullet Bob Hayes, amid the crowd noise, had
misunderstood the instructions when he went onto the field to transfer
the play call to Meredith.

In the Packers" dressing room moments after the game,

the media people had been allowed to flood in, Lombardi approached
Dave Robinson. The coach was grinning, and Robinson anticipated a
rare postgame accolade. Instead, Robinson recalled years later, Lombardi
said, "Dave, you weren't supposed to blitz on that play."

From small fiascos, they say, great plays are made. So Green Bay
traveled to Southern California and made football history, stampeding
the Chiefs, 34-10. Receiver Max McGee, one of the few players on
the Packers' roster who could compete with Paul Hornung in the party
league, had been pressed into service when Boyd Dowler got hurt.
McGee wound up the star of the game, catching two touchdown
passes. After the game Lombardi approached McGee and said, "Max,
you drive me crazy. You make these great behind-the-back circus
catches, and then you turn around and drop the passes that are thrown
right on the numbers."

"Maybe that's because I don't get much practice catching passes
right on the numbers," countered McGee, who could talk to the coach
that way because he was not much younger than Lombardi.

Ray Nitschke's promise to Fred Williamson, that he would learn
who the Packers were and what they represented, took shape in the
second half. The Hammer got trampled by a Green Bay power sweep,
was relieved of his senses, and left the floor of the L.A. Coliseum on a
stretcher.

What the Packers did not understand after the game, and probably
still don't, was that their second-string fullback, Jim Grabowski,
served as the catalyst for the game's even being played in the first
place. Grabowski, although he may not have realized it himself, was a
principal backstage character in a sequence of events that led to the
merger of the National and American Football Leagues.

One year earlier, when the NFL-AFL bidding war for prime college
draft choices was at full throttle, the Dallas Cowboys wanted to
sign Grabowski, who, like Ray Nitschke and Dick Butkas, was a star at
Illinois. "In Dallas, we were used to signing whatever players we
wanted," remembered Tex Schramm, the Cowboys' president and

HE ICE BOWL 19


general manager, who for nearly three decades served as the shadow
commissioner of the National Football League. Schramm had given
Pete Rozelle his first job in pro football. "But Grabowski had an agent.
He was one of the first players to use one. And after we learned his
financial demands, we knew we couldn't sign him.

"The Packers--because of their peculiar public ownership structure
by which the profits are never disbursed to the stockholders---had
tons of money, a whole lot of cash. So for them drafting and signing
players like Grabowski was not necessarily a problem.

"But that wasn't the case in, say, Pittsburgh. Because of this bidding
war against the ALL, the teams on the low end of the finance
chain were using first-round drafts on guys who should have been in
the third or fourth round, because they were the only ones they could
afford. By the end of the 1965 season, the draft was totally predicated
on whether you could sign your player.

"After [the Cowboys] learned that we couldn't sign Jim Grabow
ski, we flew John Niland, a guard, from Iowa to Washington, D.C.,
where the Cowboys were playing the Redskins. I didn't even go to the
game. I spent the entire day in a hotel negotiating with John Niland.
We signed him, and the next day we drafted him.

"So it had become obvious that the system that had made the
league was gone, and, more sooner than later, just a few teams would
own everybody."

Schramm said, "I went to Pete and said, 'We've gotta do something
and I have got an idea. I can pull off the merger, but I'll be the
only person involved from our league [the NFL], and the only person
I'll talk to is you. And I'll pick one other man from the other league,
and he'll have to make the same promise.' And Pete agreed."

From the very day that the upstart ALL was organized in 1960,
the NFL establishment had launched active efforts to smother the life
out of the infant rival league. In an owners' meeting, George Halas of
the Bears offered what he deemed a delightful suggestion. Halas's idea
was to place an NFL expansion franchise in Dallas. At that time the ALL Texans were regarded as the linchpin operation of the new
league. It was Halas's hope that competition would kill the Texans and
that the American Football League would die with them. After three
seasons the Texans did indeed leave Dallas for Kansas City (for a time
OWner Lamar Hunt wanted to call the team the Kansas City Texans),
but the American Football League remained afloat.

T	20
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


Naturally, the person that Tex Sehramm selected to negotiate the
AFL's interests in the merger was none other than Lamar Hunt. "We
met initially at Love Field [the Dallas airport] in the lobby beneath the
statue of the Texas Ranger [inscribed "One Riot--One/anger"], and
then we went outside and talked in my car. Later, all of the meetings
were at Lamar Hunt's house, and after a few weeks the deal was
done," Schramm said.

"When the negotiations came to an end, the plan called for the
Jets to move out of New York and for Oakland to move away from the
Bay Area. This had been agreed to and approved by both leagues. But
at the last minute we were afraid of legal complications, so we changed
the deal to money."

According to Schramm, that involved indemnity payments from
the ALL to the San Francisco 49ers for $8 million and the New York
Giants for $10 million, paid out over eighteen years. Also, the Giants
would receive an extra first-round draft choice that would be used to
bring in a marquee quarterback capable of competing with the Jets'
Joe Namath.

The plan also called for the creation of what is now known as the
Super Bowl. "At first the franchise structure was to remain as it was in
1966," revealed Schramm. "But then A1 Davis out in Oakland made an
impassioned plea. I'll never forget this, he said, 'What am I going to
say when I wake up in the morning, my kids look at the newspaper and
they say, "Daddy, why have we [the AFL] only got eight teams and
they [the NFL] have twelve teams?" What'll I tell my kids?' So it was
agreed to send three existing NFL franchises over to the ALL. We
asked for volunteers and there were no takers. So we offered $3 million,
and Cleveland, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh agreed to make the
switch. And that," concluded Schramm, "is how the great NFL-AFL
merger took place."

One might wonder how one individual like Tex Schramm, the
general manager of a franchise located on the horizontal prairie of
North Texas, light-years from the media centers in New York and L.A.,
could throw around that kind of influence in the political structure
within the National Football League. But Tex Schramm was never just
another GM, just as he was never just another sportswriter after he
graduated with his journalism degree from the University of Texas in
Austin.

It has been written that in order for someone to be called Tex, he

THE ICE BOWL 21


first must move away from Texas. In Schramm's case, the name on his
birth certificate reads "Texas E. Schramm, Junior." "Tex told me that,
as a kid, he was hyperactive, although they didn't call it that at the
time," said Frank Luksa, a Dallas sportswriter who covered the Cowboys
almost from the beginning days of the franchise. "Never could sit
still, certainly never long enough to read a book. The only way that he
finished college was that his wife, Marty, would read the course material
to him out loud."

By his senior year at UT, Schramm was the sports editor. Not of
the college paper, the Daily Texan, but of the big-city paper, the Austin
Statesman. Schramm's father had been a business associate of Dan
Reeves (not to be confused with the football coach), a well-heeled
wheel horse in L.A, who bought the Cleveland Rams and moved the
team to the coast in the late 1940s. Schramm, who had personal ambitions
that did not coincide with the salary of a sportswriter, secured a
job as the PR director of the Los Angeles Rams. By the mid-1950s
Schramm essentially was running the team. He understood what most
NFL executives did not at that time: Professional football, using television
as its power source, was poised to become a tremendous growth
industry in the entertainment world. While Schramm was working for
Dan Reeves, pro football and television had been dating, but they had
not yet gone to bed. "Up until then pro football had failed to capture
the public imagination," Schramm said. "It was just catching on when
the Bears beat the Redskins 73-0 in the 1940 championship game.
But the war came along, and people lost interest again."

Even throughout the 1950s, on-the-field fighting was as prevalent
in pro football as it was in the National Hockey League. Promoters
assumed that this was what the public wanted. "Most of the teams
maintained some kind of haphazard TV arrangement," Schramm said.
"George Preston Marshall, owner of the Redskins, had one of the
better setups, a network that covered the entire southern United
States. It wasn't by chance that the Redskins were the last team in the
league to integrate. They also had this huge band, dressed in Indian
costumes, and before every game they would march up and down the
field playing 'Dixie,' if you can imagine that."

In 1957, Tex Schramm took a job as an associate producer with
CBS Sports and moved to New York. Schramm says that he made the
move partly because Dan Reeves was drinking heavily, and life at the
Rams" headquarters often seemed too hectic. Before abandoning L.A.,

	22
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


Schramm handpicked another ex-journalist, Pete Rozelle, to

him as the Rams' general manager.

At CBS, which owned the TV rights to the NFL telecasts,
Schramm quickly became an innovator. It was Schramm who convinced
the network to buy the rights to the 1960 Winter Olympics at
Squaw Valley, California, and it was Schramm who convinced Walter
Cronkite to work as an anchorman for a sporting event. The U.S. ice
hockey team upset the Soviets for the gold medal, and CBS celebrated
a ratings coup.

When NFL commissioner Bert Bell died suddenly in 1959,
Schramm convinced the league to think ahead. With the league now
experiencing unprecedented popular appeal, the last thing it needed
was some stodgy coot from the old school running the show. Think
young, Schramm told the league. Bring in some bright kid. Somebody
like Pete Rozelle.

Things were happening fast in Tex's life. When the NFL hastily
acted on George Halas's idea to place an expansion franchise in Dallas
in 1960, Tex sensed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The person who
agreed to finance the franchise, Clint Murchison, Jr., was a billionaire
back when a billion was a lot of cabbage. Murchison let it be known to
Schramm that he had no interest in actively participating in the operations
of the team. Tex gazed into the future, and what he perceived
was power and influence. He packed his bags.

Dallas, Texas, had become the ideal grazing land for persons of
Tex Schramm's tastes and temperament. Since the end of World War
II, Dallas had been the center of the largest metropolitan area in the
entire world that did not have access to a seaway.

Why? There was no heavy industry in Dallas. No manufacturing
at all, to speak of. Dallas County and Tarrant County (Fort Worth)
were the only counties in Texas that had never produced an oil well.
The landscape offered no particular appeal. You could find bigger
trees on the moon. The city was bisected by a muddy little stream
called the Trinity River, with water that looked like gingerbread batter.
In the summer the heat reached levels that melted people's fingernails.
About three hundred years ago, the Spanish explorers actually
tried to ride camels through the region, and they all died of heat
exhaustion.

So why this boom town amid all this apparent nothingness? The
answer: When Jesus chased all of the money changers out of the tern
THE ICE BOWL


pie, they all moved to Dallas--international headquarters of opportunists,
hucksters, and people who like to play cards.

Dallas is insurance, banks, investment houses, advertising and
PR, civil law, fashion retail, and every other known activity that does
not require hard work. In a TV show called Dallas, on which supposedly
prototypical Texans were portrayed, actor Larry Hagman, as J. R.
Ewing, pranced around each week in a cowboy hat and boots. In
reality, nobody of consequence in the mercantile realm of Big D
would be caught dead in a getup like that. Dallas is the realm of the
coin. Several counties away, off to the south and the east, in the 1930s,
some promoters discovered an oil pool approximately the size of the
Caspian Sea. When a Japanese naval officer named Isoroku Yamamoto
toured North America and beheld the magnitude of the East Texas oil
eld, he returned home and discouraged military leaders from attempting
conflict with the United States. He realized that the Japanese
war machine would eventually run out of gas and that the United
States would not.

The men who reaped ungodly fortunes from that oil patch came
to Dallas to bank and invest the money. Two such individuals were the
fathers of Clint Murehison and Lamar Hunt. As the story goes, once
upon a time there was a Texan so rich that he bought a little boy so
that his dog would have someone to play with. That would not have
been completely out of the question in Dallas. Not all of the rich
Texans lived in Dallas. But they would fly in from someplace like
Midland, drop fifty grand at Neiman Marcus on shoes and perfume,
and fly back out again.

Not surprisingly, the homecoming queens from one out of every
two high schools within a seven-hundred-mile radius would soon find
the way to Dallas, the kind of young women who always keep their
noses to the rhinestone. Finding a woman in Dallas who is actually
from Dallas is not easy.

In January 1960, one more pretty face arrived in town. Alicia
Landry could have been a movie star. That's what everybody said.
When Vince Lombardi, Jr., was growing up in New York, he had a
hopeless crush on the wife of the defensive coordinator who coached
the Giants along with his father, before he moved to Green Bay. "I
thought that she was"--and here Lombardi pauses for a moment to
select the appropriate word--"neat."

It would be inaccurate to suggest that Clint Murchison would

	24
	MIKE SHBOPSHIRE


have hired Tom Landry whether he had known how to coach or not.
But everybody agreed that Tom--a former football star at UT who was
flying a B-17 in combat missions over Europe at age nineteen--and
Alieia made a handsome couple.

With Tex building the business operation, Tom constructing the
football portion of it, and Clint writing the cheeks, a prudent betting
man could only presume that the franchise was here to stay. Even with
those assets in place, the Dallas Cowboys of the early years struggled
mightily. While Halas and the others had been quick to establish the
team, Papa Bear would also see to it that the new team would pose no
threat in the win column.

The new franchise did not participate in the league draft prior to
its first season. The entire roster started out composed of castoffs and
orthopedic disasters from the other twelve teams. Typical was halfback
L. G. (Long Gone) Dupre, who had been a starter for the Colts in
their heralded overtime championship win over the New York Giants.
What was long gone by now was Dupre's ability to cut upfield for a
first down.

Landry's quarterback, Eddie LeBaron, looked more like a jockey
than an NFL passer. The 1960 Cowboys played and lost the first
eleven games on the schedule. In the twelfth game, the season finale
at Yankee Stadium, they managed a 31-31 tie.

During the off-season, however, Landry quickly determined that
the talent deficit between his team and the rest of the league was so
significant that no quick fix would happen soon. The team did draft the
cornerstone of its defense, Bob Lilly from TCU, after that ridiculous
campaign, and the Gowboys upset the Steelers with a whirlwind finish
in the 1961 season opener. After that it was business as usual.

For the second straight year, Dallas's top draft choice came from
Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. At six seven, Sonny Gibbs,
unlike Eddie LeBaron, at least looked like an NFL quarterback. It was
Gibbs, on media day at TCU, who told reporters of his desire to
graduate from college. "I want to get that pigskin, or sheepskin, or
whatever the fuek you call it," he said. Sonny Gibbs did not turn out to
be Tom Landry's kind of guy. The only contributor in the entire draft
was defensive end George Andrie, selected sixth. After two seasons the
Dallas Cowboys were stuck in reverse.

The on-the-field difficulty was amplified by the Cowboys' uniforms.
White helmets, white pants that drooped in the butt, stars on

THE ICE BOWL "25


the shoulders. The team looked like a bunch of dorks. The Cowboys
were running a dead heat with the Denver Broncos, who played in
socks with vertical stripes, for the tackiest uniforms in professional
sports.

"I designed those uniforms," conceded Tex Schramm, "and they
were a . . • bad try.'" Then he quickly took credit for drawing up the
new look, the sleek silver and blue that premiered with the opening of
the regular season in 1964 and became the trademark for the team
that finally became one of the sparkle franchises in North America.

"The team was shitty, but Tex maintained great damage control,"
said sportswriter Frank Luksa of the early years. "He understood the
media and how to manage them better than any executive in the history
of sports. That's why he insisted to Rozelle that Dallas play in the
NFL East. He wanted to go against the Giants and Redskins twice a
year because that's where the media were.

"He would fly the Dallas reporters to the road games at the Cowboys'
expense, just to expand the coverage. We had total access, always,
to the players and the staff." In those early years, Southwest
Conference football ruled the sports pages, and high school football
served as a second religion for much of the population. The Cowboys,
in fact, were fighting the Garland Owls and the Arlington Heights
Yellow Jackets for headlines in the Dallas and Fort Worth papers.

As a goodwill gesture, Tex saw to it that key writers were invited
to Clint Murchison's private island off Florida for a week of fun and
fishing. On the road, the media were wined, dined, and wined some
more. On one memorable occasion, an overserved photographer for a
Dallas newspaper invited himself to join the table of Tom and Alicia
Landry at Bookbinder's restaurant in Philadelphia and proceeded to
pass out, face first, into a bowl of minestrone. Henceforth the Soup
Nose Award was presented annually to the member of the Cowboys
media corps who made the biggest ass of himself on the road.

For coach Tom Landry, it could not be said that the early years of
the franchise were especially rewarding.

CHAPTER


ONE Olz THE PRIME BENEFITS Of working as a columnist for the

Worth Press, other than the spectacular salary that eventually allowed
me to become a major shareholder in Whitewater Savings and Loan,
was the opportunity to meet and interview a fair number of major
celebrities. The late 1960s proved to be a particularly active time for
that stuff, when I shared my insights with everybody from the
Nun to Big Lyndon himself. I spent an entire afternoon sitting in
house trailer in Colorado Springs, drinking scotch with Lucille
who said, "People can say what they want to about Desi Arnaz,
when it comes to business sense, he's the smartest son of a bitch
ever walked into Hollywood."

But the one encounter that sticks foremost in my mind

in 1968 when I sat down at my assigned seat in the press box at
Cotton Bowl and noticed that the person at my immediate left
Vince Lombardi. Green Bay had come to Dallas to play the
and by then Lombardi had retired as the coach but was still working
the Packers' general manager and thus was relegated upstairs.
body doubted that the image of the man's forceful presence
to be something that was enlarged by the media, I can report that,
close range, the Lombardi personality offered all of the dynamic
ties that the newspapers described.

As many books have been written (or so it seems) about
Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers as about Abraham Lincoln
the Civil War. People recall that in that season, 1968, living in s{
imposed exile left Lombardi far from his cherished terrain along
Packer sidelines, and Lombardi became withdrawn, sullen,

Lombardi seemed anything but like a saddened and

THE ICE BOWL 27


franchised man during that Packers-Cowboys game. Although the season
had advanced to a point where it was clear that the Paekers were
headed into a steep decline ("Seven games into the year and they still
stink," Lombardi muttered when the Pack fell behind 10-0), they
managed to upset the Cowboys, and half of downtown Dallas could
have been lit up on the energy that Lombardi seemed to radiate as the
game progressed. On one play, when the Packers ran their power
sweep---the trademark of Lombardi football jurisdiction halfback
Elijah Pitts took the football from Bart Starr and had not run two steps
when Vince jumped to his feet and shouted, "He's gone!" Lombardi
sat down, quickly and sheepishly, realizing that he had violated the "no
cheering in the press box" edict. But Pitts was gone, by God, on a
touchdown run of about fifty or sixty yards. In the proximity of greatness
like that, I almost felt impelled to ask Lombardi for his autograph.
In the ranks of the sportswriter fraternity, that's a hanging offense. But
at halftime I rode the elevator downstairs, bought a beer (they didn't
serve any in the press box) and delivered it to the coach. Even though
he didn't want it, it seemed like the right thing to do. Lomhardi appeared
absorbed with the events on the Cotton Bowl floor during the
half. When a float carrying some young women rolled onto the field in
a typical Dallas tit-and-ass show, Lombardi exclaimed, "'What the
hell's that?" and grabbed his binoculars. Then he grinned and said,
"No harm in looking."

When the game was over and I was leaving the Packers' dressing
room after conducting the standard interviews, Lombardi saw me and
actually smiled and waved. If you'd have put a mustache and a cowboy
hat on Vinee when he smiled, you'd have had a spitting image of Teddy
Roosevelt. Lombardi had less than two years to live, but there was an
allure about the man that left an indelible impression--a do-the-rightthing
kind of person. He made me feel almost ashamed that, twenty
minutes before the game, I'd been out in the Cotton Bowl parking lot
scalping my comp tickets for thirty bucks.

Mmost three decades later, I was on the telephone with Vince
Lombardi, Jr. The coach's son lived in the Seattle area, where he had
moved to work as an executive for the Seahawks football team. Now
he traveled the country as a professional motivational speaker. I asked
Lombardi about the television ad campaign for a shoe company that
used a comedian to portray his father.

Lombardi Junior said that a friend of his who writes books, a

	"28
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


fellow named David Halberstam, had called him recently, all upset.
Halberstam thought the commercials had crossed the parody line and
entered the land of sacrilege. "I told David that I actually thought the
spots were reasonably entertaining and that Jerry Stiller had done a
really proficient job in portraying my father. I approved the spots. And
my family was compensated for that promotion, too. Not a princely
sum--but enough," he confirmed.

The fact that Lombardi, or at least the memory of a figure from
what now certainly qualifies as the distant past, would be selected as a
focal point of a major and multimillion-dollar marketing push, seems
remarkable. You damn sure don't see any comic actors playing LBJ to
hawk, say, Goodyear Tires. And while I probably won't be around to
collect, I am willing to cast a small wager that thirty years hence, there
will not be any Jimmy Johnson impersonators selling Bud Lite.

Willie Davis, the Hall of Fame defensive tackle for the

has said, "To me, Vince Lombardi never left, never died."

Willie is right.


SOMEBODY ONCE POINTED out that modern America has evolved into
only society in the history of the earth that takes money more
than death. If that indeed has become the case, then imagine a
munity like Green Bay, where they take football more seriously
money and death is a joke. At the Lyndahl Funeral Home, people
get planted in green-and-gold caskets.

The most unusual enduring entry in the history of big
professional sports in the United States started in 1921 when
Lambeau, a frustrated ex-jock, staged a meeting in the
room of the Green Bay Press-Gazette and organized a team. Curly
played in the same backfield with George Gipp at Notre Dame,
missed the grandeur of playing before a crowd. Besides,
had become the law of the land, and Lambeau thought the folks
Green Bay might need a new recreational distraction.

After assembling his team, Lambeau made a sales call at
Indian Pacldng Company in Green Bay. Nowhere is it recorded
Lambeau told them that he wanted to go out and "win a few
the Gipper up there in heaven." But Curly walked out with a
that would buy the football team's uniforms---on the stipulation

THE ICE BOWL
	29


sponsor that the team would be known as the Packers. Green Bay
Packers. Nice ring, nice strong consonant sounds.

Curly had put up $50 of his own money to purchase an entry fee
in what was known as the American Professional Football Association,
and his Packers went unbeaten that year, 1921--up until the last
game, which they lost, 6-0. One must dig deeply into the dusty files to
learn that the Pack's first ever loss (nowhere is it inscribed in Lambeau
Field) came at the hands of a team that called itself the Beloit Fairies.

Fans passed the hat at Packers games that season. Lambeau collected
enough to fund the team again when it joined something called
the National Football League. Professional football of that era ranked
with the two-headed pygmies and the fat lady in a carnival tent show
in terms of public esteem, a situation that persisted to some extent into
the 1950s. While pioneer franchises in venues like Pottsville, Hammond,
Racine, and Duluth passed away quickly of natural causes,
the people of Green Bay forged an early bond with their Packers.
Lambeau refinanced his team in 1923 with the funds from a dance and
rally at the Elks Club. People showed up for that event rather than
listen to the Jack Dempsey-Louis Firpo heavyweight fight on the radio
the same night.

By then, Curly owned a real gate attraction, a running star named
John McNally, who played under the stage name of Johnny Blood.
When McNally and a companion came to Green Bay, McNally had
suggested that they use aliases. As they drove past a movie house,
McNally noticed that the silent film epic Blood and Sand was playing.
"That's it," McNally told his friend. "You be Sand and I'll be Blood."

The Lambeau-Blood partnership became a grand alliance.
Lambeau, the player-owner-coach, offered Blood a hefty wage of $100
a game on the stipulation that Blood arrive in time for the kickoff and
$110 if he agreed to remain sober the night before the game. "I'll take
the hundred," Blood agreed. A kindred spirit with Blood in certain
aspects, Lambeau devoted more and more of his off-season hours to
frolics with the pretty people in Hollywood and New York. Johnny
Blood liked to recite Shakespeare, and ran for sheriff in Green Bay on
a campaign that promised the restoration of "honest wrestling." Both
were avid outdoorsmen, forever on the quest of the trophy skirt.

They were the best of teams. They were the worst of teams. In
1929, 1930, and 1931, the Green Bay Packers won the National Foot
b League championship. After big wins on the road, Packers fans

	30
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


would gather after midnight to greet the team train, lining the tracks
and carrying torches. Whenever Curly's finances became thin, he
could always rely on the Packer backers to bail him out. The ultimate
bailout happened in 1950, when the fans bought the team. About
1,900 investors bought stock at $25 a share, the stipulation being that
nobody could own more than twenty shares. If the team were
sold, a stipulation in the corporate charter dictated that profits
be forwarded to the Sullivan-Wallen American Legion post in
Bay.

In the cold days of early February 1959, the board made a
sion that drastically and forever altered the future of the franchise
the league. After the Packers had completed a 1-10-1 season in
embarrassing the stockholders and shaming the town, it was
that Coach Scooter McLean had to be replaced.

Tony Canadeo, a Packers fullback in the days when
Lambeau was still coaching, had become a person of influence
the Packers' executive committee. Paul Brown, coach of the almi
Cleveland Browns, issued a hot tip to Canadeo. If the Packers were
truly intent upon retooling the team, Brown told Canadeo, the
man who could expedite the task could be found in New York,
he worked as an assistant coach with the Giants. He ran the
Canadeo had heard of Vince Lombardi, but only as a guard on
famous line that somebody had named "the Seven Blocks of
at Fordham College.

A possible hang-up loomed: Jim Lee Howell was due to
soon as the Giants' head coach, and Lombardi was rumored as
likely replacement. Another potential drawback was the actuality
Lombardi and his wife, Marie, were a couple devoted to city life. A
question lingered as to whether this duo might be willing to move
to a town that billed itself as "the toilet paper capital of the world."

After one meeting with the board, the members from Green
were immediately convinced that Vince was their boy. They were delighted
with his eagerness to plunge into the head-coaching ranks
the NFL. He signed a five-year contract.

Lee Remmel, who was helping to cover the Packers at the
for the Green Bay Press-Gazette, remembers his first exposure
Vince Lombardi. "'They held a press conference to announce his hiring
at a downtown Green Bay hotel. I didn't know who he was.
was nationally obscure, and I was surprised at how confident he was

THE ICE BOWL
	31


his ability to succeed. He said, 'You are going to be proud of this

Green Bay team because I will be proud of this team.'

"And he was right."

Lombardi's background was a little peculiar for an NFL head
coach, then or now. Vince had devoted years to coaching at Saint
Cecilia High School in Englewood, New Jersey. High school coaches
seldom, if ever, become head coaches in the NFL. Lombardi received
the opportunity that changed his life when Colonel Earl "Red" Blaik
hired Vince as an assistant at West Point.

If Blaik's Army teams were not the best teams in the land, they
were close to it. Blaik himself told an oft-repeated story concerning
Lombardi and his temper. First week on the job, Vince was attempting
to correct the work habits of one of his linemen, and the coach was
doing it Lombardi style. Just as he seemed poised to peel the kid's
skull, Blaik sprinted across the practice field. "'Vincet. Vincet.'" he
screamed. "We don't coach that way at West Point["

Perhaps that incident at the academy led to Lombardi's willingness
to accept the head coach post at Green Bay. Now he could coach
any damn way he pleased.

An offensive tackle laboring for the Packers, Forrest Gregg, was
like Lee Remmel. He'd never heard of Vince Lombardi. "I was living
in and working in Dallas in the off-season, and the papers didn't cover
the NFL like they do now. But I saw a little item in the sports section
that said that Lombardi had been hired as head coach of the Packers. I
had a friend, Tiny Goss (about six-foot-seven and 290 pounds) who I
had played with at SMU and he'd gone on to play with the Giants for a
couple of years. I called him and asked him if he knew anything about
Lombardi. He said, 'Yeah. I know him. He's a real bastard.' So naturally,
before I reported to training camp, I was curious about who I
would encounter."

Lombardi, on the other hand, held no curiosity about Forrest
Gregg. He knew what he had. When Lombardi took charge, he devoted
his first weeks to the dismal chore of studying game films of the
Packers" 1-10-1 campaign. Then Lombardi reported to the board of
directors and announced, "Gentlemen, there is only one professional
football player in the whole organization. It's that number 75
Gregg.' ....

Of Course, Gregg never knew about that evaluation. It was just as
well. Just because Forrest Gregg might be the one player that Lom
	32
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


bardi had somehow come to respect in no way meant that the coach
would cut him any slack on the practice field. The previous season,
some of the veterans had conned Coach McLean into the notion that
training camp should move at a humane and leisurely pace. The NFL
season was a long one, so why not allow these seasoned pros to play
their way into shape as the year progressed? "Come on, Scooter," was
the theme that Forrest Gregg remembered in 1958. "Let's blow off
the scrimmage and go have a beer."

Forrest Gregg and defensive back John Symank had driven from
Texas to join Lombardi's first training camp in August 1959. "We
stopped in Milwaukee and called Dave Hanner [a tackle], who had
arrived in camp early," Gregg said. "'I asked Dave how things were
going and I was curious about the new coach and Hanner said, 'Whooeee.'
And I said, 'What do you mean whoo-eee?' And Dave said,
'Man, get ready. He's gonna kill us.' We'd planned to stay over in
Milwaukee that night but decided then it might be a better idea to get
on up there to camp.

"When we checked in that night, I told one of the equipment
boys that since it was late, not to wake me for breakfast. But early the
next morning, the kid came into my room and said, 'Coach Lombardi
wants to see you in the cafeteria.'

"So I went down there and he introduced himself. Full head of
curly hair. Big smile. Very cordial. He said the bus was leaving for
practice and encouraged me to be on it."

Gregg distinctly remembers his first on-the-field experience involving
the new coach. "The workout was tough, and my tongue was
hanging out. Then, from across the field, I heard someone screaming.
It was Lombardi. Max McGee had run a pass pattern and made the
mistake of walking back to the huddle. Lombardi was chasing Max to the huddle, really chipping away at him. Wherever I had played before--high school, college, or prothe coaches were never afraid to
tie into the linemen, but laid off the skill-position guys. I remember
thinking, 'At least this Lombardi guy is going to spread it around. This
might be all fight after all.' "

The extent of the change of training camp lifestyle under Lombardi
was almost melodramatic. Right away, Packers players were exposed
to a conditioning routine that Lombardi called the grass drill:
The squad assembles on the practice field and runs in place. On command,
the players flop on their bellies, then hop up again, knees

THE ICE BOWL


churning. Then, wham, drop backward, then up again. Leonard
Sheehter, a writer, described the activity in a piece that appeared in Esquire. The man doing all the yelling is Vinee Lombardi.

"C'mon, lift those legs. Lift 'em. Higher. Higher. Front!" and the
players flop on their bellies and as soon as they do, the coach shouts, "Up!" Then it's "Move those damn legs! This is the worst looking thing
I ever saw. Move your legs. Keep 'em moving. What's wrong, Davis?
You told me you were in shape. Move those legs, dammit! What the
hell's the matter with you guys?! You gotta lotta dog in you! You're
dogs, I tell you. A bunch of dogs! Let's move. For the love of Christ,
you're all fat. Ten bucks a day for every pound you don't lose. Ten
bucks a day! Lift those legs!"

After about twenty minutes (sometimes longer) of grass drill, the
bloodletting would begin in earnest. Full-bore scrimmages, twice a
day. God, did those players miss Scooter McLean! If they felt hopeless
and miserable in that will-shattering camp of 1959, Lombardi shared
the outlook. Or at least that's what he elaimed. "After the first day of
practice, I walked into the trainer's room and I wanted to cry," Lombardi
said. " "What is this?' I yelled. 'A hospital emergency ward? Let's
get this straight. When you're hurt, you have every right to be here.
But this is disgraceful. I have no patienee with the small hurts that are
bothering most of you. You are going to have to live with small hurts
and play with small hurts if you are going to play for me!' "

Here, Lombardi demonstrated that he was simply a chip off the
old Block of Granite. Vinee's father, Harry, lived his life aeeording to
the beat of a few spartan theme songs, and one of his favorites was the
one that went, "Pain is in the mind." After a tough game at Fordham
that left Vinee's faee looking like the garage floor after the St. Valentine's
Day Massacre, a doctor sewed thirty stitches inside his mouth.
"'That night, my mind hurt a lot," Vinee was fond of recalling. Now,
late in the afternoon, with the foam around their lips hardening into a
white glue, the new Green Bay Packers had Harry Lombardi, partially,
to thank for their plight.

By the time that the regular season began, it remained uncertain
as to xvhether the Paekers were highly conditioned and motivated or
simply stir-eras, but they rattled off three eonseeutive wins. "We felt
that we were a select buneh of people," said Bay Nitsehke. Those first
three xvins were followed by a five-game losing streak. Then the Paekers
regained their earlier form and chased the almighty Baltimore

	34
	MIKE SHROPSHIIE


Colts across the finish line for the NFL's Western Conference championship.

Willie Davis, asked to recall the early days of the Lombardi reign
of tyranny, said, "I am not sure now what it was like. But we learned
early that under Lombardi, winning was the easy way out. That was
sort of our unofficial motto. You had to win for this man or you were in
real trouble." Davis probably did not realize it at the time, but he had
it soft. He played on the defensive side. The players who received the
full force of the Lombardi Doctrine were his offensive linemen. Lombardi
had taught physics back at St. Cecilia High School, and according
to Vince's self-discovered natural laws of football sciences, the
fulcrum of the team had to be its offensive line.

"The offensive line must function not as the keys to a typewriter
but as one man. Timing and rhythm, it's a subtle thing. Take out one of
the parts and you look like a bunch of rookies, destroying the best
plays ever devised." That's chiseled into a stone tablet somewhere on
Mount Sinai. Lombardi went to exceptional lengths to certify that his
offensive linemen were the best-conditioned players on the team--
thus less susceptible to injury. Loss of an offensive lineman, Lombardi thought, screwed up the intricate timing that was so necessary to advancing
the ball in the NFL.

In a team meeting, the coach assembled his oxen. "You know
you'll get banged up, and you hope it ain't serious. The offensive
lineman must be dedicated to perfection and recognize that perfection
can be achieved only through the drudgery of practice. There are no
shortcuts to success in football, and the individual who tries to find
them will lose his way." Forrest Gregg heard Lombardi make that
speech during the first week of training camp in 1959. He suspected
that he might hear it again and again through the years and, boy, was
he right. "An offensive lineman seldom finds his name in headlines. I
know. I was one myself," Vince liked to remind the troops. "The band
seldom plays for him. But when he does his job . . . he knows it."
And when he didn't, Forrest Gregg confirmed, Vince was always there
to remind him.

Lombardi realized that for his power sweep to work properly, his
offensive line had to be brainwashed. That sweep wasn't merely the
priority play in Vince's offensive scheme. The power sweep, in Lombardi's
estimation, pealed across the heavens like a symphony. The
coach had learned all about it in college, playing for Fordham against

THE ICE BOWL
	35


Pitt, xvhen he was almost trampled by Jock Sutherland's single-wing
attack.

"'There's nothing spectacular about it. It's just a ground-gainer,"
Lombardi said. But after a season or so of working for Lombardi, the
players sensed that the coach thought there was something almost
erotic about the sweep when they worked it right. At least, Lombardi
owned up to the rush he would feel on the sideline when "you hear
those linebackers and defensive backs yell, 'sweep!' and you can see
their eyes 'almost pop out when they see those guards turning upfield
and coming after them. Maybe it's my number one play because all
eleven men play as one to make it succeed and that's what 'team'
means.'"

That sweep, though Lombardi portrayed it as a simple tool, like a
crowbar, actually included some intricate subplots in its execution for
it to function at its diabolic best. The crux of the play involved the tight
end. Lombardi used two players at that position during his nine-year
tour with the Packers. First Ron Kramer had labored there and later,
when the coach sensed that Kramer might be edging beyond his
prime, Marv Fleming took the job.

The coach's message to the tight end regarding the power sweep
went like this: "Position yourself six to nine feet outside the offensive
tackle . . . isolate the end or linebacker . . . depending upon the
defensive alignment and never, I repeat, never . . . allow that man
inside penetration." Failure to comply would result in a quick ticket
back to a job within the more conventional elements of the American
work force. Those ends got notified of that on a daily basis.

Paul Hornung won a Heisman Trophy playing for a Notre Dame
team that posted wins in only two of the ten games on the Fighting
Irish schedule in 1O8--quite a feat. But the Green Bay Packers'
power sweep made him famous. "Paul doesn't have great speed, but
he's a quick and intelligent runner who uses his blockers to gain every
possible yard out of every play," Vince said.

That power sweep, with some variations that came on when
Hornung became handy with a halfback-option pass play, carried
Green Bay into the 1960 championship game against Philadelphia,
quarterbacked by Norm Van Brocklin. Ted Dean made a five-yard TD
on a gooey playing surface at Franklin Field that enabled the Eagles to
win the game, 17-13. Green Bay almost scored late, but the NFL's last

	36
	MIKE SHB, OPSHIIE


sixty-minute man, Chuck Bednarik (aka Concrete Charlie) tackled Jim
Taylor on the last play of the great lineman's career.

Packers players staged a wake in the Ioeker room afterward. Lombardi
wasn't sympathetic. "The biggest tragedy of this loss was that you
guys didn't recognize that you were good enough to win," he told the
team. But by 1961, the Packers and their sweep surged through the
NFL schedule like General George Patton's tank and infantry corps
advancing through a Girl Scout camp. The championship game against
Lombardi's former employers, the Giants, became nothing more than
another routine search-and-destroy mission, with the Packers winning
at Lambeau Field, 37-0. What an ass-kicking. Over in Minnesota,
which is ice hockey country, devotees of the sport like to think of
themselves as Puekheads. Now, in Wisconsin, it was even more fashionable
to be a Paekerhead.

The 1962 season worked out essentially as a replica of '61. The
ehampionship game, once again, featured the Packers and the Giants,
this time in dreadful weather conditions at Yankee Stadium. With the
game blaeked out on television in New York, a radio newsman commented
on the bumper-to-bumper traffic moving toward Philadelphia,
where TV coverage would be available. "Imagine going to Philadelphia
on a Sunday," the radio man bawled. "What's happening to the human
race ?"

TV broadcaster Ray Scott wondered the same thing. "They had
me and Chris Schenkel perched up on some platform, a photo deck, up on the damn roof along the right field line, to call the game," Scott
said. "It was nine degrees, the wind was blowing forty miles an hour,
and I was miserable. By the fourth quarter, we were so cold, it was
almost impossible to describe the game because our jaws couldn't
work anymore. All that came out of my mouth was sounds like
'nnnpph and gguuhhh,' "

New York columnist Bed Smith wrote of the game in the now
defunct New York Herald Tribune: "Polar gales clawed topsoil off the
barren playground and whipped it in tan whirlwinds about the great
concrete chasm of Yankee Stadium. One minute, fifty seconds remained
in the struggle for the championship of the National League,
but no hope at all remained for New York. Allie Sherman's men had
no arms to combat and no armor to fend off the finest team in the
professional game. The defending champions from little Green Bay,

THE ICE BOWL 37


Wisconsin, established themselves once more as despots of the mercenary
world."

Vince Lombardi, Jr., remembers some occasions when his mother
would yell at the commander of the mercenary despots because he
had forgotten to carry out the garbage. "Like anybody else, he had his
frailties," the son recalled. "But the characterization of the hard and
demanding disciplinarian with the Packers was essentially what he was,
and he dealt with me the same way that he dealt with those players.

"It was tough, although I think I might have made it tougher on
myself than I had to," Lombardi Junior says, not exactly relishing the
memories of playing high school football in Green Bay when his father
was coaching another team in the same town.

As the years began to roll past, Forrest Gregg continued to wait
for Vince Lombardi to ease the labor-intensive atmosphere that prevailed
in Green Bay. Gregg would learn that such yearnings were like
hoping that Stalin might someday take up badminton. Lombardi, after
he quit coaching, chose to single out Gregg as "quite simply, the finest
football player I ever saw.'"

"But when I reported for preseason training camp at St. Nor
bert's College, I was treated no differently than any free agent walk
on. I would once again have to prove that I belonged and earn a spot
in the starting lineup," Gregg said. The Vince Lombardi of 1961 was
the same Vince Lombardi who would greet the team in '67. The grass
drill routine remained as ruthless as it always had been. Incredibly,
most of the faces in the starting lineup were the same, too. Linebackers
Bill Quinlan and Dan Curry had been replaced by Lee Roy Caffey
and Dave Robinson. Jesse Whittenton, Hank Gremminger, and John
Symank were gone from the secondary, replaced there by Bob Jeter,
Herb Adderley, and Tom Brown. Ron Kostelnik was playing one defensive
tackle spot instead of Dave Hanner, who was now an assistant
coach.

Jim Ringo was not playing center in Green Bay anymore. When
Ringo sent m agent representative to Lombardi to negotiate a new
contract, the GM-coach took approximately 100 seconds to complete a
trade that sent Ringo packing to Philadelphia. Hornung and Taylor
were gone by '67, replaced by high-dollar newcomers Donny Anderson
and Jim Grabowski. "Vince said that he hated it, having to pay that
kind of money to rookies during the old AFL-NFL bidding war," said
Tony Canadeo, still the Packers' president. "But he said we had to

	38
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


spend the money to keep those kids from going to the other league.
Vince took care of the team's money better than he did his own."

A core group, however, remained on the team. Gregg, Fuzzy
Thurston, Bart Starr, Bob Skronski, Willie Davis, Ray Nitschke, Willie
Wood, Boyd Dowler, Max McGee, Henry Jordan, Jerry Kramer.
They'd all come back again to endure the grass drill, the repetition, the
torture, and the grind so that they might win one more, one final
championship.

In Green Bay, the town that in essence was the home of the
world's greatest high school football team, Vince Lombardi endured as
God. One Green Bay man, a roofing contractor named Howie
Blindaur, actually mustered the temerity to have a lien slapped on
God's house. Because of some dispute, Lombardi had refused to pay
Blindaur for work done at the coach's house. Blindaur, being one of
the umpteen little stockholders in the Packers, was, in his own way,
Vince's boss.

So Vince and Howie went at it jaw to jaw, and after a twentyminute
shouting session, Howie got his check. To this day, though,
he's never cashed it.

After Lombardi quit coaching, one of the players who felt he'd
yielded a little too much flesh to the coach's bullwhip, announced,
"This season will show the public, the nation, and football who really
won all those championships." So it did. After Lombarcli left, the Packers
fell on their ass and pretty much stayed there for the next twenty-five
years.

,APTER


PrOGRAMMIN¢ EXECUTIVES AT NBC stood in mutual agreement when the
network's new fall lineup for 1966 had been finalized. One new program
stood out among the other prime time entries as an almost certain
candidate to flop. This program, Star Trek, would be based on the
adventures of space voyagers who dared to boldly go where no man
had gone before. When Cowboys scouting director Gil Brandt heard
that, he thought that the show might be about him.

Brandt, with the endorsement of Coach Tom Landry, had embarked
on some bush-beating explorations that shattered precedents
for National Football League scouts. With a thin and aging talent pool
that left Dallas noncompetitive on the NFL battleground, Landry and
Brandt agreed that creative, if not extreme, steps would be required to
locate new and better sources of personnel. In short, Landry thought
that the Dallas Cowboys desperately lacked good athletes. So Brandt
embarked on a nationwide search for people who were known as
"Moose" when they were still in grade school. While the remainder of
the pro football establishment watched and tittered, Brandt began
combing some out-of-the-way colonies where electricity was considered
a novelty. He located and signed tight end Pettis Norman and
defensive tackle Jethro Pugh from Johnson C. Smith College and Elizabeth
City State, respectively--two schools that infrequently appeared
on Notre Dame's schedule.

Brandt, an ex-baby photographer from Wisconsin, was also of the
opinion that professional football, basically, was a sport for cavemen
and easily mastered by individuals with limited experience, or no experience
at all, in the arts and sciences of the gridiron. Thus, Cornell
Green, a basketball player at Utah State, was allowed an audition at

	40
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


cornerback. Before Green's first workout, he inserted his thigh pads
backward into his football pants. Bob Hayes, who had played some
football at Florida A&M but was more popularly known as the World's
Fastest Human for his skills as a sprinter, was drafted to run post
patterns. Mike Gaechter was given the opportunity to play defensive
back on the basis of his running faster than Mel Renfro on a sprint
relay team at the University of Oregon.

A quarterback at South Carolina, Dan Reeves, was deemed by
pro scouts as having too weak an arm to succeed as a pro passer,
probably too small to function as a pro running back, and too slow to
make it as a pro receiver. "So what the hell," Gil Brandt figured. "Let's
give him a contract and see what else he can't do." The late Colin
Ridgway received a contract because, in a tie game late in the fourth
quarter, a coach never knows when he might need an Australian high
jumper.

Tom Landry had been especially pleased with the outcome of the
Cornell Green experiment. Green--brother of major league baseball
player Pumpsie Green---developed as the exact remedy the Cowboys
needed to narrow the personnel chasm between this team and the
contenders. Green immediately demonstrated both size and agility and
wound up playing at an all-pro level for a dozen seasons. "'Go get some
more of those basketball players," Landry told Brandt. The basketball
player's ability to accelerate quickly and to change directions translated
nicely into the work requirements of a cornerback. So the scout
concentrated his hoops search around the Big Ten, which in the early
'60s was playing a physical game not unlike that of the NBA.

And that is where Gil Brandt located Pete Gent, a six-five forward
at Michigan State, where Gent had attended classes with the likes of
James Hoffa, Jr., and future Michigan governor Jamie Blanchard.
(Some years later, Pete Gent would compose a novel titled North
Dallas 40 that, in essence, did for the image of professional football
what Lady Chatterley's Lover did for the image of horticulture.) But
at first the Pete Gent experience was very typical of how the Cowboys
were assembling the NFL's most rapidly improving franchise.

As Gent was completing his tenure at East Lansing, his plan was
to become an advertising account executive, and he had a job at Foote,
Cone, and Belding, a big-time agency in Chicago. "To have a past
reputation as an athlete would be considered a plus at a job like that,
but I wasn't crazy about the prospect of playing professional basket
THE ICE BOWL 41


ball," Gent said. "The NBA then was not like it is now. The schedule
was horrible, the money was nonexistent and the travel accommodations
were inferior to those of most college teams. I remember coming
across some NBA teams sleeping in an airport lobby, waiting to catch a
commercial flight. Those guys had it tough, and I thought I didn't want
to do it.

"I was drafted by the Detroit Pistons, and then they traded that
pick to the Baltimore Bullets for Terry Dischinger. The Baltimore GM
called me and offered $8,500 . . . for an eighty-five-game season plus
the exhibition schedule. Then, out of the blue, I got a call from Gil
Brandt, wanting to know if I might be interested in playing for the
Cowboys.

"By now, other NFL teams were looking at basketball players.
The Cleveland Browns had drafted John Havlieek to play linebaeker.
Brandt's offer was this: They would give me $500 to sign, another $500
if I would remain in training camp for twenty-eight calendar days, and
$11,000 if I made the team. So I called the guy in Baltimore back and
told them I was considering this offer from the Cowboys, thinking the
Bullets might up their offer. Instead, the guy said, 'Well, okay. If you
change your mind, give us a call."

"So I became a Cowboy in 1964. They wanted me to become a
defensive back, like Cornell Green, but even before the veterans arrived,
I knew I wasn't doing well and felt that I was heading for a
sandwich and a road map. But they had a lot of rookie defensive backs
in camp and not many receivers, so in a morning practice, I filled in on
the offensive side.

"In a scrimmage, I caught ten or eleven straight balls and after
the practice an assistant coach, Red Hiekey [former head coach of the
49ers, who introduced the shotgun offense to professional football]
came to me and said, 'If you just listen to everything I tell you, I think
you can make this team.' It was close. When it came down to the final
spot on the forty-man roster, it was between me and the big quarterback,
Sonny Gibbs, who was on borrowed time after his first year."

Tom Landry opted to go with the Pete Gent project, even though
the coach and the prospective flanker were leery of one another. "I
don't think Tom was ever too happy with me personally. All the players
had to take something called the Minnesota Multiphasie psychological
profile test," Gent said. "'You have to have a kind of criminal personality
to play the game, and I guess I didn't completely fit in."

	42
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


Landry's dubious suspicions of Pete Gent were no more pronounced
than Gent's misgivings about a job in professional football.
"Basketball is a contact sport. Football is a collision sport and in those
days, in the mid-sixties, I believe the game was even more violent than
it is now," he said. Back then, "they still allowed chop blocking and
crack-back blocking, where we had total license to assassinate somebody.
I saw some terrible wrecks out there. And everybody wore those
suspension helmets, where your head, inside the plastic, was encased
in this little canvas web. The quarterbacks were getting concussions
like cra.."

While Gent attempted to acclimate himself to this new job
opportunity in what amounted to a demolition derby on cleats, the off the-field
aspect of coping with Dallas--the carnival midway of Southwestern
American finance--would prove harrowing as well.

"Dallas was where everybody came to make it big," Gent said.
"You ran into a lot of interesting people and a lot of sharp operators,
and if you played for the Dallas Cowboys, you had to be careful. Once
you got your name in the paper, you quickly encountered plenty of
men and women who were trying to get their hands in your pockets."

Still, the day-to-day panorama in this Babylon-on-the-prairie was
no more frightening to Gent than the corporate jousting he encountered
in his off-season job back at the ad agency in Chicago. "They
liked the name recognition that I was getting as an NFL player, albeit
an obscure one," he said. "But the company was a bottom-heavy pyramid.
They had a lot of creative and hustling guys on the bottom who
did all the work and a few guys at the top who were making all the
money. So I thought, 'Do I really want to do this?' In Dallas I was
living in a furnished apartment that rented for $185 a month that
was within walking distance of the practice field. On eleven grand, I
was living damn well."

Gent also noticed that eighty-five percent of the inner-city population
of Dallas seemed to be made up of young flight attendants. The
remaining fifteen percent were employed as models at the Apparel
Mart. A typical comment in a Dallas bistro of that era: "Susie got all
her good looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon."

"After my first year, I lived at an apartment called the Four Seasons.
The ownership had to let the manager go when they found out
that he was letting a bunch of the Braniff stewardesses live there rentfree."

THE ICE BOWL 43


Free enterprise. In the Dust Bowl years, the so-called Okies migrated
to California, where they were disappointed in the reception
that they received from the fruit growers. In the post-Sputnik years,
the Okies packed up again, this time for Dallas, where, they had
heard, venture capital was growing wild in the creek beds. Sometimes
life could be precarious. Dealing with the wrong crowd could lead to
an early departure, via what was known locally as "an overdose of
plastic explosive.'"

But with persistence, judgment, and luck, the benefits could be
limitless. In 1966, a stockbroker named Robert Allen "Monk" White
made a courtesy call on "an eccentric little fellow with an electronics
company. His name was Ross Perot, and he had some growth charts
for his business that ran all the way up the wall and halfway across the
ceiling."

In the Dallas of the 1960s it was said that "you qualify as Old
Money if you know who your parents are," and now it became stylish
to send the children away to Ivy League colleges, where they would be
taught to say "that's interesting" instead of "no shit?" The atmosphere
remained fervently conservative ... conservative to the extreme.
One Dallas-based airline executive actually named his son States
Rights. In presidential elections, it was not unusual in Dallas for voters
to insert the name "Hoover" as a write-in candidate. They meant J.
Edgar, not Herbert.


WHEN PETE GENT reported to the Cowboys' preseason training camp in
Thousand Oaks, California, before the 1967 campaign, he had a big
problem. Even though he had already flunked five separate physicals,
the draft board back in Paw Paw, Michigan, had classified him as 1A.
"When it was learned that Lyndon intended to escalate the war in
Vietnam, the Cowboys, like most other teams, were able to exert some
influence and get their players in National Guard units, where they'd
serve their military obligations and still be able to play ball," Gent said.
The pro football players, in truth, were no different from many
draft-eligible Americans. Not many of the combat-age population base
overwhelmingly embraced the U.S. military cause. If somebody like,
say, Vince Lombardi had been preaching the mission from the Oval Office, the overseas commitment might have been more widely embraced.
But LBJ proved an ineffective pitchman for Western involve
	44
	MIKE


ment in Vietnam. This Texan in the White House, who began every TV
speech with the salutation "Mah fella Umericans," was coming across
like some tired old junior high school vice principal lecturing some
kids that he'd caught smoking in the schoolyard.

By August, the news on the opposite side of the world was going
from bad to grim. In the course of three days a mortar shell killed four
U.S. Marines, the Viet Cong kidnapped 143 civilians in Saigon, and a
bus jammed with women and children was blown up. Lyndon Johnson
said he needed another $4 billion for the war effort. "While the war is
hardly beyond the means of the world's wealthiest nation, many Americans
are beginning to begrudge such vast expenditures as inappropriate
to the results," wrote a Time essayist.

Certain alternatives to a trip to Southeast Asia were available that
did not require fleeing to Canada. Student deferments offered the
easiest solution, although that was often temporary. Admission to a
graduate program could prolong the evasive process. So, too, could the
precarious tactic of extending one's undergraduate tenure five and
even six years without flunking out. One aspiring artist in the Dallas
area actually went to the extreme of having a friend chop off one toe
with an ax in order to attain a 4-F classification.

That was the route that kept many of the pro football players out
of the rice fields. With their wrecked knees and damaged backs, pro
athletes like Gent were routinely turned down by the medics. One
Cowboys linebacker had a typical story: "'When I took my physical, I
had a ruptured kidney and actually passed blood into my urine sample.
So I got a temporary deferment. When I came back the next year, my
leg was in a cast from my ankle to my hip. So this time I was officially
4-F."

But in 1967, because of some snafu in the paperwork, Pete Gent,
with damaged ligaments in one knee that looked like moth-eaten yarn,
was due for induction the coming fall. "So I went to Gil and told him
about my problem," Gent said. "Since it looked like the Cowboys
might be short one receiver, they came up with a quick solution. They
decided to bring in Lance Rentzel."

Dallas was able to get the talented flanker from the Vikings for a
reasonable price--a couple of draft choices. "Lance had some personal
problems that the Vikings were aware of, and the coach, Norm
Van Brock[in, wanted to get him out of town," said Gent.

Even though Pete Gent finally resolved his misunderstanding

THE ICE BOWL 45


with the draft board back in Michigan--"General Louis Hersey, head
of the whole Selective Service operation, actually wrote me a letter of
apology"--the ex-basketball player lost his job to the very talented Rentzel.

Lance did not conform to the average demographic of the pro
football player in many, many aspects. First of all, he had grown up as
a rich kid--his father was a business associate of Clint Murchison's in
one high-dollar venture--in Oklahoma City, where he attended a private
school called Cassidy. He went on to star at the University of
Oklahoma, where he and a couple of other ahead-of-their-time Sooner
teammates were the first college players to lose eligibility because of
their dealings with a sports agent.

By the time that Lance Rentzel checked into the Dallas training
camp, he was married to actress-dancer Joey Heatherton. Lance's
mother called him "Wonder Baby" and Joey called him "Dimples."
Despite all that, Rentzel quickly became a popular player on his new
team.

Landry had felt that if the Cowboys hoped to return to the NFL
championship game, a player like Rentzel, who ran precise patterns
and was a threat to catch the deep ball, would naturally serve as a key
acquisition. Frank Clarke, who had started the title game against the
Packers after the '66 season, had lost a step. Landry also was worried
that NFL secondaries would locate more effective methods of negating
the threat of Bob Hayes with double-zone coverages. In fact, going
into the 1967 season, Landry ordained a motif that gave Bullet Bob a
diminished role in the Cowboys' attack, and the offense suffered because
of it throughout most of the season.

Rentzel, described in one Dallas paper as "a breezy, confident
fellow," said that he understood his role. "I think I can offer a threat at
flanker and take some of the pressure off Bob Hayes." The new receiver,
in early practices, demonstrated superior technique, although
the Dallas offense appeared lethargic in early practices.


Tnz mnLcZ or what had been an uneventful preseason effort by the
Cowboys had been slated in Houston. Dallas would test its resources
in a first ever post-merger confrontation against the ALL. The game
was scheduled at Rice Stadium, seating capacity 72,000, and for Tex

	46
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


Schramm's sake, this game, even though it was a meaningless exhibition,
loomed as one that the Cowboys could not afford to lose.

Fortunately for Dallas, the Oilers were attempting to bounce
back from a colossally disappointing season in 1966. But still, Tex
Schramm had been known to issue comments like, "The problem with
the ALL games on television is that the commercials are not long
enough." After such derision of the ALL as one slot below Roller
Derby when it came to prestige in the sports world, the embarrassment
of a Cowboys loss to the Oilers was something that might
manifest itself well into the regular season.

As the Cowboys boarded their charter at Love Field for the forty
minute flight to Houston, Schramm got Don Meredith's attention,
hissing, "Kill! Kill!" But the game was a joke; everybody knew it, and
the idea that Dallas might actually be fired up to play Houston seemed
ridiculous. "'When we play teams like Green Bay," said Cowboys defensive
end George Andrie, "I know that I will be playing across from
Bob Skronski, I know what to expect and that helps me prepare for the
game. This Houston guy, I've never even heard of."

The ticket-buying fans in Houston took on the same "So what?"
attitude as George Andrie. If anybody presumed that Oilers backers
would turn out en masse to level abuse on "the villains from the big
mansion on the hill," they were misinformed. Only 52,000 paid to see
the game, and of those, about half were rooting for the Cowboys.
Dallas won, 30-17, giving up some points late. Meredith took a hit
from Houston's gigantic Ernie Ladd and promptly turned the quarterbacking
chores over to Craig Morton. With Dallas poised to make one
more touchdown at the end of the game and Tex Schramm muttering,
"Center it . . . center it," Morton opted to allow the clock to run out.

Afterward Tom Landry, who had actually seemed to be stifling
yawns on the sideline, took a dig at the ALL officials: "I'll be glad to
get back into the NFL. The officials [in their ALL shirts] looked
strange in their red stripes. This was a weird setting. I hadn't seen so
many flags since v-J Day," said Landry, who, despite his reputation,
would occasionally make the effort to appear glib to the media.


ON WEEI¢ ATEB Landry was probably wishing for a return engagement in "weird" Houston. In Dallas's final exhibition tune-up, against Baltimore,
Johnny Unitas torched the Cowboys secondary. The Colts won

THE ICE BOWL 47


33-7 and Dallas Times Herald writer Steve Perkins, ordinarily an
unashamed Cowboys apologist in public print, warned the fans to "get
ready for a long and miserable season." What Dallas required, Perkins
wrote, was "'a Packer-like level of consistency. The Landry system is
not conducive to free-style mayhem."

Opening the regular season at Cleveland loomed as a dismal task.
In seven previous tries, Dallas had never won at Municipal Stadium
. . . never really even come close. Even though Jim Brown had
finally retired, Dallas chronically had taken the field in an intimidated
posture before the enormous, thundering throngs of 80,000-plus fans
in Cleveland. Before flying off the banks of Lake Erie, some Cowboys
players seemed to have conceded the loss. "Cleveland is a good team,
but double tough at home. I've never played a good game there,"
declared Mike Gaechter.

Dallas fullback Don Perkins, a product of the University of New
Mexico who for some reason spoke with skills of elocution that would
shame Richard Burton, declared, "We have always moved the ball in
Cleveland, but all day we have had the feeling that the Browns are
going to win the game. I don't know if they really feel that way or
not--that "Well, here come the Cowboys again'---but they have you
thinking that, they do."

Early on, it appeared that Don Perkins was talking not as a defeatist
but as a realist. Jim Brown might be gone, but Cleveland could
still offer a near replica in the form of Leroy Kelly. While 81,039
football-crazed Cleveland fans raised a deafening din, Kelly put the
Browns on top with a five-yard run in the first quarter. The fortresslike
stadium, a cavernous double-deck horseshoe, had a daunting effect.
This joint seemed haunted. Coach Don Shula could discourse at
length about that. His 1964 Baltimore Colts, a team that won a division
title from the Lombardi Packers and clearly the best team in
football that season, turned to jelly in the championship game at
Cleveland and lost 27-0.

But after falling behind, the Cowboys, seemingly to their own
amazement, assumed command of the game and the Browns never
presented a counterattack until the contest was essentially finished.
While Don Meredith was pitching touchdown passes to Bob Hayes
and Dan Reeves, the Cowboys" pass rush harassed Browns quarterback
Frank Ryan into three interceptions. Cornell Green, who had not
been expected to play because of a bad ankle, set up a touchdown with

	48
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


an interception. Chuck Howley returned another one 28 yards for
another score, and Dallas beat the Browns 21-14.

Steve Perkins, the Dallas sportswriter who one week earlier had
attempted to prepare Cowboy loyalists for the worst, quickly changed
his mind. Perkins noted that the Browns' quarterback, Ryan, owned a
doctorate in physics and probably knew of the MFT formula (M for
mass, F for force, T for time) as the basics in the law of inertia. On this
occasion, Perkins added that Ryan also had learned that "M is for
murder, F is for football, and T is for trouble."

Defensive end Willie Townes acknowledged, "We were really
chopping heads today." Even Landry, rarely known to offer glowing
reviews, at least until he had viewed the films, was gushing: "I've never
seen a front four play as good a game as they did today." While the win
over Cleveland became just one more game lost among the annals of
the hundreds that Dallas would play, this might have been one of the
most significant wins in the history of the franchise. The Cowboys,
until their trip to Cleveland, had developed a bad habit of choking on
the road. After finally beating the Browns in that vast and eerie
ballpark of theirs, the Cowboys felt as if they had just escaped from
death row.

Reporters wanted Don Meredith to upgrade the "good" rating for
the overall team performance to "great." Meredith shook his head.
"Not great," he said. "Adequate. But stick around and I'll show you
'great' before it's over."

As Landry launched his eighth season as a head coach, one key
factor emerged that indicated his regime might finally be approaching
a dominant status. In 1960 the Cowboys built their team from an expansion
pool that allowed NFL teams to protect twenty-five players
. . . so, in effect, Dallas probably did not own a player who could
start for any other team in the league. On opening day of the 1967
regular season, starting lineups around the league listed sixteen players
who had been let go by the Cowboys.

In Dallas the next Sunday, over 66,000 full-voiced customers
streamed into the Cotton Bowl to watch the Cowboys play the New
York Giants. Stuck in a traffic jam near the stadium and afraid she
might miss the kickoff, Don Meredith's wife, named Chigger, got out
of her car, flipped the keys to a cop, and said, "Here, you take it," then
ran inside the arena.

The Giants that the Cowboys were facing were no longer the

THE ICE BOWL


team of Y. A. Tittle, Kyle Rote, Frank Gifford, Sam Huff, et al., who
had challenged and frequently overcome the Cleveland Browns as the
dominant forte in the NFL East. By now the Giants had stumbled into
a melancholy condition of disrepair, and fans in New York were aetuall}'
becoming more interested in the Jets and Joe Namath. With coach
Allie Sherman worried about his job status, the Giants had brought
quarterback Fran Tarkenton in from the Vikings to resuscitate the
offense. Tarkenton, elusive and hotly competitive, qualified as a good
hire. But his supporting cast was lacking.

Against Dallas, though, Tarkenton utilized the Giants' version of
Bob Hayes. Tarkenton threw a 5g-yard touchdown pass to Homer
Jones, and New York actually led in the first quarter, i0-0. But if Don
Meredith's wife was willing to have her ear towed away in order to see
a football game, she had picked a good afternoon to do it. Meredith
declared open season on the Giants' secondary and threw four touchdown
passes.

The first one was a 52-yarder to Bob Hayes, one of the few track
stars whose sprinting talents could be effectively transformed to the
football field. According to Sports Illustrated, "Hayes streaked through
the New York defense like the Santa Fe Super Chief rolling past some
blue barns."

Then Meredith pitched a shorter touchdown to Dan Reeves and
a third one, a 16-yarder, to Pete Gent, and the Cowboys led 21-10 at
the half. Landry would insert Gent into the lineup to give Hayes or
Rentzel a breather after they had run deep patterns.

But in the third quarter, a play occurred that essentially propelled
Pete Gent into the world of literature. Gent, who caught four passes in
the game, grabbed one on a curl pattern and was speared in the back
by the helmet of the Giants' free safety.

"At first I thought I might be paralyzed," Gent recalled. "The
trainers came out and asked, 'What's the matter?" and I said, 'I can't
move my legs." And they said, 'Yeah, yeah. Of course you can move
your legs.' I said, 'I think I broke my back,' and they said, 'Nah. Nah.
You didn't break your back.'

"Well, what had happened," Gent said, "was that three little short
ribs had been knocked right off my spine. Anyway, the trainers picked
me up underneath my arms and dragged me off the field and then just
dropped me over the sideline, at about the 20-yard line. I had to crawl,

	50
	MIKE StiROPSHIRE


literally, on my hands and knees up the tunnel and into the dressing
room."

The Cowboys' medical staff was not known for its reluctance to
utilize invasive treatment options in those days, but saw nothing in
Gent's condition that a knife might cure. Dallas put Pete Gent on
waivers, but three teams claimed his rights, so he stayed on the Cowboys'
roster for the rest of the season. Now listed as damaged goods on
the Cowboys' inventory sheet, Gent's playing career was all but finished.

"'Once
you start getting hurt, one injury seems to follow another,'"
he said. "At this point, I could see how good Tom Landry was building
that team. And it was like getting to a train station too late. The train
was taking off, and I could see that I was not going to get on the last
ear. And that Cowboys train, it looked as if it was going to go forever. I
never did see them stopping."

And a novelist was born.

CHAPTER


WHILE THE SECOND HALF of the American twentieth century will be

historically recognized for a multitude of oddities, one of the most
peculiar might be the emergence of something known as the media
analyst. The job requirement simply calls for professionals in this field
to enumerate areas and situations that have been harmed or even
mined by television. They tell us that television killed boxing, television
killed minor league baseball, television killed drive-in movies and
in its fashion led to the demeaning of art and literature.

On the other hand, television served as the mechanism that generated
and developed two American postwar icons, Lueille Ball and
Vinee Lombardi--partieularly the latter. The small screen became the
ideal showplace for Lombardi's super-tuned, ultra-conditioned, high
performance Green Bay Packers. In an era when mediocrity was
becoming acceptable in the consumer marketplace and the advent of
technology was convincing some Americans that happiness might be
found in shortcuts, the Packers of the 1960s helped to reinforce the
otherwise declining ideal of excellence through herculean effort.

While Lombardi and his football team could only supply the
visual effects, another individual was supposedly required to articulate
the message. Pennsylvanian Ray Scott, with his succinctly stentorian
description of what virtually became the annual Packer Conquest,
performed as the flawless, impeccable conduit for Lombardi's team
and its inimitable precision. Scott's distinct, hype-free play-by-play accounts
of the games offered the fundamental texture for the Packers
football aesthetic. Ray Scott, almost as much as Lombardi, contributed
the flavor that made the Pack such a national fascination. John Madden,
some say, would be twice as effective on the air if he said half as

	52
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


much. But most announcers, past and present, just were not born with
Scott's knack for the economy of word use.
CBS had actually put Ray Scott in place in Green Bay one year
before Lombardi's arrival. When Lombardi came to Wisconsin prior to
the 1959 season, both the coach and the broadcaster at once sensed
the initiation of a productive symbiotic relationship. And like Lombardi,
some peculiarities of destiny had been at work to bring Scott to
Green Bay.

Scott believes that two coincidental events provided the magnet
that attracted him to the Packers' broadcast booth. With a career that
dates back to the virtual Iron Age of on-the-air sports reporting, Scott
began calling high school games for a 250-watt station, WJAC (the call
letters stood for Johnstown Auto Club) in western Pennsylvania. "The
best high school football in the United States was played around there
at the time, and that is where most of the major colleges came to get
their players," said Scott, who went to Connellsville High, the same
school that produced Heisman Trophy great Johnny Lujack.

After the war, Scott took a job at a Pittsburgh radio station, calling
college games for Carnegie Tech and Pitt. What Scott accomplished
during those years, more than polishing his technique behind the microphone,
was that he acquired an understanding of the way sponsor
financing of sports broadcasts actually worked. In 1953, Scott convinced
Westinghouse Consumer Products to sponsor the first coast-to
coast telecasts of NFL games, and then he persuaded the old DuMont
Network to carry the games.

"I only did that for the one season, in 1953. The next year, we
couldn't get together on the compensation," Scott said. Shortly after
that, a chance encounter on a sidewalk in downtown Pittsburgh generated
a significant alteration in his approach to his craft.

"A friend, a retired high school football coach from that area, Pop
Wenreich, stopped me on the sidewalk and said, 'Ray, I think I know
you well enough to say this: Please don't insult my intelligence!' And I
said, 'What in the hell are you talking about?' And the coach told me
that he had seen my TV work on those pro games in 1953, and he
offered a critique. 'I can see that the quarterback is fading back to
pass, for God's sake! And if he completes the pass, I can see that, too!
M1 I want to know is who caught it, on what yard line and creating
what situation. Don't insult the viewer.' And frankly," Ray Scott said,

THE ICE BOWL 53


"that one encounter became the reason that I started calling the
games the way I did."

The second event that landed Scott his eventual ticket to Green
Bay involved the considerable and yet bizarre assistance of sports radio
personality Bill Stern, whose fabled broadcasting career, in Scott's estimation,
was just that--a fable. Scott could not deny that Bill Stern
generated a flair for dramatics and a kaleidoscopic narrative that made
him famous. "But Stern was terrible," Scott asserted. "Always completely
inaccurate. But . . . since his career was eonined mostly to
radio, not many people knew that. I actually produced the rst football
telecast that Bill Stern ever worked, the 1951 Maryland-Navy game.
Twelve times the ball moved on penalty and he never mentioned it.
He was terrible.'"

Terrible, however, for a reason, and lay Scott can be eternally
thankful for that reason, since it provided the ultimate career boost.
"'In 1955, I was still doing Pitt games on the radio, and when the
Panthers were invited to the Sugar Bowl to play Georgia Teeh, Gulf
Oil, which sponsored the Pitt games and also owned sponsorship rights
to the Sugar Bowl, recommended to ABC that I handle the television
play-by-play," Scott said. "ABC's response was: 'Who in the hell is Ray
Scott? We need a big name for this telecast.' So nally it was agreed: I
would announce the second and fourth quarters, and the so-called big
name would call the irst and third quarters. Naturally, the big name
turned out to be who else?--Bill Stern."

Scott said that he learned years later, after reading Bill Stem's
autobiography, A Taste of Ashes, that "'he had been a drug addict for
nineteen years and, on the day of that Sugar Bowl game, he had
convinced the house doctor in his hotel to give him a dose of whatever
it was he was hooked on. And he had a bad reaction to the drug.

"'So . . . when Bill showed up to do the broadcast, he was in a
fog. He had the wrong records and the wrong teams, and two minutes
into the game, the producer tells me, 'You've got to take over.' I told
the producer, 'You have to tell him something.' I don't know what the
producer said, but Stern looked at me and mumbled or muttered, on
the air, 'Ray . . . you know this Pitt team. I'll be back later.' Well, he
never came back.

"Bill Stern was like Howard Cosell," Scott said. "'He was a prick,
quite frankly. He was always feuding with the media and insulting the
writers, just like Cosell did. So after the game, when the sportswriters

	54
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


covering the Sugar Bowl heard what happened--that Stern had been
taken off many of them came after me. They wanted to quote me,
saying that Stern was drunk. Well, he wasn't drunk. Bill Stern didn't
drink. So I refused to talk to the writers. In fact, I went back to the
hotel, bought a bottle of whiskey, went back up to my room, and drank
it all.

"'The next day, the news director of the radio station where I did
my nightly sports show back in Pittsburgh asked me what happened,
and again I said, 'I don't know. I don't know why he showed up in a
fog.' The news director went on the air and repeated that, and the next
morning the advertising director from Gulf Oil phoned me and said,
'You can lie to that partner of yours all you want, but I know a drunk
when I hear one.' It took me forty-five minutes to convince the guy
otherwise. But the notoriety that arose from the Sugar Bowl fiasco was
one of the reasons that CBS hired me to handle the regional telecasts
for the Packers."

Scott thought the logical choice for that job would have been Earl
Gillespie, the radio voice of the Milwaukee Braves, who was well
known throughout the marketing base for the Packers. Ad agencynetwork
politics stood in the way of that. Hamm's Brewery had purchased
a one-third sponsorship of the Packers telecasts. It did not
want to be associated with Gillespie, a name closely allied with the
rival Miller people, who advertised on Braves games.

So CBS presented Ray Scott with a ticket to the Badger State,
and "because the Packers weren't very good back then . . . their
1958 team under coach Scooter McLean had been a 1-10-I disaster,"
they also promised Scott that "if this works out," he would be assigned
to a larger region after three years, Now a veteran broadcaster, Scott
traveled to Green Bay with a thorough understanding of the actual
value of a promise from a television network executive. Scott never
moved to Green Bay, electing to commute to all the games from
Pittsburgh.

"And," he said, "after three years I wound up as the broadcaster
for the glamour team of the NFL, if not all of American sports."
Green Bay's blastoff from the depths of NFL darkness was not unexpected
to Ray Scott, "Word throughout the pro football business was
that the Giants had two assistants--Lombardi and Tom Landry--who
were going to be hugely successful as head coaches, and there was
never any doubt about that," Scott said. "And one meeting with Lom
THE ICE BOWL 55


bardi, and you knew right away that the Green Bay thing was going to
turn around in a hurry."

Scott and Lombardi immediately sensed that one man's talents
would serve to enhance the others. One of Humphrey Bogart's more
famous movie lines--"I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship"--comes
to mind, but more important, both recognized the potential
of a useful and important professional relationship.

"Marie Lombardi told me that other than her husband, I was the
strongest-willed person she had ever met. Vince and I had our moments
at times, but in general we always remained on cordial terms,"
Scott said. "From the start of his first season in 1959, after every home
game, Vince would invite me over to his house . . . win or lose. He
would have a little party down in the game room, and then we would
all go to dinner.

"I was always full of questions about what had happened during
the game that day . . . 'Why did you do this?' and 'Why did you do
that?' Looking back, he always had a reason and a motive for everything
he ever did."


BEFORE THE OPENING Of the 1967 season, Bay Scott realized that the

coach was approaching that year's campaign with unprecedented passion--even
for Vince Lombardi. "He made it clear, at least to me, that
the prospect of winning what would be his second Super Bowl was
significantly more important to him than winning the first one," Scott
says, "Why? Because now, for the first time, his star backs were no
longer on the team, and this was going to be his ultimate coaching
challenge."

Jim Taylor's departure became a bitter affair for both the fullback
and the general manager, Lombardi. True, Taylor's best years were
now lost in the past. Tailor's greatest game, in Lombardi's estimation,
was the championship game that followed the 1962 season. Sam Huff
of the New York Giants admitted that he performed every guerrilla
tactic available in the NFL manual of arms against Taylor that day.
After each play, Huff would punch his elbow into the area of Tailor's
larynx, or gouge his eyes or grind his cleats into Taylor's groin. But
Sam Huff never stopped Taylor---on a day when the fullback was
seriously sick with hepatitis.

Lombardi had nether won without Jim Taylor on the field to fire

	56
	MIKE SIqIOPSHItE


out and lead the blocking charge on his power sweep. In Lombardi's
first season, while Taylor was out with serious burns after he dropped a
pot of hot grease on his bare feet in a kitchen accident, the Pack had
lost five straight games. Lombarcli the sentimentalist had hoped to see
Jim Taylor complete his career in the green and gold. The idea of this
man playing out his option to join the expansion New Orleans Saints
became something that Vince the GM took personally.

The loss of Paul Hornung had been seen differently--the fallen
hero having been hauled away on his shield. The golden boy's chronic
neck injury had been diagnosed by orthopedic specialists as something
that might put him in a vheelchair if he persisted in participating in
the choreography of collision known as pro football. "This might not
be widely known, but after the 1966 season Paul toured the whole
country trying to find one doctor who would tell him that it was okay
to play football again,'" said Bay Scott. "'And he never found one who
would tell him that."


IN THE S'YATE-OF-THE-TEAM message that the coach delivered to his players
on the opening morning of training camp at St. Norbert's College
in 1967, he addressed the absence of the two players who served as the
signatures of the entire Lombardi reign. Lombardi emphasized how
much Paul Hornung had contributed to what the Green Bay Packers
had become and confessed that Hornung was going to be missed.
"That other fellow," Lombardi added, matter-of-factly, referring to
Taylor, "'--he can be replaced."

In lira Grabowski, Lombardi felt he had signed the player who
would become the Packers' fullback of the coming decade. That was
why he had given Grabowski the combination to the Packers' wall safe
and that was why Jim Taylor had chosen to leave. As an additional
safeguard, Lombardi contracted the services of Ben Wilson, a veteran
fullback of four seasons with the Rams.

Throughout the training camp, Lombardi's characteristic bellowing
reached unprecedented decibel levels as he drove the players
into hitherto uncharted regions of human endurance. The preseason
aspect of what the coach was designing as a third straight championship
campaign fell neatly into place. After beating the College AllStars
at Soldier Field, the Pack cruised to five easy wins in exhibition

THE ICE BOWL 57


games, including one against the Dallas Cowboys, in the fearful Texas
August heat of the Cotton Bowl.

The five wins were routine. More important was the play of veteran
running back Elijah Pitts and his companion piece, second-year
bonus boy Donny Anderson. Their performance in practice and in the
preseason games convinced Lombardi that the void left by the injury
forced retirement of Paul Hornung might be filled. Now Lombardi,
despite the chasm created by the absence of Hornung and Taylor,
established an interchangeable, one-two combo at both running positions.
Anderson and Grabowski, the high-octane, work-in-progress additions
to the Packers' star system, were teamed with the reliable and
experienced Pitts and Wilson.

Imagine the hopeless grind that the thirty-eight rookies (Lombardi
always referred to these players as Tentative First-Year Men) had
to endure, only to face inescapable dismissal notices at the end of their
ordeal. All but a handful had been doomed from the start, and they
had to have known it. With a deep veteran roster returning from a
championship season, only one newcomer, quarterback Don Horn,
was guaranteed a roster slot. The Pack's first-round draft choice from
San Diego State, after all, was entering a prolonged study program.
Lombardi looked to Horn as the eventual successor to Bart Starr.

Another first-round pick, Bob Hyland, from Boston College, also
seemed likely to make the team, and he did. Hyland offered enough
versatility to perform at both center and guard, and Lombardi valued
depth in the offensive line as essential to winning.

After the final cuts were announced, John 1Rowser, a defensive
back from Michigan, made the roster as a special teams player. Travis
Williams, a halfback and third-round pick from Arizona State, made
the team and was clearly the star of the entire crop of players in the
rookie auditions. Lombardi boomed out rare praise both to Williams
and to the media on the player's behalf.

Travis Williams came to camp and demonstrated the kind of
breakaway speed that had been missing from other Packers teams.
Lombardi thought he had a different kind of weapon available now,
and in some key moments during the upcoming regular season Travis
Williams would justify Lombardi's praise.

Two other members of the Pack's rookie squad, quarterback Kent
Nix and defensive back Mike Bass (the Green Bay coaches erred in
letting him go) found work on other NFL rosters. As for the remaining

	58
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


thirty entries on the roll call of the Tentative First-Year Men--names
like Dick Weeks of Texas Western and Les Murdock of Florida State
and Bob Ziolkowski of Iowa and Dwight Hood of Baylor and Richard
Tate of Utah and on and on and on--after the passage of a reasonable
number of years, they could tell coworkers and offspring, and with
some element of truth, of having been a part of the Green Bay Packers'
famed Ice Bowl team.


Bs" 1967, OFFEswE tackle Forrest Gregg had already accumulated credentials
satisfactory for the NFL Hall of Fame, not to mention enough
championship rings to open his own pawnshop. Eleven years earlier
Gregg could not have suspected that this would be the outcome.

When he earned M1-American credentials as a versatile lineman
at Southern Methodist University in 1955, playing both offense and
defense, Gregg began receiving brochures from NFL teams. "If I was
going to play pro ball, I hoped it would be with the Rams or the Colts.
My ex-teammate at SMU, Ray Berry, was playing at Baltimore, and
that looked like a team on its way up. I got a letter from Green Bay,
wondering if I might be interested in playing there. I never wrote
them back," said Gregg.

Weeks later, he walked through the athletic offices on the
campus and was flagged down by the sports information director. "He
said he had some good news for me . . . I had been selected in the
second round of the NFL draft , , . by the Green Bay Packers. So I
went and looked in an atlas to find out where Green Bay was. I
thought it was in Minnesota."

But Gregg did sign with Green Bay. "'I was supposed to play in
the College All-Star that August, and they invited me and three or four
other draft picks up for a sort of orientation thing. The Packers were
still playing in the old City Stadium, and I remember being quite
surprised. It was just one step up from Wildcat Stadium, where I had
played in high school in Sulphur Springs, Texas. The equipment was
beat up, not new stuff like we had in college. I remember my first
impression: This is not good.

"But I made the team and was getting paid for it $7,500 for my
first season. That season--1956---I lived in a cheap motel with most of
the players outside of town. Housing was tough to find in Green Bay.
They didn't have any apartments. Around town the people were great,

THE ICE BOWL 50


but all I heard was 'Lambeau.' The people remembered his old teams,
and when they talked about them I envisioned the players as being ten
feet tall," Gregg said.

On the field as a professional rookie, Gregg did not encounter any
players of that stature. "But NFL was different from college. The
players were bigger. Faster. Meaner. Uglier. I remember playing
across from Gene 'Big Daddy' Lipseombe at Baltimore, and they
didn't call him that for nothing. I tried to hold him on every play. My
line coach, Lou Ryrnkus, told me that was the only way a lineman
could survive in the pros. Finally, Big Daddy, between plays, came to
me and said, 'Hey, Forrest, I've got a deal for you. If you quit holding
me, then I won't kill you.' Not many NFL players were earning fortunes,
but they took their football seriously.'"

As a decade's worth of football went by, and Gregg remembers
the years passing quieldy after Lombardi's arrival, circumstances
greatly improved. Like the rest of the Packers who had endured the
course of Lombardi's tenure, Gregg enjoyed nationwide regard as a
God of the Gridiron. "'I was looking forward to winning a championship
again in 1967. Taylor and Hornung were gone. That was taken
away from us. But Elijah [Pitts] had matured into a terrific professional
running back," Gregg said, "'and I was confident we could do it
again,"
The Pack looked well fortified for the championship run as preparations
began for the season opener against Coach Joe Schmidt's Detroit
Lions at Lambeau Field. In the last of the preseason games
Green Bay had flattened the Giants, 31-14. Bart Starr, who missed
three of the preseason games with painfully bruised ribs, had come
back and was ready. Typical of Starr, while evaluating his showing
against the Giants, he said, "The big thing is timing. Our blockers gave
me time to do the job. If the quarterback is rushed, he can't find his
receivers. I had the time, the receivers ran good routes and got open,
and I was lucky enough to hit them." Starr never deviated from the
script.

Another promising feature of the preseason rub-out of the Giants
had been the work of a second-year defensive end, Jim Weatherwax.
At six seven and 260 pounds, Weatherwax, subbing for the banged-up
Lionel Aldridge, showed good instincts, and Lombardi was intrigued.
George Halas--not Papa Bear himself but his nephew, working

	60
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


as a Bears scout--assessed the Packers and said, "Poor Vince. He has
so many players, he doesn't know which ones to play."

It appeared that with the season set to begin and the Pack deep,
experienced, and eager to three-peat, Lombardi's biggest worries
might be more societal than football-related. The coach had become
concerned over the Vietnam War protests and the concomitant misbehavior
that those demonstrations might spawn. Five years as an assistant
coach at West Point only served to heighten Lombardi's diehard
zeal for discipline. The hippie movement might have been under way
in San Francisco, but Lombardi insisted that his players keep their
hair cut in a style favored by U.S. Marine fighter pilots.

"Before one of those preseason games at County Stadium, I
showed up at my father's room at the Pfister Hotel," recalled Vince
Junior. "I'd let my sideburns grow some, not bushy but down parallel
to my earlobes, which was stylish at the time. By 1967 I was married
and had two or three kids. I don't think I had seen my father for a
couple of months, and the first thing he said was, 'Get rid of those
sideburns!' So I went back to my room and shaved them off."

Vince Junior noted that the coach, by the 1967 season, had added
long hair to his list of absolute taboos for all Packers personnel. "He
told the players that long hair would cause boils under their helmets,"
said the coach's son.

The regular-season curtain was finally ready to rise--with the
orchestra in tune and the understudies having memorized their lines
just in case--and the entire state of Wisconsin had become choked
with anticipation. The choking sensation intensified rapidly when the
game began. Packers loyalists carried a carefully honed grudge against
the Detroit visitors. The Lions were the outfit that, on Thanksgiving
Day 1962, had routed what might have been Lombardi's greatest
team, 26-14, imposing an ignominious blotch on an otherwise
splendid transcript. Furthermore, Lions tackle Alex Karras authored
some disrespectful remarks after that game, an act that Packers fans
regarded as tantamount to telling jokes at a funeral.

Now the damned Lions were at it again, showing Green Bay

'o

respect. From the press box, Ray Scott described as precisely as possible
four Bart Starr passes that were intercepted by Detroit. With Lombardi
running the Pack, the number of Green Bay interceptions and
fumbles approximated the pregnancy rate among the nuns on the campus
of St. Norbert's College where the team trained.

THE ICE BOWL 61


For the entire 1966 season, out of 251 passes, Starr had seen only
three picked off. But in the first quarter against the Lions, Starr
pitched three interceptions in a row. Lions rookie Lem Barney snared
one and ran it back 24 yards for an easy score. To amplify the angst at
Lambeau, the hated Karras had been running over and around Jerry
Kramer, almost at will. The important time element that Start had
prioritized after the final preseason game now caused the quarterback
considerable misery. Over the course of the afternoon, the Detroit
rush knocked Starr down seven times before he could pass, and four
times Alex Karras was the person who knocked, pulled, or jerked the
quarterback to the turf. Karras, an off-the-field celebrity who KO'd a
horse in a highlight scene in the motion picture Blazing Saddles, later
confided that Jerry Kramer had flunked his self-styled "knuckles test."
Said Karras, "If his knuckles are white, he intends to block forward
and the play is a run. If his knuckles are pink, the play is probably a
pass." At the half, Detroit led, 17-0, and in the stands at Lambeau
Field, the knuckles of the crowd of 50,000-plus remained white.

Lombardi and the rest of the staff maintained their composure in
a halftime effort to rescue the team. The Pack returned to the field
refreshed and gradually regained command of the football game. Winning
at the NFL level often can be refined down to the smallest detail
in the close games.

Before the final squad cut a week earlier, an "on the bubble"
candidate, rookie John Rowser, barely made the squad. Now, in the
third quarter, it was John Rowser who would lay a "chain reaction"
block that leveled four Detroit Lions defenders and allowed Donny
Anderson to escape on a 43-yard punt return. That play set up an
Elijah Pitts touchdovn run, and the Packers now trailed by only ten
points. The afternoon brightened some more when Mel Farr, the
Lions' best runner, was hauled off the field hurt.

Starr, still under duress from Karras, began locating an assortment
of receivers, who in turn started running for good yardage after
the catch. In the fourth quarter, Start connected with Carroll Dale for
51 yards, and after a 23-yard holding penalty against the Pack, the
quarterback located Grabowski in the fiat and the fullback wasn't apprehended
until he had fled 53 yards. Elijah Pitts scored again from
short yardage and the Packers trailed now 17-14.

With the hour growing late, and Green Bay pinned at its own
nine-yard line, Starr, his tortured right rib cage now feeling rather

	62
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


aflame after a long day's worth of hammering from the Lions, found
himself chased out of the pocket once again by Alex Karras. Starr
flicked a desperate short pass to his safety valve, Pitts, who negotiated
a sudden zigzag maneuver, located precious running room, and
sprinted all the way to the Lions' 13-yard line. Here, the Packers
offense was stymied, and Don Chandler kicked a field goal that tied
the game with 1:32 to play.

Green Bay forced a Detroit punt and a late pass, Starr to Boyd
Dowler, that left the Packers in range for a 45-yard field goal try by
Chandler that would have won the game. On the sideline, assistant
coach Dave "Hawg" Hanner yelled, "Kicking team! Kicking team!"
But before Chandler could attempt his kick, referee Norm Schachter
pointed out that the game was already over. Vince Lombardi, acting
steamed for the first time on a trying afternoon, flung a lineup card
high into the air and stalked off the field, suggesting to reporters that
they ask "him" (referee Schachter) how time could have run out. "I
can't understand it. There were eight seconds left when that play
started, and those were the quickest eight seconds I ever saw in my
life!" Vince yelled.

The fast finish might have robbed the Packers of a miracle ending.
Vince Lombardi would admit afterward that he was relieved to
capture at least the tie. Miracles are for churches, not football games.

Of more pressing significance were Bart Starr's shocking quartet
of first-half interceptions. Tommy McCormick, Green Bay's new offensive
backfield coach, donned rose-colored glasses. "We gave the
ball away five times in the first half [Green Bay also lost a fumble].
When you do that even twice in this league, you usually lose. Bart had
one of those days a quarterback will have, and still we didn't lose. He
had a lot of help on a couple of those interceptions. He got stuck good
just as he was throwing."

Starr, naturally, seemed contrite about the effort. "My passing
was just bad, that's all," he said--even though he finished the game
with 321 yards worth of completions.

Nobody knew what to expect from Vince Lombardi and his postgame
temperament. The tie had been the Pack's first since a deadlock
against the Rams in the team's last nontitle season in 1964. The coach
remained, on this occasion, on the mild side. "That's the most hustle
I've seen out of those guys [the Lions] in three or four years. And that

THE ICE BOWL 63


Alex Karras was just sensational. We were fortunate," Vinee decided,
"'to come away with a tie."

Joe Schmidt, the Detroit coach, chose to side with Lombardi on
that issue. While beleaguered Bart Starr spent his day avoiding the
Lions' defense like the Frankenstein monster fleeing a torch-bearing
mob of villagers, Schmidt's guy, Milt Plum, had gone unmolested by
the Packers' rush. "We should have won," Sehmidt said. "We took it to
them better than they did to us. But a 17-point lead had melted and
eveuone knew what might have been was not."

"That Green Bay. They really have to work to lose a game, don't
they?" Karras chimed in.

Now with the season under way and, along with it, the drive for a
third straight championship, Vince Lombardi might have a new slogan:
Winning isn't everything and when you don't, a tie beats the hell out of
a loss.

But did he really believe that?

CHAPTER


As THE DALLAS COWBOYS continued the construction phase of what
would become a championship regime, it seemed that more and more
often scouting director Gil Brandt was doubling as casting director for
Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour. Brandt seemed relentless in his
enthusiasm for drafting hurdlers and high jumpers and power forwards
as well as football players from college towns that did not appear
on most road maps.

So Lee Roy Jordan, Dallas's first-round draft pick after the 1962
season, arrived as something out of the ordinary. Jordan was not
signed because of his background in Greco-Roman wrestling. Nor was
Jordan the product of the Cave Spring College of Radio and TV Repair.

Jordan's
credentials as a football player, and nothing else, were
secured and sealed when the University of Alabama dispatched a talent
scout to watch a small-town high school game in the delta area just
north of where the Sipsey and Mabama Rivers pour into Mobile Bay.

As often happens when the colleges venture this deep into the
sticks in search of talent, the scout who came to see one player became
enamored with another. Such was the case with Lee Roy Jordan, who
had grown up as one of seven children on a farm, where the family
raised everything from cattle to peanuts, near the town of Excel (population
345 if the census includes the suburbs). Jordan remembers
that he enjoyed the "physical things" of farm work.

"I still had a year to go in high school, was the biggest kid on the
team playing fullback and linebacker, and had a somewhat better
game than the guy they [the "Bama scouts] were coming to see," Jordan
recalled. Afterward, Alabama assistant coach Jerry Claiborne, who

THE ICE BOWL


later became head coach at Maryland and Kentucky, told Jordan, "The
next time through, I'll be here to see you." The year was 1958 and
"Bear" Bryant, whose real first name was Paul and not Legendary, as
most people in Alabama might presume, had settled into his first year
on the job as head coach of the Crimson Tide. Country singer Little
Jimmy Dickens produced a big hit in which he sang about a kid who
got his education "out behind the barn." Lee Boy could relate to that.
By his junior year in high school, Jordan was already married. So,
when a personage such as Bryant invites the quintessential country
boy to join a big-time college football program, the farm lad rarely
declines. After Jordan completed his senior season, Bryant sent another
assistant, Gene St'allings, to make sure that Lee Boy would be
Tusealoosa bound.

While Stallings went ahead to enjoy a long and successful tenure
as a coach, both college and pro, he would experience few days better
than the one when Lee Boy Jordan signed his letter of intent that
bound him to the Tide. By Jordan's junior season in college, he stood
out as the hood ornament on a defense-oriented Mabama team that
won the national championship. While that team's roster included a
sophomore quarterback named Joe Namath, Bear Bryant--after his
eventual retirement--listed Jordan as his all-time favorite player. That
might have been partially due to the fact that the season after Jordan
left, Namath got loaded one night and drove the streets of Tusealoosa
yelling, "Bear Bryant! Fuek you!" For that effort, Broadway Joe got
kicked off the team and missed the Sugar Bowl game.

'Bama and Jordan had been deprived of back-to-back national
titles when Georgia Teeh upset the Tide, 7-6, in i962. But Jordan, as
the captain of the team, finished his career at the Orange Bowl, where
he partieipated in the pregame coin toss in the grandstand. "John F.
Kennedy flipped the coin," Jordan said. "He was surrounded by Secret
Service agents and his family. I eafled the flip correctly and he gave me
the silver dollar to keep as a souvenir. I had it framed." Jordan played
the game of his college career that afternoon, as Alabama shut down
Oklahoma and Joe Don Looney, i7-0. By then Jordan knew he was
shortly to become solvent, since he had already been selected as the
first-round draft choice of both the Cowboys and the Boston Patriots
of the American Football League. He always knew that he would sign
with Dallas. While the financial offers were similar, Jordan felt that the
bromide "You ean take the boy out of the country but you ean't take

66
	MIKE SHtOPSHIRE


the country out of the boy" had probably been written for him. "'I knew that I probably wouldn't adapt that well to New England life,
and Dallas was a southern city more than a southwestern el/T in those
years," Jordan said. "Of course, in Dallas there were more things to do
than in Excel, or Mobile, or any other place I'd ever seen, for that
matter."

Jordan took the Cowboys' contract offer and showed it to--who
else?--the man he called his second iather, Bear Bryant. "The contract called for a 825,000 signing bonus, and Coach Bryant said I didn't
need that kind of money in one lump and told me to spread it out.

"So I signed for a $5,000 bonus, plus a car and a no-cut deal that
called for $17,500 the first year, $18,500 the next year, and $19,500
the year after that. I remember Coach Bryant saying, 'That's a helluva
lotta money, Lee Roy,' and, at the time, it was. Obviously, compared to
modem-day NFL money, it wasn't, and people have told me I came
along twenty or so years too early. Maybe. But I prefer my era, when
the team concept was much more in place and nobody felt like they
needed to put on special on-the-field exhibitions to enable them to get
another endorsement contract."

If Lee loy Jordan remained satisfied with his rookie compensation,
Tom Landry was delighted with the acquisition of the middle
linebacker that he desperately required to activate a defense that
might finally allow the Cowboys to become competitive. As the New
York Giants" defensive coach, Landry had used Sam Huff as his flagship.
In Jordan, Landry felt that he now had a linebacker more mobile
than Huff, yet endowed with the same predator)" instincts.

Not only was Jordan destined to become one of the key elements
in the cast that became known as the Dallas Doomsday Defense, but
he kept Gil Brandt's entire draft for that year from vanishing in flames.
Other names on the Cowboys' draft list--Auburn linebacker Jim Price,
Ole Miss guard Whaley Hall, Kansas guard Mary Clothier, Iowa halfback
Bill Perkins, and Boston College linebacker Lou Cioci--were
jettisoned back into the private sector by the end of training camp.

The NFL analyst from Sports Illustrated at the time, Tex Maule,
fostered the suspicion that Landry had been concocting something lethal in his basement defensive laboratory, and, astonishingly, picked
the Cowboys to win their division before the 1963 season. "Dallas
Defense Can Win in the East" was how the magazine headlined its

THE ICE BOWL 07


cover story. Tex Maule's assessment proved premature: The Cowboys
lost their first four games and staggered to a 4-10 record.

"'The Cowboys weren't winning when I signed and were still very
much in an evolutionary process, although the core of a winner was
already on the roster," said Jordan, who had become accustomed to
playing for a team that lost one game every two seasons. "'But you
could see that with Don Meredith, Don Perkins, Frank Clarke, Bob
Lilly, Dave Edwards, Cornell Green, Chuck Howley, and one or two
others that things were headed in the right direction."

Like every other player on the Cowboys roster at the time, Jordan
promptly discovered that the notion of adjusting to life on a 4--10 team
stood as rather simple compared to learning to cope with the arcane
world of Tom Landry football. Most professional football players respond
to a straightforward communication technique in which the
coach shouts out observations like: "Got-dammit, Jimmy! You couldn't
scatter shit with a rake!" Certainly, at Alabama, Jordan could scarcely
recall an instance in which Bear Bryant or his assistants did not quickly
articulate such constructive criticism.

Now Cowboys rookies were confronted by a man whose opening
address to the newcomers in training camp included a preamble stating
that he (the coach) had devoted his life to Jesus Christ. The new
players customarily exchanged nervous glances at that disclosure. But
the players were quickly assured that belief in God was not a prerequisite
to sticking with the team; however, a devout devotion to the coach
and his football theory was strongly encouraged.

"Tom was a quiet, mild-mannered type of motivator," Jordan said.
"Had he been a stronger person in voice and demanded more of us,
we might have won some games we didn't win. He didn't push us to
our maximum level in practice like, say, at Alabama. He never pushed
us to our limit."

Football players on the Green Bay Packers roster of the 1960s
probably could not say the same about their professional experience.
What Jordan and the Cowboys on the defensive side of the ball were
exposed to was a graduate-level course in tactics, masterminded by
Tom Landry, that offered the ultimate in complex sophistication.
Eventually, the Landry Method would be popularly known as the Flex.
It involved concepts alien to the proactive instincts of most defensive
players, and a rare mental discipline was required in order for a player
to function within the structure.

	68
	MIKE SHIOPSHIRE


For a college linebaeker, particularly on Bear Bryant's Crimson
Tide, the fundamental job requirement involved pursuit of the ball
and "on every play, going to the spot where you thought the ball
carrier was going to make his break," Jordan said. The design of the
Landry approach employed a different theory, based on containment.
"Instead of pursuing the ball, every player had a gap-oriented responsibility
and, if everybody did his job, then the ball carrier would have
no place to go. You couldn't leave your responsibility to go help someone
else because there was always the possibility that the back would
come back through where you had come from.

"It was all designed to control the great runner, like Jim Brown.
Tom Landry designed it for that and for twenty years, largely, it
worked brilliantly."

Still, even players like Lee Roy Jordan, equipped with a keen
football mind and tempered by nicely refined defensive instincts that
enabled him to sense where the ball was going, required a slow indoctrination
into the Landry Method.

At Green Bay, Vinee Lombardi did not mind making public the
structure of his "three-year plan" with high draft choices. In his first
year, the player was expected to sit, be quiet, unlearn childish collegiate
habits, and conform to the professional way of life. In the
second year, the on-the-field aspect of the learning experience was
accelerated and, if the player was not making a substantial contribution
to the won-lost effort by the middle of his third season, he was
soon to enjoy the sensation of liberation that came with unconditional
release.

Landry would never publicize the fact, but he operated with the
same program. In times of frustration, Landry would make a speech in
which he told the team that "some of you are professionals, others are
amateurs drawing pay." At no time was Lee Roy Jordan regarded in
the latter category.

Jordan served a two-year apprenticeship under Jerry Tubbs, who
doubled as middle linebacker and assistant coach. After those two full
seasons, Landry felt that Jordan had taken in enough of an understanding
of the strange nuances of the Flex to entrust him with the
middle linebacker's role on a full-time basis.

From a safe distance, life as a starter on an intriguing pro sports
franchise might seem desirable. In reality, the challenge of working
under the standards of an ultimate football epicure like Landry, who

'file ICE BOWL 69


yielded praise grudgingly, if at all, often proved the opposite. Then the
chore of functioning as a Dallas Cowboy had become complicated by a
completely non-sports-related catastrophe that took place near the
completion of Lee ROY Jordan's rookie season.

After JFK was assassinated on Elm Street in Dallas on a Friday
afternoon, National Football League commissioner Pete Rozelle
quickly presented a directive that the full schedule of games would go
on the following Sunday as scheduled. While the rest of the country
shut down, Rozelle noted that it would have been the president's wish
that the games continue.

So, at the precise moment when Jack Ruby was shooting Lee
Harvey Oswald in the stomach on live TV late Sunday morning in the
basement of Dallas police headquarters, the starting lineup for the
Dallas Cowboys was being introduced to a cascade of boos at Cleveland's
Municipal Stadium. "I wasn't in Cleveland that day," says Jordan.
"I was on injured reserve for one game with a punctured kidney.

"But for the rest of the season, and for the next few seasons, the
Cowboys got the same reception on the road, no matter where we
played, usually. It was like we were responsible for the killing, and it
was horrible. In Philly and D.C. and New York, it seemed like everybody
hated us. They were very vocal in their abuse of the people who
murdered JFK.'"


BY 1967, THE Ice Bowl season, that problem had largely gone away.

Jackie Kennedy was dating somebody named Lord Harlech, and so, in
the minds of the public, the mourning must be over. The Cowboys
now had earned, if not the respect, then the curiosity of a sports nation
as the team that almost toppled the unbeatable Packers in the 1966
championship game. Now fans were eager to see what Landry and his
team might generate for an encore.

In Dallas, after the Cowboys had ventured into Cleveland to beat
the Browns and then had followed that up with a systematic hammering
of the New York Giants, a rapidly expanding fan base presumed
that the remainder of the 1967 regular season would serve as nothing
other than a window-dressing formality prior to the much awaited
rematch against Lombardi and the Pack.

A Cotton Bowl crowd of over 75,000, which was capacity,, came
flooding into Fair Park to watch the Cowboys play their third regular
MIKE SHROPSHIRE


season game, against the Los Angeles Rams. At least an hour before
game time, the ranking swans of the Dallas social set congregated
inside a circus tent pitched on the west access steps to the stadium.
The sold-out, or nearly sold-out, Cotton Bowl had become a regular
home-game event for the Cowboys. With a possible championship
beckoning, the success of the team now could be measured by the
positioning of the Lions Club band. In the early years, when persons
reporting downtown for jury duty outnumbered the spectators in the
Cotton Bowl, the band enjoyed a view from the fifty-yard line in the
east stands. As paying customers began to arrive in more abundant
quantities, Tex Schramm moved the band farther from the choice
seats. By 1967, it performed from behind the goal line and, eventually,
the band played its music from bleacher seats stuck in the south-end
zone tunnel that led to the dressing rooms.

But inside the party tent, season-ticket holders could and did
slam down ample portions of hard liquor, since the Cowboy Club
enjoyed official private club status with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage
Commission. On Sundays in Dallas, the Cowboy Club was clearly the place to be seen. The gathering in the tent consisted largely of the
thirty-five to forty-five set that was inhaling deeply of the full-scale
entrepreneurial Dallas boom scene. While the autumn of 1967 might
be remembered as the time when burning one's draft card became
stylish in certain pockets of the Left Coast, the New York Times nonfiction
best-seller list included titles like Anyone Can Make a Million and Happiness Is a Stock That Doubles in a Year.

While the Republicans pondered their roster of candidates for
the presidential run coming up in 1968, New York mayor John Lindsay
announced that the identity of the person at the top of the ticket didn't
matter "because at this point, Mickey Mouse could beat Lyndon Johnson."
Lindsay could well have made that conclusion from a poll of the
perhaps 1,500 upscale show ponies inside the Cowboy Club tent,
where persons of the liberal persuasion were not among the plurality.

On this particular Sunday, with the Rams in town, conversation in
that tent did not concern politics. Most of the men in there wore Gant
shirts, Weejun loafers, and a smile that said, "Everything is completely
under control. And after today . . . we'll be 3and-0."

On the field of the Cotton Bowl, as both teams warmed up, Lee
Roy Jordan wasn't as certain, and neither was Tom Landry. Cowboys
practice sessions for the Rams game had not been crisp. Jordan real
THE ICE BOWL
	71


ized that the Dallas defense remained vulnerable at the cornerback
spot opposite Cornell Green. In the championship game of the season
before, Bart Starr had picked on the other corner, Warren Livingston,
at will. Livingston had been jettisoned in favor of a new face who was
not fating much better. Mike Johnson, adequate as an offensive left
halfback in a University of Kansas backfield that included Gale Sayers
at tight half, now struggled as an NFL cornerback.

The top quarterbacks in the league, the Starrs and the Sonny
Jurgensens and the Johnny Unitases, customarily enjoyed a feast day
when they located a weak spot like that in the opposing secondary.
Roman Gabriel of the Rams also qualified as such a quarterback.

Late in the week, Landry's preparations for the Rams had been
complicated by word that a Rams scout, Norm Pullum, had been detected
in the vicinity of the Cowboys' practice facility near North Central
Expressway. Landry suspected that a spy had infiltrated his camp.
He filed an official protest with the league office. When word of that
hit the public print, everybody was laughing except Landry. (Interestingly,
when Pullum was spotted poking around a Packers practice later
that year, nobody laughed.)

"I don't know how much they saw or how they interpreted what
they did see," Landry said, "but other teams don't use a lot of different
formations like we do."

When the Rams hit town on Saturday before the Sunday game,
their coach, George Allen, just beginning his reign as Landry's everlasting
nemesis, took complete advantage of what now had enlarged
into a slapstick flap. He presented eountereharges that a suspicious
character in a tree, watching a Rams practice, had been identified as a
Cowboys scout, Bueko Kilroy. "I told one of my assistants to throw a
rock at him, but he was too far away," Allen deadpanned. Bucko Kilroy,
at the time, weighed more than three hundred pounds. "I wasn't
going to mention it until all of this came up," continued Allen, maestro
of the mind game and unchallenged virtuoso of the offbeat motivational
tool. Few men in the business of coaching professional football
were endowed with the kind of imagination to exploit the likes of a
Bueko Kilroy to rev up his team's competitive juices. The spy controversy
served as the ideal distraction. With the slightest lapse of focus
on the part of the Cowboys, the edge in a dose game would be shifted
to the Rams.

Allen, the former Bears defensive coordinator, had assumed the

	72
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


head coaching job in Los Angeles after a bitter departure from George
Halas. At first, Halas refused to allow Allen to break away from his
contract in Chicago. Now in Los Angeles, Allen became devoted to the
idea that he, not Lombardi and not Landry, would prevail as the winning
coach in Super Bowl II.


BY 1967, THE NFL game had metamorphosed into a competition in
which the team with the best front defensive four, and not the best
quarterback, might be the one to capture the championship. Dallas
held a strong hand in this aspect of the game. The quartet known as
Willie (Townes), Lilly (Bob), Jethro (Pugh), and George (Andrie) had
become more consistent in producing harmonies that dominated a
game. Lombardi's defensive front also came with nice credentials. Ron
Kostelnik and Lionel Aldridge brought job skills that meshed well with
those of the other two, future Hall of Fame players Willie Davis and
Henry Jordan. The front four often would resort to guile and finesse
techniques to function at maximum level.

"Our defense basically revolves around the concept of playing
keys," explained Henry Jordan. "We move with them all the time. On
a trap play, for example, Aldridge's opposing tackle will fake a pass
block by going for our middle linebacker. Now, I have moved with my
key, the offensive guard, and I am trapped by him. Then Aldridge will
move with his key when he sees him going for the middle linebacker.
If Lionel had simply crashed straight ahead, he would have been
trapped by the guard, who has pulled and come across. But instead he
has moved into the hole by following the tackle, and thus he fouled up
the trap."

But in the bnltal and heartless realm of hand-to-hand trench
combat, nobody could hope to match the firepower of the Rams' Fearsome
Foursome. Each member of the group brought his personalized
trademark of destruction to the stadium on Sunday. At six five and 260
pounds, end Deacon Jones could run the hundred-yard dash in ten
seconds fiat, making him a terrifying specimen in his day.

Opposite Deacon Jones on the other end, Lamar Lundy matched
Jones's 260 pounds but stood one inch taller. Ominous and frightening
in his physical presence, Lundy played a minor role in the motion
picture version of In Cold Blood. Lundy's role? The two murderers,
hitchhiking, are offered a ride by a highway motorist, played by the

THE ICE BOWL 73


Rams defensive end, The murderers freak at Lundy's threatening
countenance and decline the lift.

Inside, at tackle, Roger Brown, with his 295 pounds of guided
muscle, pointed out that his style was dictated by the opposing team.
"'They hate me and are trying to cut off my career. So I'm going to
hurt them first."

Merlin Olsen wound up immortalizing himself as a television
broadcast star, by starring in commercials for a floral-delivery outfit,
among other endeavors. Before that, in his playing prime, Olsen
agreed that an activity like blind siding a quarterback into partial consciousness
was, if not addictive, at least "exciting. I like to bloody them
up a little."

Olsen has never attempted to deny a story that reportedly happened
during a halftime, when a Rams coach admonished, "Merlin,
that guard you're playing across from is outthinking you.'" As the story
goes, Olsen replied, "'That's okay, Coach. By the end of the game, he'll
be as stupid as I am."

On a Sunday afternoon in the Cotton Bowl, Olsen and company
played at the pinnacle of their Fearsome Foursome reputation---especially
Olsen, who, to his happiness, found himself stationed head on
with Jim Boeke, the least forceful player in the Cowboys' offensive
line. As a public figure, Boeke might be remembered for three things.
Boeke was the player who jumped offside with the Cowboys positioned
at the Packers' goal line in the title game that followed the 1966
season, just as Dallas seemed poised to throw the contest into overtime.
Also, Boeke was fairly well known in West Coast circles for his
off-season employment as Ricky Nelson's bodyguard. And in a
modern-day circumstance, some fans might occasionally recognize
Boeke's name in the credits of the hit ABC sitcom Coach, on which he
gets an occasional speaking role. But what Boeke might mention as the
day he best remembers is the one when Olsen and company beat his
brains out.

The Rams captured the lead in the first quarter when Gabriel
himself scored from the three-yard line, Dan Reeves had apparently
tied the game for Dallas in the second quarter with a one-yard dive,
but Harold Deters's extra-point try was blocked.

After the half, Les Josephson made a 27-yard touchdown after
Maxie Baughan, a linebacker, recovered a fumble. Then Lance Rent
zel leaped high for a Meredith pass and tipped the ball into the eager

	74
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


hands of Ed Meaders, who clutched the interception and danced 30
yards for a giveaway touchdown. The Cowboys were through for the
afternoon. Dick Bass capped the day with a 21-yard run, and the Rams
not only breezed to a 35-13 win, they kicked down the Dallas facade
and ruptured the fairy-tale dream of the Cowboys' fans. The only
genuine excitement came in the second half when an end-zone fan
snatched a policeman's service revolver and began waving his trophy
around while other spectators crawled beneath their seats.

Afterward, in the Cowboys' dressing room, Tex Schramm wore
the expression of a man who had come home to discover his front
porch stolen. If the Rams had indeed employed the services of a spy,
their agent had done his job marvelously well. Tom Landry labeled "all
phases" of the Cowboys' showing against the Rams as "miserable."

This was one game when Lee Roy Jordan was happy to be playing
for Tom Landry instead of Bear Bryant, who probably would have
mandated a three-hour scrimmage in the parking lot after such a
stinkout. "I hate to see the films. It's gonna be embarrassin'. The films
don't lie. You can't fool them," Jordan remembered saying.

"I couldn't contain their wide plays and nobody was coming up.
We had no pursuit. We tackled bad," he added and placed himself
among the teams' leading offenders. "Two or three times, I had a ball
carrier nailed and let him get away. I had my arms around Dick Bass
and he ran for a touchdown."

Offensive guard Jim Boeke, after his awful pounding by the
Rams' front four, could probably hear the distant strains of bagpipe
music. The week before, in their 38-24 tap dance over the New York
Giants, the Cowboys had rolled up 414 yards of total offense.

Against the Rams, the yardage numbers plunged to 272, and
many of those came in garbage time after the Rams had sewed the
game up in the third quarter. The Dallas ground game collected 51
yards against Olsen, Brown, Lundy, Jones, and company. Referring to
the offense, Don Meredith, as usual, was pragmatic. "We didn't play
an alert game," he said. "But I don't guess the defense is too proud of
itself, either."

So dominant were the Rams that, even though the game was
simply one of the fourteen regular-season encounters, the fans and
media now realized the trip back to the championship game would
amount to a game-by-game, blood-and-guts ordeal. All of this hardly
came as a revelation to Tom Landry. It merely confirmed that his

THE ICE BOWL 75


Dallas team was not yet a finished product and that some sleight of
hand coupled with plain luck would be necessary for the Cowboys to
hold up their end of the rematch appointment with Green Bay.

Vinee Lombardi himself was not overjoyed when he heard the
result of the lams-Cowboys game. Dead set on returning to a third
straight championship, Lombardi held every confidence that his team
could once again handle Dallas. Those lams, with slick and unpredictable
George Allen at the controls, now loomed as something more
ominous.

CHAPTER


In TrZ EA,Y ATtM of 1967, Fenway Park served as the core of the
ever broadening American sports galaxy. The Red Sox, Twins, White
Sox, and Tigers had raced neck and neck through a prolonged and
thrilling stretch run before Boston finally prevailed and won the American
League pennant.

On the morning of the seventh game of the World Series against
the St. Louis Cardinals, the carillon of Boston's Park Street Church
pealed out the melody of "The Impossible Dream," and Cardinal
Cushing bestowed a blessing on the Red Sox. Despite the call for
celestial intervention, Bob Gibson stood on the mound for St. Louis in
the seventh game. Gibson, as usual, was throwing gas and the Red Sox
became the Dead Sox. Afterward, Gibson said that he had reached a
point in his life where the win-at-all-cost ethic had become so intense
that he refused to let his seven-year-old daughter beat him at tic-tactoe.

Packers
halfback Donny Anderson watched the seventh game of
the World Series with keen interest. Had it not been for a decision that
he had made at the crossroads of his life six years earlier, he might
have been on the field that afternoon at Fenway Park. Instead, Anderson
found himself laboring for Vince Lombardi and attempting to fill
the cleats of the now retired Paul Hornung.

Donny Anderson had grown up in the remoteness of the Great
American Outback, a town called Stinnett in the upper reaches of the
Texas Panhandle. "That's ten miles north of Borger, or sixty miles
north of Amarillo, however you prefer it," Anderson says. Few regions
of the lower forty-eight American states are as remote as the treeless
stretches that run along a stream called the Canadian River. When it

THE ICE BOWL 77


comes to a test of faith, the winter months can be just as trying
throughout the Panhandle as the infernal summertime. And this territory
tends to produce people who are as plain and tough and sometimes
as strange as the landscape itself. Although it is theorized that
lithium salts in the groundwater supply help to tranquilize the population,
the breathtaking emptiness of this commonwealth-of the-wind
can produce behavior of the sort detailed in psychiatric texts.

In a town near Stinnett, according to Panhandle folklore, a
woman promised her nephew that she would buy him a shotgun for
his sixteenth birthday. All the boy had to accomplish in return was to
memorize the Old Testament. The kid accomplished the feat in six
months, and, when the aunt gave him the gun, he loaded the thing and
promptly blew her head off with it. The locals all joked that if the aunt
had insisted on the kid's memorizing the whole Bible, she might have
lasted out the year.

Fortunately for Donny Anderson, his exceptional athletic skills
provided a healthier kind of outdoor outlet. His passion was baseball.
In high school, Anderson, a natural left-hander, had been hitting baseballs
such great distances that a pro scout bought a road map, located
Stinnett with a magnifying glass, and came to watch him play.

"The Red Sox offered me a contract right out of high school, and
I was tempted," said Anderson. But he played another sport in high
school, too, and college football coaches were always on the hunt for
somebody like Anderson, who was known to be large, strong, and, as
they say in West Texas, "swnft." Baseball. Football. In the end, all that
really mattered to Donny Anderson was that somebody was offering
him a free one-way ticket out of Stinnett. "The money the Red Sox
offered me was not that significant," Anderson said, so he decided to
accept a football scholarship to Texas Tech.

Not only was Texas Tech located down in Lubbock, which had
been the hometown of Buddy Holly, but also the coach, J. T. King,
told Anderson "that I could play baseball there and basketball too, if I
wanted to." Naturally, on his arrival, King told his halfback that he
should probably forget baseball. And Anderson did. While Tech football
teams were resoundingly mediocre, Anderson--playing in an era
when Southwest Conference sports were limited to the exclusive participation
of white boys--consistently demonstrated rare breakaway
speed for a player of his size.

Vince Lombardi watched a film of a 95-yard run that Anderson

78
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


made against TCU, noted that the halfback was also punting the ball
for a 44-yard average, and decided that Donny would look great in
green and gold. Anderson had the sort of personal background that
won the approval of Lombardi as well. The Green Bay Packers' roster
was loaded with players who had grown up in the hard towns of the
Rust Belt, or along Outhouse Row in the deep South, or in little
dipshit prairie hamlets like Stinnett, Texas. If the player had been
exposed to physical hardship as a kid and the likelihood of that was
high in the uncompromising backwoods locales--then that was all the
better; the player had already learned to hate and therefore might
more readily tolerate Vince Lombardi.

What Vince did not like were the bronzed gods that came out of
schools like UCLA, and, when Donny Anderson signed with the Packers,
defensive halfback Willie Wood was the only Californian on the
whole squad. And Willie Wood did not show up at the Packers' training
camp carrying a surfboard. Wood, not drafted as a quarterback at USE , had sent Lombardi a postcard, begging for a tryout. So for the
cost of a postage stamp, Wood would become one of six free agents to
land in the NFL Hall of Fame. Lombardi described the defensive
back as "pound for pound, the hardest tackler I ever saw."

Fortunately for Anderson, his route to Green Bay had been less
challenging. The AFL-NFL merger still would not happen for another
year. Now enjoying the status of a first-round pick by both Green Bay
and the Houston Oilers of the ALL, Anderson realized for certain that
ranch life in Stinnett was behind him for good and forever.

Now Anderson faced a decision more perplexing than the foot
ball-baseball choice he had faced four years earlier. "The Green Bay
Packers were the kings of the sport at that time. I was still a big
baseball fan back then, a baseball nut, really, and to me the Packers
were like the New York Yankees," Anderson said. "Plus, the National
Football League was established, and Houston and the ALL had not
yet achieved that level of prominence. The Packers had a proven
coach and a proven offensive line, and it made more sense to go in that
direction."

There was one hang-up. The Oilers, over the long run, had a
more lucrative contract pitch. "Well, I didn't have any problem playing
and living in Houston. Plus, my father worked for Phillips Petroleum,
and Bud Adams, who owned the Oilers, also owned sixty-six percent of
Phillips Petroleum," Anderson pointed out. "So Bud Adams came at

I
THE ICE BOWL


me with a contract offer that included some interesting fringe benefits,
such as the ownership of some filling stations, that the Packers could
not match. All they had Still, the Packers' offer to Anderson, the contract that he eventually
did sign, probably was the largest sum paid out to a player over the
course of the AFL-NFL bidding war for rookies that lasted five years.
"I don't know if my contract was the biggest. They told me that it was.
All I know is that when Jim Grabowski and I both signed with the
Packers, they called us the quote, unquote million-dollar-bonus boys."

So Anderson embarked to training camp with the Packers in the
summer of 1966, fully anticipating the enmity of a locker room full of
Hall of Fame football players who, some of them, would be earning
perhaps one-fourth what Anderson was being paid. If not apprehensive,
Anderson remained curious about the reception that awaited the
"million-dollar-bonus boy" from the likes of a Jim Taylor or a Henry
Jordan. "I expected them to envy the unproven entity. God knows, I
realized that it didn't make sense," Anderson recalled. "You should pay
the proven people the big money and not pay the rookies anything.
But it didn't work that way. What I found out immediately was that
Vince had told the team that if they wanted to continue to win, then
the team had to pay for players like Grabowski and me and that was
that. So we were accepted right away. With one exception. Ray
Nitschke was a little bit . . . uh . . . well, let's just leave it at that.
That was just Ray being Ray."

Anderson had been at work in the Packers' training camp about
ten minutes when he realized something. Whatever his teammates
thought about the state of his finances was of little consequence. What
mattered now was the ordeal of everyday survival in Vince Lombardi's
Neighborhood. "The practice-field atmosphere was unbelievably intense,"
the rookie halfback quickly learned, "and it became apparent
right away why the Packers had been winning all of those championships.
All of the stress was placed on developing the mental toughness
and the refinement of a thought process that did not allow room for
mistakes. The Green Bay Packers simply didn't make mistakes, and
when you don't make mistakes, that separates you from a lot of other
teams.

"'Vince felt that any time the Packers were in a close game in the
fourth quarter, we would win it because we would execute and do it
properly and win. Of course, this was coupled with the conditioning

was cash. So it was a little bit of a problem."
	80
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


business, the stuff where he talked about fatigue makes cowards of us
all. Vince had a jillion quotes just like that. But the notion was simple
enough. He felt that if you weren't in the right kind of shape, then
you'd lie down and quit when the game was on the line, no matter how
mentally tough you thought you were."

Anderson learned something about what to expect from his
rookie season. What Lombardi wanted from Anderson, as Paul
Hornung's stand-in, was for him to stay on the bench, keep his eyes
open, and speak only when he needed to ask an intelligent question.

"In 1966, in our second regular-season game, I learned what it
really meant to function as a Lombardi Packer. We were playing at
Cleveland, we were losing 20-14 with 2:14 to play, and we didn't have
the ball. I was just a rookie on the sideline and I turned to Fuzzy
Thurston he was kind of my mentor--and I said, "This doesn't look
too good.' And Fuzzy said, 'Nah. Here's what's getting ready to happen.
The defense will hold them, we're going to get the ball back and
go on down and score. Then we'll kick the extra point, go take a
shower, get on the airplane, and go back to Green Bay.'

"'What happened next was that Cleveland punted, we got the ball
and drove sixty yards to score. Bart Starr threw a little screen pass to
Jim Taylor, who ran it in for a touchdown. Don Chandler kicked the
extra point, and the next thing I knew, we were all on that plane going
back home, drinking a few beers and laughing. For the young guys,
you became a believer pretty quick, because you could see it. The test
of greatness comes when you believe you're going to do it. You train
your mind to think that way. The Packers had won and won and won
under Lombardi. Just the same as the reverse situation. If you're batting
and facing some pitcher and you're zero-for-thirty against the guy,
then there's an excellent chance that you're getting ready to be zero for-thirty-one."

Throughout
Donny Anderson's rookie season, that postgame setting
would become a weekly event, although the Packers rarely
needed to score in the final two minutes to seal the issue. It was
frequently mentioned during the Joe DiMaggio era that nothing in life
could compare with being young and a Yankee. Anderson discovered
that being a single man on the cheerful side of thirty and playing for
the Green Bay Packers also would serve to provide some of life's
simple pleasures. Or, as they like to say in Green Bay, "It beats the
hell out of getting kicked in the teeth with a frozen boot."

THE ICE BOWL 81


Townspeople remained cordial, and while nobody ever mistook
Green Bay for Monte Carlo, the town offered some places to socialize.
Monday nights became particularly eventfnl. "We played on Sunday,
so Monday became our Saturday," Anderson recalled, and locations
like Speed's, the Tropic, the Zuider Zee, the Left Guard (which was
Fuzz?" Thurston's joint), and the Left End (of which Max McGee
owned a part) became nightly haunts.

"Vinee had a couple of rules about that kind of behavior," Anderson
said. "We could hang out wherever we wanted to, as long as we
wanted to, as long as we sat at a table and didn't actually sit at the bar
and drink. If we did and he found out, the result would probably be a


The bar thing was one of Lombardi's many idiosyneraeies. He
figured that in the eyes of the public, a Green Bay Packer seated at a
table in a tavern was enjoying a eoektail. A Packer seated on a barstool
was getting soused. Lombardi once chased several of his players out of
an airport lounge as they watched two other NFL teams play on "IN.
Even though the players were not drinking, they were standing at the

bar.

Donny Anderson discovered quite a few things about Vinee Lombardi
during that elysian season of 1966. "Vinee used two separate
philosophies with all the players. He analyzed every man on the roster
to dictate which philosophy to set in place. For some Vinee would use
the carrot as the bait--the carrot being a new salary, a new eontraet, a
new ear.

"With others, instead of the carrot, Vince would use the whip,
and he was always popping it. This involved continuing exposure to
corrective criticism, which basically was a form of country boy ass
chewing. But either way, Vinee Lombardi had made his personal commitment.
A commitment to family, a commitment to God, and a commitment
to the Green Bay Packers, and if you did the same thing, you
became a helluva good football player--or Vince would tear you down
until you couldn't do it anymore.

"And," Anderson continued, "'there were some guys who could
not play for Vince because he put so much pressure on them. The
practices were intense. The games were intense, and you had to learn
how to perform under terrific pressure."

After the Green Bay Packers had beaten the Cowboys, 34-27, in
the NFL championship game, and the team traveled to Santa Barbara

MIKE SHROPSHIRE


for two weeks to prepare for the battle against the Kansas City Chiefs,
it is Anderson's recollection that the coach deviated from this carrot
or-whip routine. For the final week of practice in particular, Vince
tossed away the carrot and the players were driven like peasants working
on a Soviet barley farm.

"Let's just say that after winning in Dallas, Lombardi didn't let us
drift too far," Anderson said. "He told us that none of us were any
good and that if it hadn't been for him, none of us would have ever
become world champions and he wanted us to know that. That's how
he motivated us for Super Bowl I, even though they didn't call the
game that back then. He got us so mad, he knew that we would
prepare better."

Afterward, the browbeaten Pack might have wondered if it yeas
worth it. At least one player thought it was. Linebacker Lee Roy Caf
fey used his winner's share of the championship-game bonus money to
buy a small farm back in Texas and then sold his entire watermelon
crop to a grocery store back in Green Bay. If the Pack could repeat in
Super Bowl II, then Caffey said he could afford a moonshine distillery.


IN SEPTEMBER 1967, when the Green Bay Packers embarked on Virice
Lombardi's grand and final crusade, the marching song for most of the
United States was a ditty titled "Light My Fire." The fire that Vixace
Lombardi was trying to light and the one the Doors were singing
about were not exactly the same. Said Jim Morrison: "I'm interested in
anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, and especially activity that has
no meaning. It seems to be the road to freedom." Not surprisingly, the
Doors were never invited to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at ny
Green Bay Packers games at Lambeau Field.

On the world fashion front that same fall, the rage was brown.
According to Pierre Cardin, "Brown has class. It lends an air of distinction."
And the editor of the French edition of Vogue cooed,
"Brown is so warm, so wonderful against a tanned skin." Like the
Doors, the arbiters of taste in the fashion world would have been hard
pressed to locate a safe haven in Green Bay in 1967. Then, as now, the
ensemble tended to call for green shoes and a gold handbag, or vice

versa.

Down in Milwaukee, the parents of a Marine officer were talking
about their son's francee from D.C., describing the twenty-three-year

THE ICE BOWL


old woman as "quick-witted under the hat, bubbling and sharp." Mr.
and Mrs. Robb were talking about Lynda Bird Johnson after meeting
her in the White House. "The greatest thing that Mrs. Robb and I got
out of all this was to know that these young people are truly in love,'"
said Mr. Robb. The father of the groom-to-be, a Republican, withheld
comments on his impressions of Lynda Bird's old man.

Upstate in the Green Bay region, nobody cared about any of that.
After the Packers' hair-raising comeback against the Detroit Lions,
which earned the 17-17 deadlock, fans were obsessed with the topic of
how Green Bay would respond to the next challenge. That involved
pro football's ultimate grudge match, the Packers against the hated
Chicago Bears, the hated George Halas, the hated Dick Butkas and
the not necessarily hated but greatly feared Gale Sayers.

After Bart Starr's alarming four-interception showing (when he
had thrown only three in the whole previous season) against the Lions
in the first half, the fansmnot to mention the coaching staff needed
reassurance that this was merely a Bart Starr aberration. At least, nothing
like that would happen again. They were right. Instead of throwing
four interceptions against the Bears, Starr threw five.

Furthermore, Jim Grabowski, the other "million-dollar bonus
boy" now working as Jim Taylor's full-time replacement at fullback,
fumbled three times against Butkas and company, and the Bears recovered
all three. Eight turnovers!

The punch line was that the Green Bay defense limited Halas and
the Bears to a total of four first downs and nineteen yards passing as
the Packers, despite the most outlandish giveaway display in the entire
history of the Lombardi tenure, somehow won the game, 13-10.


DONNY ANDERSON, NOW in his second year and being called on to earn
some of that million-dollar bonus, demonstrated the kind of initiative
that Lombardi demanded. In the second quarter Anderson, back to
punt, canght the Bears in a state of temporary brainlock, saw an opening,
and ran downfield for forty yards. That burst of inspiration set up
Grabowski's two-yard touchdown dive and left George Halas sputtering.
"One of our men totally failed on his assignment on that play,"
Halas said. "'Someone was supposed to come in from that side and he
didn't, that's all." That lapse cost the Bears the game. Halas remained

	84
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


careful not to identify that "someone," although his name undoubtedly
would appear on the waiver wire the next Tuesday.

Vince Lombardi, whose team never made mistakes, could not
have been any happier than Halas. After Start threw interceptions on
the Pack's opening two possessions of the first quarter, Grabowski
fumbled on the first two drives of the second quarter. Later in the
second quarter, Starr threw a pass that Boyd Dowler juggled. Then, as
Dowler fell down, the football actually bounced off his Packer helmet
and into the hands of Chicago safety Richie Pettibone. That was one of
three interceptions for Pettibone that afternoon, one short of the NFL
record. Starr's five picks also left him one shy of a listing in the Green
Bay record book.

Somehow, Greea Bay led 10-0 at the half, mostly because the
Bears were playing somebody named Larry Rakestraw at quarterback.
But with the Pack tossing the football around like a hot rock, the Bears
could have tasted soroe success with Liberace playing quarterback. So
when Butkas recovered another Grabowski fumble at the Packers' 40yard
line in the fourth quarter, the inevitable finally came to pass.
Sayers disappeared iato the Green Bay end zone from 13 yards away,
and with three minutes to play, the score stood at 10-10.

Finally, though, Start and the Packers mounted a drive during
whieh they did not shoot themselves in the foot, throw up, or fall into
the orchestra pit. Jtst as Starr had done in the fourth-quarter drive
that had tied the Lions, he again tossed a dump-off pass to Elijah Pitts
to launch the march. After Green Bay crossed midfield and Grabowski
plowed into the Chicago midsection, butted Butkas in the teeth, and
rumbled ahead for nine yards, placekicker Don Chandler bent over on
the sideline, pulled tap a clump of grass and tossed it into the air. The
kicker didn't like what he saw. The wind, out of the northwest, was
blowing hard.

When assistant coach Dave Hanner yelled, "'Kicking team!" with
the game on the line for the second time in as many weeks, Bart Starr
would put the ball down 45 yards from the goalpost. With the wind
blowing partially in his face but also from a direction that might blow
the ball off to the left, Don Chandler was not crazy about his odds
when he loped onto the field. The kicker also noted the ominous
presence of Gale Styers stationed at the goal line. If the kick came up
short, the lethal Sayers would attempt to run it back. After Chandler
kicked the football, he said, "I knew it was straight enough. The wind

THE ICE BOWL


was swirling, like coming from two directions at once. I watched Gale
Sayers, and when he didn't react I knew then that it was long enough,

fOO.'"

As the ball cleared the upright, only 63 seconds remained on the
clock, and with the Bears' passing offense nonexistent all day, Halas
and Chicago were now doomed. When Green Bay won its championships
in 1961 and 1962, players like Hornung and Jerry Kramer had
handled the placekicking chores. Lombardi's decision to bring in Don
Chandler, the ex-Giant kicking specialist, now appeared inspired.

But Vince Lombardi was not feeling especially inspired when the
game ended, nor was he elated, relieved or anything other than gravely
concerned and moderately horrified over the eight-turnover burlesque.
After two games, home games at Lambeau Field at that, the
Pack had surrendered thirteen giveaways. Lombardi must have felt
tempted to place a call back to Fordham and hire an exorcist.

"'We're having a hell of a time, apparently, but it's a tribute that
they can still come back," Lombardi said. The coach addressed the
awkward questions of the reporters with a civil tongue. In earlier
years, somebody would have been fitting Lombardi with a straitjacket
after a showing like that.

"Starr is not going to throw interceptions. You don't change that
way. Not in one year. Maybe this is the year when things happen to us.
We've had nine good years, but everybody gets bad bounces and we've
had ours in the last two weeks.'"

Lombardi paused. The man had never been known to dwell on
"ifs" and was certainly not prone to speculate on the great unknown
that some people refer to as the future. But now Lomhardi felt obligated
to offer a prophecy: "'One of these days these things are going to
stop. It might be next year, this year, this week, in two weeks. But
someday we are going to put it all together and stop making these
mistakes, and this might become a great team."


THE FOLLOWING WEEK, as the scene shifted to Milwaukee and County

Stadium, the Packers elevated their record to 2--0-1 with a 23-0 win.
But somebody would have to dispatch a search party to locate the
great team that Vince had envisioned. Those guys were still missing in
action. The shutout win had come at the expense of the awful secondyear
Atlanta Falcons.

	86
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


The day before the Falcons game, in Madrid, Master Sergeant
Donald Redmond of Seattle somehow managed to fall into a bullring.
While Redmond's wife and six of his nine children looked on, the
enraged bull gored the man to death. But other than Sergeant Redmond,
few individuals on the planet were experiencing a more difficult
time than Bart Starr. In pregame introductions, some fans, mindful of
Starr's 4.5 interception rate of the previous two games, booed the
quarterback. In the second quarter, with the score 0-0 and the Packers'
offense gasping and sputtering, the only genuine football player on
the entire Atlanta roster, linebaeker Tommy Nobis, blitzed and
rammed Bart Starr, who wrenched his right shoulder badly on the
play.

So it was out with Starr and in with the veteran backup, Zeke
Bratkowski. Right away Bratkowski pitched touchdown strikes of 5 and
50 yards to Carroll Dale. "I am fortunate to have a team that can
adjust to me," Bratkowski said afterward. Meanwhile, the Packers"
defense labored mightily to restore some measure of dignity to what
seemed to be developing into a flawed season. Henry Jordan tackled
Atlanta's Junior Coffey with such savage determination that he ripped
the thigh pad from the fullbaek's pants. "Pride? You've heard us talk
about pride?" snapped Jordan when the game was over.

Starr, his face reflecting the agony of his injured shoulder, the
frustration of having been hammered off the field by the Atlanta Falcons,
and whatever sensation that he experienced when he heard the
boos, sat in front of his locker and swallowed a pain pill. An ice bag
was taped to his shoulder, and he didn't feel like answering the prying
inquiries of the morbidly curious sportswriters.

"I really don't care to say anything," Starr announced. "Please
don't construe this as being rude. I just don't want to say anything."

"Who knocked you out of the game?" asked a reporter who already
knew the answer to the question. Reporters like to do that from
time to time, just for the hell of it.

"I don't know who hit me," answered Starr.


LOMIalDI WaS NOT in a chatty mood after the contest and was certainly
not eager to discourse on the topic of the pregame boos directed at his
proud quarterback. Green Bay Packers are not used to receiving that
type of reception from the home crowd. "Boos? I didn't hear any boos..

THE ICE BOWL 87


All I heard was cheers," announced Lombardi. "If there were any
boos, they must have come from the press box."

Lombardi was perplexed. By the end of training camp, he knew
that his ability to stimulate his veteran stars was reaching the point of
diminishing returns. The Starrs and the Kramers and the Nitschkes
and the rest had heard those speeches one time too many. Now the
coach was wondering if those retirement plans that he had been mulling
over might actually have taken form one year too late.

CHAPTER


CALIFORNIA'S RECENTLY ELECTED GOVERNOR was becoming conspicuous in

locations well beyond Sacramento. He needed some national exposure.
In the fall months of 1967, Ronald Reagan appeared at speaking
engagements in ten states. A presidential election was set for the t:ollowing
year, the Republican ticket seemed wide open, and at least a
dozen contenders were applying for the job. While Richard Nixon was
intent on a political comeback in 1968 and seriously telling his campaign
handlers that he wanted Vince Lombardi as his running mate,
the pundits were guessing the more likely ticket would involve Nelson
Rockefeller and Reagan.

So Reagan began telling Americans what he thought they wanted
to hear. He began each and every speech with the following remarks:
"In California, we have some people called hippies. For those of you
who don't know what a hippie is, he's a fellow who has hair like
Tarzan, walks like Jane, and smells like Cheetah.'" Reagan never made
it to Texas that year, but if he had, his definition of the hippie would
have needed further explanation. The hippie movement would establish
itself on Mars before experiencing much progress in the Texas of
1967.

Texas had meticulously cultivated its special quality of eccentricity
for generations. Texas remained a nation of its own, and there was no
room here for freaks wearing beads. Dallas County district attorney
Henry Wade labored passionately to guarantee that citizens of his fair
town would never be exposed to the ravages of the Age of Aquarius.

While the Dallas of the sixties was largely characterized as an
anything-goes kind of society, that "'anything" had better not include a
little marijuana. The Texas Penal Code authorized life terms, ii neces
THE ICE BOWL 89


sary, for persons found in possession of even trace amounts of marijuana.
Henry Wade deemed it necessary. If, say, some bellhop got
caught with a joint in his sock, he might be off to the state penitentiary
in Huntsville, where the throw-away-the-key approach was popularly
enforced.

One such individual was a Dallas resident named Leotis Johnson,
who "'offended the state" by giving one marijuana cigarette to an individual
who turned out to be a cop. A Dallas jury handed Johnson a
prison term that exceeded one hundred years. The civil libertarians of
Dallas, all five of them, rallied to Johnson's defense. When Texas governor
Preston Smith passed through town, he was greeted with demonstrators
who chanted, "Free Leotis! Free Leotis!" Smith turned to
his press aide and asked, "Why are they hollering aboutfrijoles [Mexican
beans]?"

So persons afflicted with latent hippie urges learned to stay underground,
Interestingly, one of the most recognizable celebrities in
Dallas in 1967 existed in the private and lonely life of the closet hippie.
Although Henry Wade didn't know it, coach Tom Landry suspected it.
Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith had been known to exhibit ten
deneies that defied the "hang 'em high" mentality that often prevailed
in the state.

Don Meredith did not wear his hair like Tarzan. He did not dress
like the original Sonny Bono. He never marched in a peace demonstration.
He never slept with Janis Joplin, and if he ever smoked pot,
he certainly hadn't done it in a public park. Don Meredith was another
kind of hippie, his own self-styled brand. What made Meredith a hippie
largely concerned his thoughts regarding authority. Again, he
never threw rocks at a SWAT team or made any "Burn, baby, burn"
speeches. Meredith didn't hate or resent authority. In his world, authority
simply did not exist. The result was that Meredith and Tom
Landry, the ultimate man of structure, never meshed at the psychological
level. A coach-quarterback relationship in which both men think as
one--thought to be essential to consistent winning patterns in the
NFL--just never happened between Meredith and Landry.


IN 1964, WHEN the Cowboys still suffered the weekly Sunday pangs of
the NFL learning process, the team was boarding a plane to Philadelphia,
where Dallas was destined to get beat. Don Meredith sat at the

	90
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


gate at Love Field, tapping his hands on an attache case as if playing a
bongo drum (the closet hippie at work here). As Landry walked past to
board the plane, Meredith said, "Hey, Tom. Are you sure you want to
go through with this?"

But the team started winning anyway, because Landry developed
brilliant offensive schemes and Meredith--fearless and talented--
made things work at game time. On Landry's weekly television program,
the coach would sit with a movie projector and demonstrate the
nuances that made his plays work. For example, Meredith would toss a
screen pass to Dan Reeves for 33 yards. Landry would stop the projector,
reverse the film, and rerun the play sometimes a half-dozen times
to illustrate, say, how a fake handoff to Don Perkins pulled a couple of
linebackers out of position and an open lane was created that resulted
in a big gain.

In contrast, Vince Lombardi liked plays that worked because
somebody like Jim Taylor threw a block that resulted in a linebacker
sitting in a dentist's chair for about a week. Because of the power
sweep, the American Chiropractic Association should have voted
Vince Lombardi Man of the Year. Simply a difference in style. But
after the passage of several seasons, Meredith mastered the deceptive
dance steps of the star matador, and the Cowboys' finesse offense
began rolling up yardage and touchdowns. Tom Landry's offensive
play book, thicker than a James Michener novel, had became famous--
or perhaps notorious--around the league for both its length and its
complexity. Asked to comment on Landry's remarkable tome of offensive
scriptures, it was Don Meredith who said, "It's a pretty good
book, but everybody gets killed in the end."


Fon SUCH A slick operator, both on the football field and in the more
stylish Dallas nocturnal retreats like the Cipango Club, where the
money men would gather, it was odd that a man like Meredith, with
his obvious urbane proclivities, was the product of the rural East Texas
soil. But when Meredith completed a spectacular high school football
career at Mount Vernon, Texas, he made it clear that he and the
country boy scene were forever parting company.

TCU, a national football power when Meredith hit the recruiting
circuit, made a hard run. Meredith, in fact, had a big brother who had
played there. Abe Martin, the TCU coach and a down-home sort of

Vince Lombardi,
xvaiting for the
moment of truth
at the Ice Bowl.


Dallas coach Tom Landry, dressed for the occasion.

THE ICE BOWL 91


man, presented his pitch. "'Donnie," said Abe, "we're all real low-key
around here on this campus. I mean, you can wear overalls to class and
spit on the floor if you want to, and nobody will care."

"Hell, Coach, I can do that back in Mount Vernon," Meredith
answered. Bear Bryant, when he finally retired, said he never worked
harder to recruit a player than he did Don Meredith. But Bear Bryant
was coaching at Texas A&M at a time when that school offered an allmale
enrollment and a social life akin to that at the Citadel. "Coach
Bryant," Meredith told the Bear, "there's not a coach in the world I
would rather play for. I'd go anywhere to play for you, except, of
course, at some school where girls aren't allowed."

Master of the one-liner, Meredith once said in a radio interview
that the most memorable game in his whole playing career actually
happened in high school, when he had helped his team rally from a
26-point deficit and win against a hated rival in the East Texas woods.
"Wow!" said the radio guy who was conducting the interview. "An
experience like that. That must be the greatest feeling a young man
can have."

"No," answered Meredith. "The second most." So it was entirely
ppropriate that Don Meredith would accept a scholarship to SMU,
:egarded throughout the land as one of academia's leading game pre'erves
for girls. Rich girls. Pretty girls. An unlimited vista of eoed
cholars. As a freshman, the story goes, Meredith enrolled in a class
tecause he thought the course was named after some Kappa Kappa
;amma named Polly Sigh. With the campus situated in easy proximity
the more active precincts of Dallas nightlife, the throb of an active
)cial whirl endured as an ever present chord in student life. Locally,
was said that SMU stood for Suck Me Unconscious.

Meredith enjoyed a sensational football career at SMU, married
ae of those coeds who was both rich and pretty, and was drafted by
e Los Angeles Rams. But the new Cowboys' franchise retained
s fights in exchange for several future draft choices. So Meredith
turned to Dallas, sentenced to spend his entire professional football
reer beneath a microscope, subjected to the perpetual in-depth
tdy and evaluation of Tom Landry and the city in general.

In the fall of 1967, the nation was horrified to learn that Joe
Maggio was joining the payroll of some off-the-wall baseball owner,
aries O, Finley, out in Oakland. DiMaggio, a national treasure at
fifty-two, fielded questions about his good name being exploited

	92
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


by Finley. "Exploit me?" said DiMaggio. "We are all exploited, in a
way, when we take a job." Meredith would not have argued that point
with Joltin' Joe.

His evolution as a starting quarterback had been slow in coming.
A golden rule in the National Football League in those years was that
quarterbacks must endure a five-year term of apprenticeship before
being licensed as competent. Landry was an active proponent of such
thinking. According to Tex Schramm, Meredith was "'the only player
on the team who was really making any money." But the highest-paid
player experienced abundant bench time. Little Eddie LeBaron did
most of the playing.

When Meredith did play, the early returns were erratic and understandably
so. While Meredith might not have totally grasped all of
the puzzling nuances of the Landry offense, neither had most of the
other offensive players. Additionally, Dallas's offensive line was a
sieve. Botched blocking assignments frequently left Meredith all alone
and vulnerable to blindside shots from weakside defensive ends or
red-dogging linebackers or blitzing safeties who delighted in laying
cruel and unusual punishment on the quarterback.

The Cowboys' football machine had been too slow to roll in the
minds of some fans, who were quick to blame the quarterback. "I can
remember the pregame introductions in the Cotton Bowl. They would
introduce the offense, and everyone would trot out there with great
applause and then they'd say, 'Starting at quarterback . . . number
17 . . . Don Meredith . . . and when Don trotted out he always got
the boos," recalled defensive star George Andrie. "And it really used
to piss me off. They took it out on Don, I guess, because he'd been
around so long in Dallas, because of the SMU thing and all. That
possibly didn't affect Don too much, but I think it affected the team. If
that had happened to me, I would have gotten out of football or gotten
out of town. I would have said, 'Screw Dallas.'

"But Meredith took a pounding game after game, because, in
large part, we had some pretty crappy blocking schemes that weren't
well enough designed to pick up a good pass rush. In fact, Don used to
get the dog shit beat out of him back there, but he played hurt and
never bitched, either to the team or to the press. And if you look at the
films, whenever he did get time to throw, he was the most accurate
passer in the whole damn league."

The man they called Dandy Don presented a stronger off-the
THE ICE BOWL
	93


field persona. Meredith's advice to teammates was, "Remember your
ABC's: Always Be Cool." After a game at New York, according to Pat
Toomay's book, The Crunch, the Cowboys' charter plane sat on a
runway at LaGuardia for two hours because of bad visibility, while the
players got blasted in the rear of the plane. When the jet finally did
take off, something that sounded like an explosion emanated from
somewhere underneath the plane. Bob Lilly stood up and shouted,
"'This is it, baby! It's all over!" Linebaeker D. D. Lewis, a product of
Mississippi State, was seated next to Meredith and saw that the quarterback
never looked up from the paperback he was reading. "Goddamn!
Goddamn!" Lewis shrieked. "'Aren't you scared?"

"Uh-uh," Meredith answered. "It's been a good "un.'"

His activities on the leisure scene were not bound by the dictates
of the Tom Landry play book. Meredith, who divorced his SMU wife
and married Cheryl "Chigger" King from Fort Worth, embodied the
free spirit. While most Texans liked to collect guns, Don collected
oddballs, or at least unusual people. For example, he was known to
socialize with the likes of Dimitri Vail, a portrait artist who bought a
pale yellow house in Highland Park because the color of the mansion
matched his Cadillac.

Frequently, Meredith would arrive for postgame parties at a dive
known as Dewey Groom's Longhorn Ranch, located on the shabby
end of the downtown area. In his company often was a songwriter with
an as yet nonexistent singing career. Back in the sixties Willie Nelson
wore Robert Hall suits, favored the Brylereem ("a little dab'll do ya' ")
look and could have passed for a recent graduate of the undertakers'
academy. "But Willie had written some damn good songs by then, and
Don liked his stuff," remembered Lee Roy Jordan, also a regular at
Dewey Groom's. "You know. 'Hello, Walls' and the song that goes,
'Turn out the lights, the party's over,' that Don used to sing when he
was doing the TV thing with Howard Cosell. Those early Willie Nelson
songs had a quality of sadness, or loneliness, to them, and there was a
side of Meredith, maybe his true side, that strongly identified with that
stuff." (Meredith's life did take a tragic turn when his and Chigger's
daughter was born with profound congenital defects.)

Of all the Cowboys players, none was a more loyal advocate of the
Meredith cause than Lee Roy Jordan. "Meredith was the most entertaining
guy I ever met in my life, and he never received credit for the
talent that he had," Jordan said. "Of course, he never really did adhere

	94
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


to Tom Landry's outlook, which was a total focus on football and that
not having fun was something that goes with the job.

"Don caught most of the blame when things didn't always go
right with the Cowboys. Tom was the source of a lot of that. That was
Tom's style, and he didn't take any of the blame. Go back and look in
all the papers after the defense had a bad game or the offense had a
bad game, and it was always the individual players who were at fault.

"I don't know how much that bothered Meredith," Jordan added.
"Back then, Don's announced intention was never to have a job, and
he did a damn fine job of that. Oh, he wound up doing Monday Night
Football . . . but what's that? One night a week."

Pete Gent remembers Meredith best for "that happy-go-lucky
exterior, but behind that was a deep thinker. He had a great memory
and would quote poetry and biblical verse, word for word. Don had a
great sense of what he was doing and what his job was.

"That sort of flippant attitude," Gent believed, "was designed to
help the other guys relax. As opposed to not giving a shit, he cared
[about winning] more than anybody."

With the arrival of Bob Hayes, fresh off a three-gold-medal sprint
performance at the Tokyo Olympics, Meredith's on-the-field task became
easier. Unfairly characterized as the man "'with nine-point-three
speed and twelve-fiat hands," Hayes quickly demonstrated that whenever
he stepped onto the field, he was a touchdown waiting to happen.
In fact, he was not endowed with 9.3 speed. He had 9.1 speed, as
some defensive backs with 9.3 speed found out. So, in order to stop
Hayes, NFL defenses were redrawn. Against the Cowboys, more
stress was placed on neutralizing the touchdown potential of Bob
Hayes than on planting Don Meredith in a shallow grave.

Hayes materialized as Meredith's salvation in 1965. But in a lateseason
game against the Cleveland Browns, an occasion when the
Cowboys attracted their first sellout audience-ever--to the Cotton
Bowl, Meredith piloted a great closing drive while the Dallas fans
became berserk. Underdog Dallas trailed 24-17, but stood first-andgoal
on the Browns' one-yard line. Meredith not only chose to pass on
a first down but threw an interception as well. The next day, in the
Dallas Morning News, sportswriter Gary Cartwright informed his
readers: "'Yesterday, the Four Horsemen rode again . . . War, Famine,
Pestilence, and Meredith."

So Meredith would listen to the Cotton Bowl boos, and they

THE ICE BOWL 05


never really quit until Meredith quit after the 1969 season. When he
returned to the Cotton Bowl in the first season of ABC's Monday night
NFL telecasts, quarterback Craig Morton became the person who had
inherited the boos. With the Cowboys losing badly to St. Louis, the

crowd began to chant, "We want Meredith! We want Meredith!"
"Hear that, Don?" said Howard Cosell.

"Yeah, I hear it," Meredith shot back. "They may want me, but
I'm not going' in."


AFTER THE COWBOYS had beaten the Browns at Cleveland to open the
1967 season, they were eager to sample life on the road. That was
particularly the ease after the 35-13 home loss to the Rams. At least in
that stadium in Washington (one year before the place would be
named RFK), the boos they would hear wouldn't be showering down
from the Cowboys' own fans.

In 1967, the Redskins had not yet reached the perennial contender
status that they would enjoy with the arrival of George Allen.
But one of the NFL's hottest rivalries originally began to take shape in
the fourth regular-season game on the 1967 slate--Dallas at Washington.
Meredith endured an early pounding, mostly through the obsessed
play of the 'Skins' middle linebacker, Chris Hanburger. After
Meredith banged his throwing hand against the helmet of the blitzing
Hanburger, the quarterback feared a broken finger. "I felt a sharp pain
and thought, 'Uh-oh. I just won't look at it.' But finally I did and the
middle finger was bright red," Meredith recalled. "I tried to wiggle the
finger and sure enough, it moved. The red was the paint off
Hanburger's helmet.'"

With Sonny Jurgensen flicking quick passes that bedeviled the
Cowboys' rush, the Redskins led at the half, 7-0, Dallas tied the game
in the third quarter, Meredith finding Lance Rentzel with a 25yard TD, and took the lead when Danny Villanueva kicked a field goal.

Jurgensen moved Washington to a late touchdown on a drive that
was sustained by a successful fake punt. Charley Taylor caught an
eight-yard touchdown pass, and, with a minute left, Washington led,
14-10. Meredith, desperate, hit two frantic passes along the sideline to
put the Cowboys in Redskins territory. With time almost gone,
Hanburger charged into the Cowboys' backfield again and gored the
quarterback in his side just as he delivered a pass that fell incomplete.

	96
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


Now 18 seconds remained, and Dallas, facing fourth down, was about
to fire its last shot from the Washington 36-yard line.

Meredith felt a searing pain from the blast he had just taken from
Hanburger, and as the Cowboys broke for the huddle sportswriter
Steve Perkins noted, "Meredith appeared groggy and listing to starboard
like an America's Cup entry."

As the quarterback retreated for the final pass, halfback Dan
Reeves broke toward the flag stuck where the sideline and the goal
line intersected. Reeves ran without escort, Meredith noticed, and
lofted a pass in that direction with a big arc. Dan Reeves, the former
South Carolina quarterback with skills deemed lacking by NFL standards
but who had become the most versatile clutch player in team
history, thought the pass might have a hang time of about six seconds.
But the ball arrived in Reeves's hands instants before Hanburger
could arrive to avert disaster.

With an obstructed view from their bench, some Dallas defensive
players saw a yellow object float skyward from the other side of the
field and thought for a moment that it might be a penalty flag. The
object, in fact, was a yellow legal pad that 'Skins coach Otto Graham
had flung thirty feet toward the heavens when Reeves, ball in hand,
trotted into the Washington end zone.

Defensive lineman Willie Townes rumbled all the way to the end
zone and embraced Reeves in the hug of a 290-pound football bear. "I
was seared to death," said Reeves. "'I tried to say, 'Lemmee go!' and all
that came out was 'Awwk!' I could feel my heart fluttering in my throat
like a little bird."

Tom Landry met Otto Graham in the center of the field.
"We stole it," said Tom.
"Yep. You did," said Otto.

"Another day at the office," said Meredith.

A reporter asked Landry if he had noticed that Meredith appeared
in some physical distress before the TD heave. "No," said
Landry. "I'm so used to seeing him that way, I can't tell the difference
anymore." But on the flight back to Dallas, the quarterback started
thinking otherwise as the pain increased to a surreal intensity. Meredith
was sure that he had serious internal wounds.

"That night, back in Dallas, Chigger Meredith called me and said
that Don had been taken to Baylor Hospital. He had a collapsed lung,"
remembered Pete Gent, who rode to the hospital and managed to

THE ICE BOWL 97


sneak inside Meredith's room in the intensive care unit. "'He talked,
but not much. They had him hooked up to a breathing machine, and
Don was in absolute agony. I had seen him in incredible pain before,
but nothing like this. He had a big hole in his side and blood dripping
from his mouth.

"Then," says Gent, "when we studied the films of this game that
Meredith had won pretty much single-handed, Tom would watch certain
plays and say, 'Don should have done this. Or Don should not
have done that.' He took him apart."


Iv Don MEREDITH was going to be absent from work and stuck in the
repair shop with a busted carburetor, Landry had to be thankful to
God and the NFL schedule-maker. Dallas's next two opponents occupied
skid row in the standings. First, the Cowboys would play the New
Orleans Saints, a team in its first season of competition but already
headlong into the process of establishing a reputation as a barf bag of a
franchise. That game was set for the Cotton Bowl. After that, the
Cowboys would visit Pittsburgh for an appointment with the habitually
punch-drunk Steelers.

Perfect timing. Landry now could gain some seasoning for Meredith's
backup, Craig Morton. The Cowboys' coaching staff had confidence
that game experience was the only ingredient missing before
Morton, a coveted prospect from Cal Berkeley, might even compete
with Meredith for the starting job. Landry was so impressed with
Morton's overall football capacities that he had told his staff that if
Morton never made the grade at quarterback, for whatever reason, he
would switch him to tight end. Morton appeared strong, durable . . .
not like Don Meredith, who was always getting his lungs punctured.

The stockpiling of exceptional ability at the quarterback position
was a priority in the Cowboys' building operation. Roger Staubach, the
Naval Academy grad then serving a hitch in Vietnam, would be available
to press for a job two years down the road.

Morton's starting effort against the Saints turned out to be something
that would sooner be filed with the bloopers than the highlights
film, which was hardly Morton's fault. The Cotton Bowl playing surface
had already been chopped up the day before when Texas beat
Oklahoma, 9-7, in the annual college passion play that always highlights
the State Fair of Texas in October. Early on Sunday, the North

98
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


Texas skies opened, then collapsed, and by kickoff time for the Cowboys-Saints
game the field was better suited for alligator poachers than
football players. For four quarters, the teams slopped through the
quicksand. Morton said that the football felt like "'a sponge with lead
in it."

Nursing a 7-0 lead, Morton found Hayes wide open behind the
Saints' secondary but threw the sponge over the receiver's head. Two
plays later, Hayes was open again for a TD. Morton's throw was directly
on target, but this time the sponge slipped through the receiver's
hands.

As so often happens in games like that, the longer the favored
team laughs its way through the motions, the better the chances of the
underdog. Down by a mere three points and with the rain pouring,
the Saints moved close to the Dallas goal. A touchdown would secure
the upset. Bill Kilmer, playing for the Saints in his pre-Redskin days
and facing fourth and goal, found a receiver, Vern Burke, open in the
Dallas end zone. Kilmer's pass squirted from his hand straight up into
the air. The quarterback caught his own ball and attempted to run it
in. But linebacker Chuck Howley rammed Kilmer out of bounds and
said, "Thanks for the game," after delivering the hit.

Reeves now fumbled the football back to New Orleans. With the
goal line five yards away and the game in its final seconds, Kilmer
fumbled the center snap and the miserable Saints had, as the saying
goes, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Few of the Cowboys
had anything meaningful to say about the ludicrous win. "'I never saw
anything so sloppy. I'm talking about the field and not the way we
played," said George Andrie. "When it's like that, you forget about
how you won or by how much. You take what you got, gratefully, and
move on to next week."


TIlE SETTING FOR the "next week" that Andrie was talking about seemed
to offer limitless opportunity. Nobody paid much attention to the
Steelers of that era. In 1967, Terry Bradshaw was a freshman at Louisiana
Tech and Franco Harris was still in high school. A team called
the Pittsburgh Pipers, playing in a new league (the ABA) best known
for its red, white, and blue basketball, commanded about as much
esteem as the Steelers, who shared Pitt Stadium with the college team.
With quarterback Bill Nelson hurt, the Steelers would start their

THE ICE BOWL 99


backup passer, Kent Nix, who had been cut by the Packers after training
camp. As backup quarterbacks go, Nix was no Craig Morton, supposedly.

The Steelers' only chance, it appeared, involved somehow getting
out to an early lead, then relying on a trick defense of stunts and
blitzes to frustrate and confuse the Cowboys. Instead, Bob Hayes outran
Pittsburgh defensive back Brady Keyes, and Morton hit him with
two early and easy touchdown passes of 55 and 37 yards. Pittsburgh,
playing under coach Bill Austin--a former Lombardi assistant at
Green Bay--seemed done.

Kent Nix, taking a shallow drop and popping away with short slant
patterns like he was throwing darts, patiently brought his team back
against a complacent Dallas defense. Nix threw one touchdown pass to
John Hilton, then ran three yards for another. In the fourth quarter,
Nix marched the Steelers on a 91-yard drive and gave the team the
lead, 21-17, on an 11-yard pitch to J. R. Wilburn. Only 1:12 remained
to play.

Morton threw a pass to Rentzel, who ran 45 yards up the field
until Keyes slammed into him at the Steelers' 20. Rentzel fumbled,
the ball bounced crazily upfield, and Reeves pounced on it, giving
Dallas the ball at the Steelers' six. One running play gained a yard.
Then Morton dropped back to pass and quickly evacuated the pocket
to avoid a heavy rush. Tight end Pettis Norman, knocked fiat as he left
the scrimmage line, got up, decided to ad-lib and ran toward what
looked like an open spot in the end zone. Morton found Norman for
the TD with 0:24 remaining. The Cowboys won only after barely surviving
the likes of Kent Nix. The defense, at least, had been impressed
with Nix and his quick delivery, and Lilly called him "son of Jurgensen."

Fo TrEE sTruGnT Sundays, the Cowboys stumbled into irrational and
unplanned circumstances to win games in the final seconds. For three
straight Sundays, the Cowboys won games that they should have lost.
For a franchise that had been making a habit of doing things the other
way around, this might have seemed like progress.

In the Bible that Tom Landry was used to reading, however,
there were no passages that read: "Thou shalt rather be lucky than

	100
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


good.'" With its 5-1 record, there was something about this team that
Landry thought was disturbing.

The following Sunday, playing against what was a half-ass Philadelphia
team that season, Craig Morton threw three interceptions.
Dallas had used up its allotted supply of fluke finishes. The Eagles
upset the Cowboys, 21-14, and Tom Landry wondered why it was
taking so long to reinflate Don Meredith's lungs,

CHAPTER


IT WAS A DIFFERENT STORY at Green Bay. With the Green Bay Packers'
steamrolling success story at full force and the proud team blazing
from battle site to battle site with relentless 61an, Vince Lombardi had
ascended to a status as American hero, and as 1967 turned into October,
Vince Lombardi remained undefeated.

Lombardi's remaining autumn aggravations were the professional
gridiron neo-gladiators who were trying to drag his Green Bay Packers
down to the plateau occupied by most other mortals. The Detroit
Lions, who had almost done just that by tying the Pack in September,
were scheduled for the rematch.

This time the Pack, now 2-0-1, entered hostile territory for the
first time after playing Detroit and Chicago at Lambeau Field and
Atlanta in Milwaukee. Tiger Stadium, in downtown Detroit, was rarely
an easy visit for the Pack, even during the Lombardi dynasty. Some of
these Detroit fans were direct kin of the assembly-line workers who
staged the epic sit-down strike at the General Motors plant at Flint,
Michigan, and drove the cops away by firing at them with five-pound
automobile door hinges propelled by slingshots made out of inner
tubes.

So the Lions' followers came with tough-guy credentials, and this
stadium in Detroit had been the site of what was probably Lombardi's
most ignominious loss, back in 1962. Now Lombardi faced the additionally
challenging prospect of traveling to Detroit without his quarterback,
Bart Starr.

With Starr on the shelf for at least three weeks with a wrecked
shoulder, the replacement was Zeke Bratkowski. Zeke brought twelve
seasons' worth of National Football League experience and savvy with

	102
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


him. That also meant that Bratkowski was no pup at thirty-four years
young. Only one player on the Packers' roster, pass catcher Max McGee
(thirty-five), had been around longer. Zeke and Max sort of resembled
each other, and, thin across the scalp, neither would seek a
career modeling in shampoo commercials.

Lombardi valued experience above all else at the quarterback
slot, but nobody had to remind the coach that a player of Zeke's age
also presented limited mobility and a hard hit might indeed snap one
of Bratkowski's tired old bones. And these were the same Lions who
had rendered a dreadful pounding unto Bart Starr just a month earlier,
with Alex Karras supplying most of the crunch. If Bratkowski became
disabled, then Vince's last alternative was San Diego State rookie Don
Horn, who had yet to take a regular season snap. Vince knew that if
anything happened to Zeke, the Pack might well be undone.


WHILE A CROWD of 55,000 Motor City zealots cheered their guts out,
the Lions surged off to a 10-0 lead, just as they had at Lambeau Field
when Starr had pitched four interceptions. On the field it was obvious
that the Lions had once again arrived at the game ready for a fight.
Detroit receiver Pat Studstill and Packers cornerback Herb Adderley.
exchanged punches after one play. "Me and Herb, we're like two
women living in the same apartment. We're always hollering at each
other," said Studstill after the game.

This time it would be the Lions' quarterbacks, Milt Plum and
Karl Sweetan (the latter like Dennis Rodman a product of South Oak
Cliff High School in Dallas), who were offering explanations to the
media about some interceptions. One of the key plays happened in the
second half, when Green Bay's Dave Robinson deflected a Milt Plum
pass toward Ray Nitschke, who intercepted the ball and ran it in for a
touchdown. "When I caught the ball, I made an abrupt turn and
yanked a muscle in the back of my leg. I wanted to lateral the ball back
to Robinson, but he didn't know about my leg and was already upfield
and blocking," was how Nitschke described it. "So I hobbled on in."

Nitschke suffered a hamstring pull, the kind of injury that puts
modern-era players on the injured-reserve list, sometimes for a prolonged
stay. In Nitschke's case, he rubbed some Vicks ointment on the
bum leg and finished out the season without further problems. After
the Ray Nitschke touchdown, the Lions were no longer a factor.

THE ICE BOWL
	103


Sweetan, with a stronger arm than Plum, had entered the game to
engineer a comeback with long passes, which only led to another interception,
this one by Adderley. "Few people can throw deep against
us." That was Lombardi's terse footnote to the game, won by the
Packers, 27-17.

The meaningful subplot involved the private war of Alex Karras
versus Jerry Kramer--a rematch of the earlier bout which had been
won so thoroughly and completely by the defensive taelde. Karras
made few, if any, mistakes during that game but committed a big one
afterward. He told the wire services and thus the world: "The Green
Bay Packers? They're just an average team. They're going to get beat
often." After that fiasco, possibly the most disastrous of Jerry Kramer's
career and certainly his most trying afternoon since the Pack had
achieved championship status, the guard began watching movies . . .
hours and hours' worth.

"'I watched movies of that game and movies of games from other
years that involved Karras," Kramer said, explaining his preparations
for this day. "'I knew what I had to do and I did it." Kramer, enjoying
the afterglow and issuing a mind-game gambit that might come in
handy in future years, refused to say what the "it" was that had made
him so effective against Karras. Unlike their brutal assault of Bart
Starr, the Lions' pass rush knocked Bratkowski down twice during the
encore bout at Tiger Stadium but offered little pressure most of the
game.

"I'd have to say that it was a lovely day," added Kramer. He
mentioned that Karras made a lot of tackles "about ten yards down the
field," where he had been knocked or shoved by the Packers' line.
"Alex showed great pursuit," Kramer said, twisting the knife a little
more.


IN STRATEGY SESSIONS before the Packs' second meeting with the Lions,
Lombardi mentioned in a news conference that he truly didn't know
the identity of the team Green Bay would meet the following week.
Lombardi had made such a comment before, to illustrate the concentration
he put on the task at hand as opposed to gazing down the road.
Given the upcoming result, Vince might have been better served by
taking the Lions for granted and plotting better offensive tactical plans
for the Minnesota Vikings.

	104
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


The Sunday skies over County Stadium in Milwaukee presented a
sullen prelude. A dark storm was blowing across Lake Michigan from
the east, and the afternoon was ideal for perhaps the witches of Macbeth.
Days like this sometimes cheered up Lombardi. He liked to call
this Packer Weather, but of course, if this was Packer Weather, then it
had to be Viking Weather as well.

The Vikings franchise had entered the league on an expansion
basis, one year after Dallas, in 1961, The Vikings had been allowed a
full draft before their first season and given access to better talent than
the early Cowboys had. But unlike Dallas, the Vikes never quite jelled
into contender status, and now the coach, the sometimes turbulent
Norm Van Broeklin, had been replaced by an import from the Canadian
League. And with Fran Tarkenton now employed by the New
York Giants, Minnesota was quarterbaeked by another CFL refugee--
Joe Kapp.

Minnesota came into the game in Milwaukee with an 0-4 record,
and that bothered Vinee. He sensed a kamikaze effort from Minnesota.
What also bothered Vince was that Bart Start remained on medical
leave. True, Bratkowski had been the conductor in two good wins
over the Falcons and the Lions. But Minnesota, despite the four
losses, seemed to be building a superior defense, A rookie playing end,
Alan Page, demonstrated a flair for the pro game. He showed rapidly
advancing skills and technique and, as Page got better, so did Minnesota.

On
the week of the Vikings game, a nun in Manitowoe, near
Green Bay, had addressed the Wisconsin Women's Press Association
on the topic of a "woman's right to nag." This nun, with the actual
name of Thomas More, declared that the women of Wisconsin and
women of the world not only have the right to nag but "the duty to do
so and recurrently remind people of what needs to be done." Mthough
nobody ever accused Vinee Lombardi of being nun-like, the team
noticed that the coach had been "on the nag" all week as he exercised
his right and duty to remind his Packers of what needed to be done
against the Viking defense.

Still, the Packers offense did finally get killed, and a Green Bay
streak of sixteen straight games without a loss--dating back to another
meeting with Minnesota the previous November at Lambeau Field
finally came to an end.

THE ICE BOWL 105


The game opened well for the Pack. Bratkowski exploited a
busted coverage and hit Carroll Dale with an 86-yard touchdown
strike. Then Carl Eller, Jim Marshall, Page, and others proceeded to
frustrate the Green Bay attack. The Packer offense started and ended
with the success of its running game, and on this inordinately dark
afternoon in Milwaukee, Minnesota denied Green Bay the rush.

"They stopped us whenever we had to go, and that's the story,'" said Jim Grabowski in what was hardly a startling admission. The
Packers finished the game with an appalling 42 yards on the ground.
Joe Kapp completed an equally appalling two of eleven Viking passes
for a feeble 25 yards. With the score tied 7-7 and the game getting
late, this time it was the Pack that made the ruinous mistake.
Bratkowski, in Green Bay territory, used the play that Bart Starr had
used in the drives that salvaged a tie against the Lions and a win over
the Bears.

Evidently, the Vikings sensed what was comingma toss to halfback
Elijah Pitts. Minnesota's Earsell Mackbee got to the ball first.
After the turnover, Fred Cox kicked a field goal and suddenly County
Stadium seemed empty. The crowd of over 49,000, the biggest ever to
watch a Packers game in Milwaukee, fell quiet. So did Bratkowski
when the game was over, as he stuffed his socks into an equipment
bag. "I was trying to throw over the sidelines . . . away from an interception,
and he [Mackbee] went over and grabbed it.'" Bratkowski
shrugged. "It looked like he made an excellent play."

The Vikings made plays like that all day. Nine times, the Vikings
stopped the Packers on third down. Was it the Vikings' defense,
though, or a dysfunctional Packer attack that resulted in the nonproduetion?
After five games, Green Bay had scored but 87 points, placing
the Pack twelfth out of sixteen teams in the NFL's most-watched
statistical category. After the Vikings game, the Packers' turnover toll
had reached 9. after a total of only 24 for the entire 1966 season. Sure,
the Packers had their Gold Dust Twins, Anderson and Grabowski, but
it appeared plain that the offense missed the devastating blocking of
the now long-departed Paul Hornung and Jim Taylor.

Lombardi seemed down. "Neither offense was worth a damn," he
declared. "Somebody is going to beat you, and if anybody is going to
do it, it might as well be them," he said, gesturing toward the Vikings'
dressing room, over there toward the man who would soon replace
Lombardi as the high priest of conquest in the Icelands.

	106
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


"'IT WAS IMPORTANT that we win today, and it didn't matter if it was the
Packers or the Little Sisters of the Poor." The speaker was Bud Grant,
the new Vikings coach, who had compiled a 121-66 record with Winnipeg
and had won the Grey Cup (Canadian football's version of the
Stanley Cup) four times. Grant, described in the papers as "a tall,
graying but extremely dashing gentleman," was throwing down a new
statement of purpose, insinuating that the Packers might better prepare
themselves to be set aside. "The Vikings are not awed by Green
Bay, physically or otherwise," Grant said. "Maybe it's because of the
geographic closeness. Those Eastern teams who play the Packers once
every two or three years wonder, 'What are they going to do to us?' We
have a different attitude: What are we going to do to them?"

Who was this Bud Grant character to barge in here and talk like
that? Not only that, but also to resort to the extreme measure of
circumventing the critical fundamental mistake and defeat the Packers
at their own game. Joe Kapp said he approached Grant on the sideline
as the clock wound down and the game was deadlocked at seven and
demanded, "Can't we throw the ball more?"

Grant gave Joe Kapp a dead stare and said, "Nope."


A FRONT-PAGE HEADLINE in the Green Bay Press-Gazette read: "4 Killed,
36 Wounded" and, for a change, the dateline was somewhere not in
Vietnam. No. These were the casualty reports from the opening day of
deer hunting season in Wisconsin.

Some friends of Lombardi had taken the coach on a Wisconsin
deer hunt---once. Before the expedition, Packers players, as a practical
joke, presented their coach with a gift: a hunting jacket with a red
target painted on the back. Deer season was an annual ritual in which
the intrepid sportsmen, fortified to the gills with the warming influence
of distilled grain products, ventured into the frosty fields and
blasted away with high-powered thirty-aught-six fires at anything that
moved, which could turn out to be another hunter. This was a particularly
tough weekend in 1967. In search of killer buck, along with the
hunters blasted by friendly fire, another eighteen riflemen died of
heart attacks.

THE ICE BOWL


107


AFTER AN AFTERNOON at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, Vince Lombardi
and most of his Packers entourage probably wished that they had
been otherwise occupied back in the Wisconsin woods, participating in that carnage, though with only a loss and a tie to blemish their record,
the Packers actually were on firm footing in their division race.

With the NFL-AFL merger in a transition process in 1967, the
NFL, for the first time, had been subdivided from two divisions into
four. All that was required of the Pack during the regular season was
to finish ahead of Detroit, Minnesota, and Chicago--all with mediocre
win-loss marks--to qualify for one of the four playoff slots. The moment
of truth would come later, in a preliminary playoff game against
whichever team won another division--Los Angeles or Baltimore--
and these were superior outfits.

After the shattering loss to the Minnesota Vikings at Milwaukee,
the Packers bounced back at Yankee Stadium and hammered the anemic
Giants, 48-21, thanks to a revival of the rushing attack. "When we
run, everything goes. This is a team that has to run the ball," Lombardi
said. The coach was impressed with the elusive qualities of the Giants'
quarterback, Fran Tarkenton. "He's an amazing little fellow," the
coach said, "and he's not so little, either."

Now Lombardi was eager to find out how his Packers might measure
up to a more genuine upper class of competition at Baltimore,
with Bart Starr finally back in the lineup. With Don Shula doing the
coaching and Johnny Unitas doing the quarterbacking for the Colts,
the competition was real.

Two omens--not particularly good ones--passed over the Packers
quickly. First, in the game program, Elijah Pitts's first name was misspelled
as "Eliza." Then, early in the contest, Lombardi experienced
something that did not happen often. He was accosted on the sideline
by a drunk. Things like that could happen sometimes in Memorial
Stadium, a baseball park where many spectators were situated at field
level and within comfortable spit-wad distance of the visiting team's
bench. Some of these fans, like the Wisconsin deer trackers, would get
fueled on Kentucky antifreeze.

Vince, using a "Can you believe this?" tone, described the scene
later. "This guy . . . just walks up to me and starts poking me and
following me around. He wanted us all to sit down so the fans behind

	108
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


us could see better." Then he shifted to the "We are not amused" tone
favored by British royalty. "The sideline stuff is terrible in this park.
They let everybody down there. So this guy is drunk, he's following me
around, and the policeman just stands there and looks."

Sadly for the Packers, their kickoff team impersonated the cop
just stood there and looked when the outcome of the contest was still
very much at issue. Green Bay scored early, a 31-yard touchdown pass,
Starr to Donny Anderson, and Baltimore scored late, Unitas to Alex
Hawkins for ten yards, then missed the extra point. Behind 10-6 with
2:16 remaining on the fourth-quarter clock up underneath the National
Bohemian beer ad on the Baltimore stadium scoreboard, Lou
Michaels tried an onside kick. While the people in the seats behind
the Packers bench might not have clearly seen what happened next,
Vince Lombardi received an excellent view. "I saw the ball go by and
somebody [on the Green Bay special team] should have had it," Lombardi
commented, his voice full of wonderment. Under the odd circumstances,
Vince's mood with the reporters was surprisingly cordial.
Often Lombardi was harder to deal with after a big win. "We knew the
onside kick was coming. My God . . . 60,000 people in the stands
knew it was coming. Everybody knew it was coming. It turned out
fortunate for them and bad for us."

Defensive back Rick Volk recovered Michaels' kick at the Green
Bay 34-yard line. "The game was on the line. That's for sure. I saw the
ball, and all I had to do was go over and get it," Volk said. That put the
Green Bay defense in the negotiating position of a man seated in an
electric chair. Johnny Unitas, naturally, threw the switch. On a fourth
down play, Unitas scrambled for seven yards to pick up a first down.
On the next play, he threw a touchdown pass to Willie Richardson and
the Packers were beaten, 13-10.

Since the Pack was still in command in its division race, that
outcome was not of dire consequence. Bleak and serious tidings, however,
had issued from the training room. Elijah Pitts limped off the
field in the first quarter. The diagnosis was a torn Achilles tendon. "He
may be through," said Vince, and Pitts was. So was Jim Grabowski,
with a knee injury that not only concluded the season but essentially
the career of the "million-dollar-bonus boy" whom Lombardi had
handpicked to replace the great Jim Taylor. Lombardi said what he
always said when guys got hurt: "How did losing Pitts and Grabowski
affect the outcome? I haven't got the slightest idea. They're all profes

THE ICE BOWL lOO


sionals. We're supposed to have the people to replace the ones we

lose."

Lombardi maintained a cardinal rule in which he never blamed a
scoreboard defeat on the absence of a starter. To do so, Lombardi
believed, would only serve to impair the confidence of the backup
player. But that same Sunday night, after the loss to Baltimore, a
fullback in Washington, D.C., who had sensed that his faltering football
future was headed on a precarious course, received a telephone
call from the executive offices of the Green Bay Packers.


Nzw TRIER HIGH School in Winnetka, a north-end suburb of Chicago,
has produced an interesting array of graduates who include Rock Hudson,
Charlton Heston, Ann-Margret, Bruce Deru, and Ralph Bellamy.
Also, a future Chicago Bear, Mike Pyle, came out of New Trier, and it was Pyle who then convinced still another New Trier player, Chuck
Mercein, to attend Yale.

"I had a lot of scholarship offers out of high school, including
most of the Big Ten schools," said Mercein, a fullback and linebacker.
Mercein's father, Tom, had been a radio personality in the Chicago
area, "sort of the Don Imus of his time," Mercein said. "But his career
was not going well when I completed high school, and Yale offered
certain people a grant-in-aid on the basis of scholastic and athletic
achievement and financial need. So I received what amounted to a
free ride from Yale. The year before, Yale was unbeaten, had won the
Lambert Trophy, always played before home crowds of 50,000 or so
people, and of course, I would be getting a broad-based, broad-stroked
liberal education."

The Yale experience for Mercein had been all that he had hoped
and anticipated it would be---th a bonus. "I never had set my sights
on pro football, either in high school or in college. I felt blessed just to
be able to play the game, and I had contained the goals I had to
reachable levels," he says.

But Chuck Mercein had a strong senior season at Yale in 1964
and was informed by the Buffalo Bills that he would be their "focus
player" in the coming draft. "So being a Yale product was no hindrance
in positioning myself in pro football. They [the Bills]offered me
a three-year no-cut contract worth over $100,000, or thereabouts, and
I was flattered. I also thought that the Dallas Cowboys would draft me

	110
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


from the NFL. Gil Brandt had been all over me." (Dallas used its first
pick on Craig Morton.)

"But I was surprised to receive a call from Bill Ford with the
Lions, who wanted to draft me as the seventh overall player in the
NFL draft. Ford asked me if I had signed with the other league, and I
told him 'no' but also told him that he should know that I had the Bills'
offer in my pocket. Ford said the Lions were not willing to match the
three-year no-cut portion of the deal, so I told them not to waste their
pick on me, which might have been a brash and foolhardy thing to say,
and I was wondering if I hadn't screwed up.

"In fact, I probably had. I slid down to the twenty-eighth pick in
the NFL draft, but Wellington Mara of the Giants finally called. I told
him about the Bills' offer, too, and Mara said, 'We have no problem
with that.' So I became a Giant and then scored all ten points--a
touchdown, a field goal, and an extra point--for the College All-Stars
in their 17-10 loss to the Browns, although Dick Butkas won the
MVP."

With New York, Mercein found himself backing up at fullback
Tucker Fredrickson, the top player overall in the '64 draft. "But the
next year we kind of reversed roles. Tucker, I think, was hurt and I
played most of the year, was among the NFL's top ten rushers well
into the season, and averaged about five yards a carry." But then, as
now, the NFL players received not a salary but hazard pay because of
the on-the-field risk factor.

Henry Jordan of the Packers, noting an escalating injury factor
throughout the league in 1966, said, "There are no longer any dirty
players in the NFL. Now they have guys who are trained to injure you
scientifically."

Larry Stallings, a St. Louis Cardinals linebacker, seemed to illustrate
that when he hit Mercein from behind, "and I got a ruptured
kidney and was pissing blood for a month and missed the last four
games of the season."

Still, Mercein felt good about his pro status going into training
camp with the 1967 Giants. Unfortunately for Mercein, none of the
history or political science courses that he had concentrated on at Yale
had taught him much about the realities that face a midlevel talent in
the cold-blooded dominion of professional sports. The Ivy League fullback
had not yet learned that a feeling of security is often abruptly
displaced by a bus ticket or a room with a view at Heartbreak Hotel.

THE ICE BOWL 111


"The fact was that I never communicated too well with Allie
Sherman," said Marcein, and during the 1967 preseason the fullback
watehed whatever element of interchange that he did have with the
coach begin to disintegrate. Sherman started to rag Marcein about his
Yale background. "On a eouple of oeeasions he looked at me and
asked, 'Whataya doing up here?' meaning the NFU Well, the fact was
that Allie Sherman was this little guy from Brooklyn with a southern
accent, and I couldn't figure him out, either. As they say at Yale, we
didn't get along worth nuthin'."

When the last cuts were announeed, the Giants traded to Cleveland
to get Larry Costello, an experienced linebaeker, and Marcein
was eut loose. "But I eleared waivers because of my high salary. There
was nothing I could do. I was upset."

Now living in Scarsdale with a wife and one child, Marceen decided
to sustain hope that his pro career had not yet vanished and
joined a semipro team known as the Westehester Bulls--a rather
precipitous departure from his existence within the majestic showroom
of big-league football. "No, playing for the Westehester Bulls
was not a happy time, but it turned out all right because I still didn't
have any quit in me and I wanted to stay in good shape, in contact
shape for football and remain sharp.'"

After two weeks, Allie Sherman was on the phone. He needed a
kicker. "'I didn't want to be a kicker, although I was capable of kicking
48-yard field goals," Marceen said. "Sherman was worried about his
job by then, and when he signed me back on as the place kicker, the
first thing and really the only thing that he told me was, "If you miss
one, you're gone again.'

"So. It was kind of funny, looking back. I went out to kick an extra
point against the Steelers, I think it was. I made the kick, but there
was a penalty. The Giants were called for holding, and they moved us
back about 15 yards. So now the extra point would be like a 80yard
field goal.

"I missed it, Sherman released me, and I knew then that I wasn't
coming back.'"

By now Otto Graham, the coach of the 1964 College All-Star
team that included Marceen, Butkas, Roger Staubaeh, and Fred
Bi/itnikoff, had become head coach of the Washinon Redskins. Graham
offered Marceen a tryout. "It went well, and Otto said that while

	112
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


there was not time to activate me for that Sunday's game, that a contract
was waiting and I could sign it Monday morning."

Enter fate. "On Sunday night, Wellington Mara from the Giants
called. He said he knew that the Redskins were offering a contract and
wondered if I had signed anything, and when I said, 'Not yet,' Maa
said he had just received a call from Vince Lombardi and asked me if I
might be interested in joining the Packers. With Jim Grabowski lost
because of his hurt knee in the Colts game that afternoon, Vince
needed a fullback and needed one quick.

"The phone rang again and it was Vince Lombardi. 'Do you want
to play for Green Bay?' he asked me," said Mercein, still relishing his
memory of the moment. "'My heart was pounding a thousand beats a
minute. I told Lombardi that I could be on the next plane, and he said,
'That's exactly what I want you to do.'

"Talk about a sudden turn of events," Marceen declared. "'The
following Tuesday I wasn't sure whether I was attending a football
practice session or an induction ceremony for the NFL Hall of Fame.
The first guy who walked up to me and introduced himself was Forrest
Gregg. The next was Bart Starr, then Herb Adderley, They all said that
if there was anything they could help with, to just ask, and they said
that they were happy I was on the team."

They might not have realized how happy they were that this east
adrift ex-Yalie had joined their team until the final minute of a memorable
football game on New Year's Eve, when the opponent was the
Dallas Cowboys and the chill factor was about 75 below.

CHAPTER


IN Nzw YOR:, in 1967, a play had opened, The Trial of Lee Harvey
Oswald, at which the audience served as the jury. Columnist Walter
Winchell himself went to see it and wrote: "The authors [of the play]
in our opinion libel and slander the people of Texas and particularly
Dallas. The show is another member of the fast-buck army. Recommended
for people who have trouble sleeping."

Down in Dallas, the football team was drawing some less than
flattering reviews, too. After a stinko performance at Philadelphia,
Coach Tom Landry felt that if the Cowboys were destined to be any
kind of factor in their far-fetched quest to win Super Bowl II, his
defense would have to accomplish that. Dallas's defensive unit remained
a work-in-progress by midseason, 1967, but the main portions
of the formula had been blending into a potent mix.

Chuck Howley, secured from the Bears via a trade in 1961, developed
an uncanny sense of where the ball was going on almost every
play. A hard case from West Virginia, Howley's approach to the game
involved a limited display of the social graces. A rookie defensive end
recalled an episode in a training-camp scrimmage. Howley yelled out
some blitz code--"Bullet!"--that the rookie had never heard of, and
after the snap the linebacker left cleat marks on the kid's back. "I don't
understand that 'bullet' call what am I supposed to do?" Pat Toomay
asked. "I don't care what the fuck you do," Howley told him. "Just stay
out of my way."

At middle linebacker, Lee Roy Jordan's kill-or-be-killed approach
became a natural fit for the ebb and flow of the pro game. One of the
top running backs in the league, Tim Brown of Philadelphia, found
Jordan's approach a problem for both his football and his show busi
	114
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


hess careers. Brown's face was structured to appeal to the tastes of
motion picture casting agents, and on the Monday after each game the
Eagles back would travel to New York for acting and voice lessons.

Against the Cowboys in the Cotton Bowl, Tim Brown ran out
of the backfield on a pass pattern through an area that Lee Roy Jordan
regarded as private property---off-limits, no trespassing. Although
Brown's role in that play was to act as a decoy, Jordan leveled a forearm
beneath the halfback's facemask. Tim Brown left the field, as they
say in the National Hockey League, "spittin' Chiclets." Thanks to Jordan,
he'd lost his four upper front teeth. In the Eagles' dressing room
later, Brown's teammate, halfback Israel Lang, was indignant. "The
Cowboys are supposed to be a class outfit. Huh! That Lee Roy Jordan
has got about as much class as a goddamn goat." Given the responsibility
that Jordan felt was his as a specialized requirement of his job, he
probably took that as a major compliment.

Landry's secondary had developed two all-pro candidates, Mel
Renfro and Cornell Green, the ex-basketball player. Renfro, indeed,
would wind up in the NFL Hall of Fame. And Mike Gaechter, with
terrific speed, made it difficult for any quarterback to throw consistently
deep against the Cowboys.

On the front line, teams routinely assigned two blockers to Bob
Lilly, which rarely accomplished much. By 1965 Bob Lilly was playing
in the Pro Bowl, an occasion that he later recalled most vividly. Not so
much for the game but for something that happened a day later. Before
returning to Dallas, Lilly stopped in Las Vegas to play blackjack
and quickly dropped an amount that exceeded his paycheck for the
Pro Bowl, plus a little extra. Milton Berle, recognizing Lilly and sensing
his plight, said, "Having some trouble, big guy? Here, I'll help you
straighten this out." With Berle playing his hands for him, Lilly got
back to even.

A Bob Lilly clone, at least in size, played to Lilly's immediate
right. As defensive end, George Andrie was not receiving the media
attention he probably deserved simply because he played in such proximity
to the all-world Lilly. As a consequence, Andrie might have to be
satisfied to be remembered as perhaps the most underrated defensive
player in Dallas history. Still, he was aware the odds against his playing
in the National Football League at all were so long that even Milton
Berle might not have helped.

At the dawn of the 1960s, Andrie played in the line at Marquette

THE ICE BOWL 115


University in Milwaukee. A1 McGuire coached the Warriors to an
NCAA basketball championship. The football team, when Andrie
played at Marquette, ranked right up there with nonalcoholic beer on
the popularity charts of upper midwesterners. Then, before Andrie's
senior season, the school actually canceled the whole football program.

Not great for a fellow's confidence level. "Actually, I was contacted
by the Calgary Stampeders from the Canadian League. And
Calgary's coach, Bobby Dobbs, had a brother, Glenn Dobbs, who was
coaching at the University of Tulsa," Andrie said. "After several confusing
phone calls, I agreed to play at Tulsa during my last year of
college eligibility. When your school drops the sport it's all right to
transfer. I didn't know what the hell was going on, really.

"Football players of that era had no one to advise them. My
parents never did advise me. Hell, I don't think they even knew I was
going to college. When I got down to Tulsa, I found out that I wasn't
even set up to enroll in any classes. They said, 'That's all right. We'll
graduate you anyway.' But . . . I had a feeling that all of this might
not work out, so I went back to Milwaukee and finished school at
Marquette. And that was when I received a telephone call from Gil
Brandt with the Dallas Cowboys, asking me if I had any interest in
continuing to play football. He sent me this off-season workout program
that the Cowboys use."

With the likely exception of Roger Staubach, nobody made better
use of the conditioning guide than George Andrie. "'I ran. I lifted
weights. I got into the best shape of my life. I have never, before or
since, been so well prepared for anything as I was before that Cowboys
training camp. I had no idea what to expect. I knew absolutely nothing
about professional football. Pro football in those days was nothing as
far as I was concerned. It wasn't even on TV.

"I even went to the gym and boxed every day. If there were going
to be fights, then I wanted to be ready for that trap, too. What I had to
overcome most, as it turned out, was the advice I was getting from
people in every direction. All of it negative. 'You didn't even play last
year.' All that stuff. If I listened, I never would have gone and tried it.
That's what I had to overcome and, when I finally did get to camp, I
found I was totally prepared, even though I had been divorced from
football for almost a year and a half."

In truth, Andrie was not prepared for the sign that greeted all
players who arrived at training that listed an agenda of misdemeanors,

	116
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


accompanied by a schedule of fines. If a player had failed to have his
ankles taped before a workout and suffered a sprained ankle, he had to
pay a hefty fine. A smaller fine was issued for missing curfew, but the
amount escalated rapidly for each fifteen minutes the player stayed
late. Fines were also levied for being late to meetings or meals. Offenses
that fell under the broad definition of gambling drew heavy
fines, so it was pare to see players shooting craps or p/aying roulette
games in the dormitory basement.

Once Andrie got past the fines sign and onto the practice field, his
personal outlook quickly improved. Other than the Ice Bowl game,
when Andrie would recover a Bart Starr fumble and score a touchdown
that almost spoiled the ending of the Vince Lombardi dynasty,
the day in George Andrie's football career that he best remembers
happened in his first morning at training camp. "It was a simple drill. They lined me up across from a big offensive lineman, Ed Nutting,
who was from Georgia Tech and projected as a starter. The line coach,
Jim Myers, said that all he wanted me to do was go from one point,
where I was lined up, to another point, where an imaginary quarterback
would be setting up to pass. All I had to do to get there was
maneuver my way past, around, or over Ed Nutting. So the coach goes
'Hut , , . hut,' and on the snap count I threw Ed Nutting over on his
back and ran over him.

"So Myers, the coach, says, 'Okay, okay, Andrie, let's try it one
more time, Come on, Nutting, Let's get it going,' So we tried it again,
with the same result. I threw Ed Nutting over on his back. Now don't
get me wrong," Andrie said. "'I've got nothing against Ed Nutting. He's
a great guy. All I know is that after that little session on the workout
field, I had opened their eyes, and from then on I had a great camp."

Since Andrie had not the slightest notion of what to expect from
life in professional football, he also could not have had any idea of
what to make of Coach Tom Landry. While Andrie would earn a doe
rotate in the study of the fine points of NFL warfare by the time he
retired, he was still not sure how to define the Cowboys' coach. "Tom
never had much communication with his players," Andrie said.
"Maybe that's good in a way, because when there is no communication,
then at least there can never be any miscommunieation. Tom told
you what you were supposed to do and that was that. When you didn't
do it, he never said much just looked at you.

"Landry, I guess, assumed that all his players were self-motivated

THE ICE BOWL
	117


like me. And most of them probably were. That was my impression. I
was like them and they were like me. When you have forty guys,
though, not all of them are going to be alike. I guess there were some
borderline guys, and if Landry had kicked them in the ass we might
have gotten there [to the Super Bowl] sooner."

Another obstacle to the Cowboys' journey to the promised land of
the Super Bowl was consistency of performance on both sides of the
ball. "I joined the Cowboys in 1961., and by the time we were finally
playing against the Packers in those championship games, we were
veT competitive on the defense, with Lee Roy and Chuck and Bob
and Mel and Cornell Green and Jethro Pugh and so on," said Andrie.
"But we'd make mistakes, we'd do things, we'd screw up. On one play
we'd get a great pass rush, but one of the defensive backs would cover
the wrong guy, and against a quarterback like, well, let's say Sonny
Jurgensen, bang. That's a touchdown that would cost you a game.

"It was just a few little things that we needed to correct. I don't
know why it took so long to make those corrections. But it did."

Another recurring nightmare in the adolescent stages of the Dallas
football team was that on frequent occasions, when the offense
showed up armed and dangerous, the defense went to lunch and took
the rest of the afternoon off. The next Sunday, while the defense
embarked on a feeding frenzy, the offense looked like something out
of an Abbott and Costello movie.

Three games leading into the midpoint of the 1967 season served
as the perfect illustration of the syndrome. Against New Orleans, with
heavy rain and a muddy field, the Dallas offense had no spark. Against
the Steelers the next week the Dallas defense had been slowly picked
to pieces by a rookie quarterback, Kent Nix. Somehow, Dallas won both games, but the following week they put the whole package together:
The offense looked pathetic, the defense reeked, and the Cowboys
lost--to the Eagles.


IN DALLAS THAT autumn of 1967, a bombardment reached the high
gear stage. All of the women and quite a few of the men did not realize
it, but they had declared war on the ozone layer. While Los Angeles
had its smog problems, the air around Dallas was becoming clouded with aerosol hair spray.

The favored coiffure of the American woman matched that of

	118
	MIKE SLIP, OPSHIRE


Mary Tyler Moore as she appeared on The Dick Van Dyke Show, Outside the Dallas city limits, in places like Waxahachie and Wills
Point, the beehive look remained the vogue. By 1967, the men were
abandoning traditional barbershops and heading for the styling salons,
where they, too, received heavy doses of the mist. So the go-go folk of
Dallas, heads now protected from the elements by congealed, transparent
lacquer, also found insulation from the terrible wartime events
exploding in Vietnam in the heady distraction provided by the football
team.

With the Atlanta Falcons scheduled in the Cotton Bowl, there
were high hopes that the Cowboys might be in store for a long-over
due blowout. Yet that's also what the fans had figured might be coming
against New Orleans and Pittsburgh. The Cowboys hadn't, in fact,
looked like anything resembling championship caliber in over a
month. At least Don Meredith, now over his siege with the collapsed
lung and resulting pneumonia, was back and listed in Landry's starting
lineup. The new Meredith--happy to be back--sounded like the old
Meredith. In a pregame prediction, Meredith guaranteed a restoration
of the offense and a 35-point showing against the Falcons.

While one sportswriter later reported that against the Falcons, "the Dallas Cowboys weren't exactly whipping a granite wall," Meredith's
reappearance in the lineup plainly reignited the offense. He
opened the game with a 60-yard touchdown pass to Dan Reeves. On
the next possession the Cowboys drove 80 yards in nine plays, the
ninth being a seven-yard touchdown pitch to Reeves. After Dallas
kicked off, Lee Roy Jordan intercepted a Falcons pass and ran it back
33 yards for another score. By the time it was over, the Cowboys had
won, 37-7, and Dan Reeves had scored four touchdowns.

Afterward, Meredith addressed the media in his classic,
wisecracking, finger-snappin' Dandy Don style--a sort of combination
of Joe Namath and Muhammad All. "I told ya'll our offense would
score thirty-five points, but I included Lee Roy's touchdown in that
mix. I knew that he would run an interception in for a score because
he told me he would. But we did score a safety, too, and I hadn't taken
that into account. Don't let this get around, but we're going to win the
whole thing."

Dan Reeves described his four-TD effort emotionally. The night
before the game his first son, Michael Leon, had been born. "If I was
running better today, it was because I was so proud of my little boy,"
THE ICE BOWL [19


leeves declared. Tommy Nobis, the Atlanta linebacker who had
maimed Bart Starr three weeks earlier, had a different idea. "You have
to gear your defense to stop Bob Hayes," Nobis said. "So when you do
that, the other guys, like leeves, can hurt you, too."

A win over the Atlanta Falcons was not something to be enshrined
in the Library of Congress, even if you scored in triple digits.
The Cowboys game that day was well remembered for an entirely
different reason by those who were in the stands. In the west stands
spectators quit watching the game when Bubbles Cash, carrying cotton
candy in both hands, strolled down the steps of the aisle perpendicular
to the fifty-yard line. Clad in what fashion experts described as
an orange miniskirt, the well-endowed Miss Cash enjoyed a stadium
reception of gasps that turned to cheers. Persons holding those fifty
yard-line season tickets--and those were the same people who played
golf at Northwood and Brook Hollow Country Clubs-could not have
responded more enthusiastically if Lady Godiva had made a grand
entry. Who knows what might have happened if Bubbles had showed
up in the end zone. Mthough the Chamber of Commerce never
printed this on its letterhead or in any of its brochures, the official
town motto might well read: "Dallas The City with a Sex Drive" or
"Dallas--The City with Tits the Size of Your Head."

When Bubbles created such a sensation in the stands, the media
rushed to learn more about her while she posed "bumpily" for newspaper
photos. As it turned out, Miss Cash worked as an eedysiast at a
well-known Dallas cultural outlet called the Theatre Lounge. That
word, "eedysiast," is of ancient Greek origin, and it means "someone
who dances and disrobes in public while men in the audience make
noises like creatures of the barnyard."

Miss Cash, in modern Dallas, could teach Sunday school in the
same costume that incited hysteria at the Cowboys game in 1967. Her
impact on the community was such that the city's most distinguished
newspaper columnist, Blackie Sherrod, allowed Miss Cash into his
office for a private audience. Bubbles, it turned out, was like all the
rest of the Dallas women . . . they were from someplace else. In
Bubbles's ease the point of origin was identified as Soddy Daisy, Tennessee.
Her Christian name, she said, was Theresa Mia, and after the
photos of her Cotton Bowl debut reached the international wire services,
she heard from home. The message from Soddy Daisy was, "Let
the hems out and behave yourself," Miss Cash confided.

	120
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


Describing her profession, Bubbles denied that she was either a
stripper or an exotic dancer. "'I just happen to take my clothes off," she
said. Describing her approach to wardrobe selection at events like
Wednesday night church services and Sunday afternoon Cowboys
games, Miss Cash said, "'if you show a lot of top, cover up the bottom.
If you show a lot of bottom, then cover up the top. If you want to see
both, then come to the Theatre Lounge,"
Here, the basic and primal instincts of the sportswriter came into
play. Sherrod sought statistics from the person he was interviewing.
"I'm nineteen," Bubbles said.

"No . . . I mean . . . ," the tamed journalist stammered.

"Oh, those statistics," Bubbles said. "40-23-35."

Blackie Sherrod would later describe what next happened: "A
button popped off Miss Cash's blouse. 'Oops. Excuse me,' said she.
'Think nothing of it,' I answered, flicking a cigarette lighter and setting
fire to my nose."

The Cowboys' new mascot identified her favorite player as Bob
Hayes. "He's such a cute little thing, but he runs and bangs into
people like some big old Jethro Pugh," Bubbles said. She also announced
her intention to travel to the sites of Cowboys road games.
"What happens," Blackie Sherrod wondered, "if the Cowboys wind up
in Green Bay for the championship game and the temperature is
around zero?"

"That will put me to the test," she said. "But I'll be there."
Tex Schramm, the pro football visionary who, along with Pete
Rozelle, hammered out the network television agreements that made
the NFL into an entertainment-industry powerhouse, watched the
Bubbles Cash craze with fascination. Tex felt another brainstorm coming
on. Why not, Tex wondered, locate about fifteen or twenty little
dancing replicas of Bubbles Cash--girls who make the Rockettes look
like the Pittsburgh Steelers' front four-dress them in skimpy silver
and-blue short shorts with halter tops and white boots, and call them
the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders? While Dallas would ultimately fall
one foot short of playing in the Super Bowl, Tex Schramm will no
doubt always remember 1967 as one very special kind of year.


BuBi-Es Cas, as promised, arrived suitably attired at the next Cowboys
game, scheduled, appropriately, in New Orleans. In the Crescent

THE ICE BOWL
	19,1


City, every woman who doesn't answer to Blanche DuBois will answer
to a name like Bubbles Cash. Therefore, the woman who caused eyeballs
to pop at the Cotton Bowl became just another pleasant image in
the crowd of over 80,000 at Tulane Stadium.

NFL football held extreme novelty value during its first season in
Cajun country, and the fans were as manic and enthusiastic as the
Saints team was feeble. Tom Landry, as was his fashion, had been
concerned that the crowd might stir the Saints into some kind of
frenzy, and he was pleased to see his team play the kind of game that
would take the heart out of the home team early. "We had them on
the run--really pouring it on them. A lot of their people were getting hurt,'" was Landry's cool assessment.

Even Dallas fullback Don Perkins, who managed to leave the
general impression that the grimier aspects of the pro game did not
meet his standards of dignity, noted, "We were supposed to get beat
up down here, but I noticed it was their guys who were hobbling off
the field."

In the fourth quarter, with New Orleans trying to make the game close, quarterback Gary Cuozzo threw a pass that Cornell Green tried
to intercept but tipped and juggled. When Green fell down, he lost
control of the football. But the back judge ruled the play an interception
and a fumble . . . and that Mel Renfro picked up the ball in the
Cowboys' end zone and advanced 9, yards. "From where I was standing,"
Landry confessed, "I would have thought they would have ruled
that an incomplete pass.'" The Saints' fans felt the same way, and they
started getting agitated when Dallas tried a reverse on the next play
and Frank Clarke ran 56 yards. Since many of these dilettantes were
sipping from flasks containing a delicate but sassy chardonnay, the
throng began to express its disapproval. The booing reached such a
crescendo that Don Meredith could not shout out the play in the
huddle, much less hope that his offense could hear a snap count at
the line of scrimmage.

The din would not subside for fifteen minutes, and when the
Saints waved their arms in an effort to silence the crowd, the frenzy
only increased. When Meredith finally did run a play, he fumbled the
snap and the Cowboys were denied another touchdown.

Somebody asked Landry if, when the Saints fans were hyperventilating
in the stands, he had considered taking his team off the field.
"No," Landry said. "Not, that is, when I'm fourteen points ahead."

122
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


DALLAS, NOW POISED to enter the stretch run of the season, appeared to

be a cinch to nail down a playoff slot, and soon. Like the Packers, the
Cowboys' regular season, barring catastrophe, had been designed to
serve as an appetizer for the playoffs. All Dallas needed was to finish
ahead of the Eagles, Redskins, and Saints, and the Cowboys would
probably have to finish under .500 to lose their division.

With the Redskins coming to Dallas, the Cowboys appeared well
positioned to lock the race up early. Instead, the team played a game
that reminded Tom Landry of his 1960 crew that went 0-11-1. For a
football organization loaded to the gums with some of the acknowledged
virtuosos of the game at the skill positions (the ones who throw,
catch, kick, and run with the ball), Landry couldn't remember a Cowboys
team that had made as many physical pratfalls as Dallas performed
against Washington. The passes that weren't overthrown were
dropped. Danny Villanueva shanked a punt. Dallas even botched an
extra point.

The play that best characterized the personality of the game came
when halfback Dan Reeves took a pitchout, stopped, and threw a long
downfield pass that appeared to be a 54-yard touchdown strike to
Lance Rentzel. Instead, the flanker tapped the ball up, juggled it from
hand to hand until Washington's Richie Harris sprinted over to snatch
the ball away from Rentzel for an interception. "Just no excuse for it,"
said Rentzel. By the time the Cowboys woke up from their odd trance,
they were trailing Washington 27-6, and two late Dallas touchdowns
offered only an anticlimax.

Sonny Jurgensen completed 23 of 33 passes for 264 yards. "He
reminded me of myself," laughed 'Skins coach Otto Graham. "No.
Seriously. I was never the passer that Sonny is."

Both Tex Schramm and Landry looked dismayed as the team
dressed hastily. Everybody seemed in a rush to get the hell out of the
Cotton Bowl. "We had a three-game lead with five to play, and we
blew it. We couldn't close the sale," Tex Schramm said.

Tom Landry looked over the Cowboys' schedule. The next week a
dangerous St. Louis Cardinals team--much better than the Redskins,
who had just flattened Dallas--was due in the Cotton Bowl. The week
following that, Dallas would play the Colts---in Memorial Stadium,
where Don Shula's team had beaten Green Bay. "Now we are going to

	THE ICE BOWL


find out what we are made of because it is going to be tough from now
on," Landry told them.

When the Cardinals hit town on Thanksgiving Day, it appeared at
first as if Landry and his team would face another excursion through
football purgatory. In the game's first minute, St. Louis quarterback
Jim Hart connected with his tight end, Jaekie Smith, for a 67-yard TD.

"When something like that [a long bomb exploding into the face
of the defense before the players have had time to work up a sweat]
happens, then you know one of two things might happen," Landry
deduced afterward. "Sometimes, you go into a game too tense, and
then when they hit you with the big play early, it loosens you up.

"Or . . . you're going to be a big flop for the rest of the game."
Dallas retaliated with a salvo of long-distance touchdowns. Bob
Hayes returned a punt 69 yards. Meredith completed a 48-yard pass to
tlentzel that set up a touchdown by Perkins. Meredith threw a short
pass into the right flat that Hayes turned into a 59-yard touehdovcn.
Meredith connected again with Hayes for 53 yards in the third quarter,
and t/eeves completed his halfback-option pass to tlentzel for 74
yards. When it was over, Dallas had beaten an excellent St. Louis
team, 46-21.

Just when Landry seemed ready to write off the season, the Cowboys'
offensive choir went out and sang in octaves that the coach had
never before heard. He came out of it looking like a world-class psychiatrist-the
gridiron was his couch.

CHAPTER


CYNICISM AND AMERICAN JOURNALISM tend to go together like big feet and
professional basketball. Look at what one New York-based news magazine,
Time, wrote about Frank Sinatra's first public appearance as
chairman of the American-Italian Anti-Defamation League at a rally at
Madison Square Garden. He said the organization "was seeking to
remove the stigma of gangsterism from the land that produced Dante,
Michelangelo, Columbus, Mussolini and Capone." The article further
noted that Sinatra arrived at the rally just in time to miss all of the
speeches and sang Italian ballads like "I've Got You Under My Skin"
and "Moonlight in Vermont."

Viewed from a certain perspective, it might seem strange to some
that the organization would select Old Blue Eyes to front its cause.
Actually, if American-Italians needed a spokesman who had won the
total approval and admiration of the nation in 1967, they needed to
look no farther than Vince Lombardi.

The coach glistened with pride in his heritage. Lombardi maintained
nonnegotiable rules that forbade anybody other than Packers
football players or team employees on the buses that carried the team
from the hotel to road-game stadium sites. One year, Vince noticed a
couple of unfamiliar faces among a Packers pregame caravan and began
shouting, "No civilians on the bus! No civilians on the bus!" But
who turned up on the bus to Candlestick Park for a Packers contest
against the 49ers, at the coach's invitation? None other than Joe
DiMaggio.

Furthermore, Lee Remmel, sportswriter for the Green Bay PressGazette
and now the head of public relations for the Packers, recalled
the days when he covered the team and described Lombardi as "kind

THE ICE BOWL


of like the Godfather." In this context, Remmel was not necessarily
referring to Lombardi's ethnicity. He was merely illustrating that when
Lombardi was running the Packers, there was never a question as to the man's total authority, and if anyone needed any favors from the
team, they had to go directly through Lombardi.

"On road trips the sportswriters for the Press-Gazette routinely
traveled on the Packers' chartered plane," Remmel said. "But it was
no standing deal. We had to get his permission to ride before every
game. Nothing was ever taken for granted.'"

Modern experts of the psychological sciences have identified a
categorical typing for a person who exhibbits coach Lombardi's workplace
characteristics. So imperially commanding was Lombardi over all
facets of the Packers" empire that the word "Caesar" might have been
more fitting for the man's job title than "coach." "For instance," remembered Remmel , "none of his assistants [by 1967 the staff consisted
of Phil Bengtson, Jerry Burns, Dave Harmer, Tom McCormick,
Bob Schnelker, and Ray Wietecha] were ever allowed to talk to the
media. Even in training camp, if you needed a comment on any given
player, an evaluation of a rookie and what his chances might be of
making the team, you had to go to Lombardi. The assistants were not
allowed to talk about anything--period."

Lee Remmel devoted his adult life and a fair portion of his childhood
to working in print journalism. "I wrote for the grade-school
newspaper, and when I was a teenager I had a job as correspondent
for a weekly paper in Shawano County, northwest of Green Bay.
When I was a junior in high school, I covered two murders in three
days and a projected strike by Menominee Indians against the federal
government," Remmel says.

He had been working full time in every known news-gathering
capacity at the Press Gazette for nearly twenty years when Vince Lombardi
came to Green Bay. But ttemmel was not prepared for the
sometimes harrowing ride that came with the daily coverage of a man
like Lombardi, who scrutinized every word written in the local press
about him and his football team. Lombardi could be quick to anger
over coverage that he perceived as negative, yet was reluctant to provide
meaningful information regarding the state of his team.

"Although it is standard policy now, there were no Monday news
conferences to review the game of the day before," said Ilemmel.

	126
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


"The only time I was allowed to speak to the coach was each Tuesday
morning, on the phone, from 9 a.m. until 9:05. I had to have my
questions prepared, obviously, and he gave me monosyllabic answers.
So I had to do a creative writing job to produce a story. It was not like
some radio broadcast where all that you need is a sound bite. You need
some substance to write a news story, and that was hard to get from
him."

Remmel remembered being thrown out of the Packers' dressing
room by the coach himself on cut-down day before the start of the
regular season in 1967. "Td never seen him so irascible. He figured
that I was in there counting noses, to see who had been cut and who
hadn't, and Vince was not prepared to announce the names at that
point. The off-seasons were different. Every year I was assigned to
interview Lombardi for the Packer Year Book. You still had to have
your questions prepared, but he was relaxed and gave great and comprehensive
answers to all the questions, and I got some wonderful
stuff then. But in the regular season--forget it."

Remmel distinctly recalled two episodes in his relationship with
the coach that led to hot words. "One time, I blew up at him. But
sometimes when his temper cut loose, the person who Lombardi was
yelling at might not be the actual source of his wrath. When Lombardi
had been an assistant coach at Army, his boss there, Red Blaik,
pointed out that Vince had an unusual thermostat."

If the everyday sportswriters who dealt with Vince Lombardi on a
local, upper Wisconsin basis had presumed that the coach might take a
more serene turn over the passage of years, Vince fooled them. "As
the years went by and he continued to win, he became even more--
maybe 'arrogant' isn't the right word, but it's pretty close," said Remreel.
"He wasn't so much that way in the early years, but the more he
won, the more I guess he felt he should be immune from criticism in
the media.

"The funny thing is that when he won, after the game when
talking to the writers Vince could be just unbearable. And when he
lost, he would show a real humility. I'm sure, though, he had to force
himself to be affable after a loss because it bugged the hell out of him
to lose.'"

Vince's behavior after the difficult loss at Baltimore was a typical
example. "The Packers had not only lost the game late when Baltimore

THE ICE BOWL
	127


recovered an onside kick, but lost halfback Elijah Pitts in the first
quarter and fullback Jim Grabowski in the second quarter .... They
were gone for the season," recalled Remmel. "But Lombardi was as
talkative and friendly to the media as I had ever seen him. And for the
remainder of the season, I think he did the best coaching job of his
entire tenure at Green Bay."

While Vince Lombardi reigned, nobody made the mistake of
thinking of Packerland as a democracy. But the trains always ran on
time. And he was, as he was supposed to be, a winner.


AVTE GIEEN BAY'S loss at Baltimore and the prospect of mounting
casualties (all-pro guard Fuzzy Thurston joined Pitts and Grabowski
on the disabled list), pub conversations from Kenosha to Port Wing
rang out with concern.

In Michigan's Upper Peninsula, known to be Packers territory
during the Lombardi monarchy, four motorcycle gangs--the Highwaymen,
the Vikings, the SSmen, and God's Little Children--staged
an all-day beer party on an abandoned farm that wound up in a gun
battle. Anxiety over the struggles of the Pack, perhaps, had boiled over
into such hostile activity.

Now Cleveland would come traveling into County Stadium, and
every devotee of the Packers' cause respected the Browns as a tough
and resourceful team. The Pack had beaten Cleveland in the championship
game at Lambeau Field just two seasons before but had gotten
its nose bloodied in the process. The fallen Elijah Pitts sat in a cold
dugout at County Stadium before the game with his surgically repaired
appendage in a cast. As he watched the Browns warm up, Pitts
shook his head. "Their quarterback, Frank Ryan, wears that number
13. I don't know what to make of that," Pitts mused. "I was the thirteenth
player that the Packers picked the year I was drafted, so I
regarded that as a lucky number."

Pitts soon learned the meaning of it all. Green Bay's Travis
Williams, the rookie rocket that Lombardi had been touting as a
concealed weapon since training camp, returned Lou Groza's ldekoff
87 yards for a touchdown. Exactly thirteen seconds had elapsed and
the Packers led 7-0. On the thirteenth play of the game, the
Browns' number 13, Ryan, fumbled, Ray Nitsehke recovered, and
.!


	128
	MIKE SHIq0PSHIBE


one of the greatest routs in Green Bay and Cleveland history was
under way.

Bart Starr threw a 28-yard touchdown pass to Donny Anderson.
Starr threw a 14-yard touchdown pass to Marv Fleming. Every time
Cleveland coach Blanton Collier looked up he saw- another Packer
crossing his goal line. At the end of the first quarter Green Bay led the
Browns by the score of 35-0! The National Football League record for
points in one quarter was 41, and that had been set by the 1945
Packers in a game against Detroit.

Cleveland finally found its way onto the scoreboard in the second
quarter when Ernie Green ran 59 yards for a TD. Big mistake. On the
next kickoff, Travis Williams took off again, this time for 85 yards. By
halftime, Green Bay had piled up its lead to 45-7. The Green Bay
Press-Gazette wondered what Blanton Collier might have said to his
troops, or what remained of them, during the intermission. Collier
shrugged. "I looked at the players and said, 'I can't explain it to you,
men.' That was the pep talk."

Green Bay eventually wound up winning, 55-7. Such an explosion,
just a week after the bitter ending at Baltimore, left fans wondering
what Lombardi might have done to create such a rebirth. If
Lombardi knew the answer, he was not about to supply it. But the
coach wore his favorite "I told you so" expression when the topic of
Travis Williams came up. "'It's a question of speed. I warned the world
about Travis Williams in training camp.'" Lombard/was beaming. Williams's
brilliant explosive run on the opening kickoff energized and
supercharged a team that had been waiting all season for such a spark.
"Those kickoff returns were a thing of beauty," said Lombardi, hardly
able to contain himself. "'Two in a game. That is an accomplishment of
a lifetime. This is a great club. I've never seen so many things go


This was not the Vince Lombardi that writers were used to confronting
after big wins, the Lombardi who could be so terse and so
insufferable. The coach appeared to permeate a feeling of complete
relief now that the '67 Pack had at last demonstrated unmistakable
thoroughbred form for the first time all season.

With the score out of hand, Lombardi let rookie quarterback Don
Horn sample his first regular-season game experience in the second
half. "You maybe saw the backfield of the future out there today,"
Lombardi told the writers. "Horn, Anderson, and Mercein."

THE ICE BOWL


129


EvEN THOUGH QUARTERBACK Zeke Bratkowski once noted that "the sixties never came to Green Bay," Vince Lombardi was hardly oblivious
to the events that were more and more featured as lead items on the
network newscasts. If the media were to be believed, an attitude of
insurrection was becoming contagious.

"'He was bothered by it and he talked about it," says Vince Lombardi,
Jr. "In some areas, he was kind of liberal for a person who had
been raised in that strict Jesuit background . . . politically liberal, at
least. He campaigned rather actively for John Kennedy in 1960. So the
idea of a protest demonstration, per se, did not bother him so much,
but the concept of civil disobedience and breaking the law was something
that bothered him a lot."

For professional reasons, Lombardi might not have been that
enthusiastic about the black students who staged a forceful protest at
Grambling University in Louisiana. Some students trashed the cafeteria
and staged a "lie-in" at the football stadium, hoping to cause a
postponement or even a cancellation of the homecoming. The topic of
Vietnam or civil rights never came up during the outburst at
Grambling. Students voiced indignation, in effect, because the college's
football team was too good, and now they were disturbed over
what the protesters described as a "second-rate atmosphere for learning."

The Grambling protesters noted that twenty alums of the college
were employed on 1967 NFL rosters, more than any other school in
the land except Notre Dame. Student body president Willie Zanders
charged that the college "would rather turn out a pro football player
than a Rhodes scholar," adding that there were no "academic pros on
the Grambling faculty."

The protesters at Grambling would have the satisfaction of knowing
that they had captured the attention of the college president,
Ralph Waldo Emerson Jones, who in his spare time doubled as the
school's head baseball coach. Jones summoned the National Guard,
and twenty-nine students were expelled. This was a rebellion scene
that Lombardi would have regarded as not only unlawful but mindless
as well. Also, one of those Grambling alums in the NFL happened to
be Green Bay defensive end Willie Davis. If Lombardi had been

130 MIKE SHROPSHIRE


pressed to name a player on his roster that he regarded as indispensable,
Willie Davis would have been the one.


WITH THE PaCK now seeming to gel after their wholesale butchering of
the Cleveland Browns, Lombardi was seeking defensive momentum to
carry the team on to the championship. The San Francisco 49ers, with
quarterback John Brodie, presented what Lombardi considered an
ideal challenge for his team as it entered the stretch run of the regular

season,

With Willie Davis supplying unrelenting constraint for Brodie,
and Ray Nitschke obliterating the 49ers' running game, the result, for
the second week in a row, was exactly what Lombardi had wanted--a
defensive demolition demonstration. Green Bay's 13-0 shutout was
the first posted by any team against San Francisco since 1961.

The coach expressed delight over another aspect of the show.
Starting outside linebacker Lee Roy Caffey missed the 49ers game
with a sore ankle, another result of increasingly rough play in the
Sunday manslaughter that was becoming widespread in the league.
"When you put all that payoff money on the line," rationalized Caffey,
"it brings out the best in people. Also knees, elbows, and helmets."

With Caffey due to be missing only temporarily, Vince learned
that he had more depth than he might have rea/ized. Caffey's fill-in,
Tommy Joe Crutcher (from where else but Texas with a name like
that?) produced an all-pro effort when given a starting opportunity.
Crutcher, who grew up not far from the farm where Audie Murphy
spent his childhood, simply commented, "I don't know how well I
played. I'd have been a lot more satisfied if I'd intercepted a pass or
something."

After watching Lombardi's Green Bay team operate for an afternoon,
San Francisco coach Jack Christiansen analyzed the two squads
and determined what he felt might be the essential reason why the
Packers seemed to win all the time and the 49ers of that era did not.
"Our shortcoming," decided Christiansen, "is a lack of meanness."


IN THE FALL of '67, Southern Cal football coach John McKay watched a
junior-college transfer playing halfback for the Trojans run 86 yards for
a touchdown against Washington. "When I saw that run, I thought that

THE ICE BOWL
	131


whoever it was who recruited that kid is a genius." MeKay was talking
about himself, and the "kid" he was referring to was O. J. Simpson.

By early December, however, few Americans were tap-dancing at
the eloudlike elevations occupied by Vinee Lombardi. The preseason
had been a difficult one for the Green Bay czar. Jim Taylor had become
the first star Packers player to defect and seek asylum elsewhere,
and for months Lombardi had been depicting Taylor to his team as a
traitor for going to the New Orleans Saints. During some long portions
of the regular season, just when it looked like things couldn't get any
worse, all of a sudden, they did. Without Paul Hornung and Taylor,
Bart Starr appeared out of sune with the newcomers, and that caused a
torrent of turnovers. Then came a rash of injuries.

At the conclusion of the San Francisco win, the Packers could be
assured that they had overcome this barrage of setbacks. With three
games still to play, they had clinched their division championship and
would coast into the playoffs, where Lombardi was now certain that
his Paek would prevail. Lombardi kept a little plaque in his offlee that
read: "I firmly believe that any man's finest hour is that moment when
he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the
battlefield, victorious."

Lombardi, having felt that kind of rapture after beating the 49ers,
turned his efforts to vengeance. Six weeks earlier he had been stung.
Green Bay's 10-7 loss against Minnesota had left the coach seething.
Not only had the Vikings limited the Pack to fewer than 50 yards
rushing, Lombardi privately came away from the game with a rare
sensation. He felt that he might have been outeoaehed. Afterward, the
Vikes' new coach, Bud Grant, made those comments about how his
team was not in awe of Green Bay, physically or otherwise, and about
how determined he had been that his would not be the team to make
the late mistake that lost the game.

Vinee read something into those remarks, and in this ease the
print between the lines wasn't that hard to decipher. Lombardi's interpretation
was that Grant, through the media, was telling football that if
that old fare in Green Bay thinks he's the only person around here who
can coach football, then he's in for a shock. So screw him. And that,
essentially, was exactly what Grant had intended.

Appropriately, with the Packers once again functioning on most
cylinders, the schedule called for Green Bay to travel to Metropolitan
Stadium in Bloomington, the town between the Twin Cities. Since the

132
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


Vikings franchise entered NFL play in 1961, Green Bay had visited
that stadium on six previous occasions, and Lombardi's team had never
been beaten there. Green Bay did survive a close call in a game in
Bloomington, and Lombardi had been so agitated at his team's play
that he kicked a garbage can in the locker room with such force that
he almost broke his foot. In the state of Minnesota, Vince Lombardi
hadn't lost to Norm Van Brocklin, and he certainly did not want to
establish any new and negative precedents against this impertinent
Bud Grant. "All week Vince kept drumming away on the theme of
how the Vikings hadn't seen the real Packers the first time around,"
recalled halfback Anderson, who had been enjoying his premier season
as Hornung's full-time replacement. "'Just because we had clinched
the playoffs, he thought, was hardly a reason to lose intensity. Vince
told us that the only thing more deadly to a football team than fatigue
was complacency."

That Packers team that the Vikings had beaten earlier, the game
that left Bud Grant feeling so cocky, had been quarterbacked by Zeke
Bratkowski, and after three games as an emergency substitute Zeke
had finally been overexposed and was showing his age. This time Bart
Starr had returned, combat-honed and adequately healthy. Starr and
the rest realized, though, that attitude alone might not be enough to
beat Minnesota at home. After their 0-4 start, the Vikings had managed
a 3-2-2 midseason run. If the Packers had improved since the
first meeting in October, so, too, had the Vikings.

While the coach and his team had anticipated the same kind of
playing conditions that Napoleon had faced on the Russian front, the
sun was out in Bloomington, the weather unusually mild and almost
balmy by Minnesota's December standards. A record crowd filled
Metropolitan Stadium to witness the rematch. Minnesota fans were
treated to a classic--not a classic by Lombardi's tastes-but a hilarious
back-and-forth display of oscillating momentum, fluke plays, suspense,
and a frenzied ending. On the whole, the spectators witnessed the sort
of show that could only guarantee customer satisfaction.

Field goals by Don Chandler and Fred Cox left the contest tied
after the first quarter. Minnesota running back Dave Osburn made the
play that initiated the cannon fire. In the second quarter, Osburn,
apparently trapped in his own backfield like a bug in a matchbox,
somehow managed to elude the Packers' defense. Osburn, a freelance
sub who worked behind Tommy Mason and Bill Brown in the Vikings

	THE ICE BOWL
	133


running corps, slipped away and sprinted 43 yards for the game's first
touchdown. The players' descriptions of that run reflected the degree
of mutual dislike that had developed between the teams.

Said Osburn: "I had good blocking. We always have good blocking
against Green Bay. They play it pretty straight and we like to play
them."

lay Nitschke remembered the play differently. "We were
sloppy," he said. "I didn't tackle Osburn. If I had tackled Osburn, he
wouldn't have done so well. We weren't as sharp as we should have
been. Maybe that was good for us. We tackled better after that."

Lee loy Caffey, back in the lineup after his ankle injury, backed
up Nitschke's account of the play. "I should have had Osburn for a
loss. I had him behind the line, but he got away. It was a poor job of
tackling." Not, of course, a good job of blocking.

The Bart Starr factor surfaced quickly after Osburn's touchdown.
He threw a 57-yard touchdown pass to Boyd Dowler, who scored only
after he and Vikings" defensive back Ed Sharockman played ping-pong
with a tipped ball. "Sharockman made a good play on the ball," said
Dowler. "I tried to catch it, and his hand came between mine and
eflected it. I kept running and the ball came back down to me. It was
a good bounce."

Earlier in the season the direction of excruciating bounces had
produced Packers turnovers in wholesale quantities. At the time, the
roach had painstakingly pointed out that if those fortunes did not
omehow reverse themselves, the Packers hadn't a prayer of winning
.hat championship the coach so coveted.

Now the bounces, for sure, had taken a cheerful new direction for
:he Pack. After Dowler had gotten his on the 57-yard touchdown, the
Packers got another on the next kickoff. Minnesota rookie Bob Grim,
echo would not commit such a botch for the next decade, bobbled the
dckoff. Special teams whiz Steve Wright, who had already recovered
:hree enemy kickoffs during the season, this time flopped down on top of Grim, pinning his face to the Minnesota turf, while the newest
Packer, Chuck Mercein, recovered the ball. One month after his stint
ecith the Westchester Bulls, Mercein, the former Yalie, had returned to
rime time. That recovery led to another Chandler field goal, and the
Pack led at the half, 13-10.

Joe Kapp, the quarterback who was built like a linebacker and
)ften threw the football with about as much touch and finesse, corn
	134
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


pleted just two passes in the Vikings' earlier 10-7 upset of the Packers.
Kapp did not demonstrate noticeable improvement in the rematch,
hitting six of seventeen. One of the completions, though, went to John
Beasley for a six-yard touchdown that put the Vikings back on top in
the third quarter, 17-13.

Again, Bart Starr fired a rapid counterpunch, finding Carroll Dale
alone in the Vikings' secondary for a 34-yard TD. And shortly, a play
that could have been re-created only on a pinball machine led to
another quick score. Cornerback Bob Jeter tipped a Joe Kapp pass in
the direction of linebacker Crutcher, who batted the ball in the direction
of Nitschke, who grasped the interception. That play set up a Ben
Wilson touchdown. The Packers now led 27-17.

Minnesota came grinding back. Ed Sharockman, wiped out earlier
on the Boyd Dowler touchdown, neutralized the damage with a
fourth-quarter interception of a Starr pass. The Vikings scored when
another of Kapp's six completions went to Red Phillips for a touchdown.


A Green Bay fumble gave the Vikings additional opportunity, and
Cox tied the game late with a 27-yard field goal. Green Bay's offense
faltered, and the Pack was confronted with fourth and long, pinned
down inside their own 20. Earlier, Donny Anderson had shanked a
punt. Even with a more reasonable effort, Minnesota still figured to
secure reasonable field position, and a couple of first downs would set
Fred Cox up nicely for a game-winning kick. Anderson, however, hammered
a career punt, a towering left-footed spiral, that sent Grim, the
Viking safety, in rapid retreat.

Grim, perhaps uptight over his earlier fumble, mishandled this
one, too, and the ball rolled another thirteen yards toward the Minnesota
goal line. "I finally got some foot into that one," Anderson said.
Grim recovered it this time but was nailed in his tracks by Mercein
and Doug Hart. On that one Anderson kick, the Packers gained 72
yards' worth of field position. Bud Grant, finally, sampled the real taste
of Green Bay fourth-quarter football.

After Bratkowski had been victimized on the late interception
that had cost the Packers the game in the earlier meeting, Grant had
been preaching the "let the Packers cut their own throat" gospel. The
flaw in that approach was that, historically, the Packers seldom did
that. Now came time for the payback.

From the Vikings' 15 they tried to run their version of the Pacers popular sweep. But one of Minnesota's pulling guards collided with
Joe Kapp and jarred the football out of the quarterback's grasp in what
Lombardi might have described as "a lapse of execution." Now the
ball was on the ground, but nobody was sure where. According to
Kapp, "I never did get the snap under control and then someone hit
me and I lost the ball. I was looking all over for it, but I couldn't find
it. I don't know where it went."

Green Bay tackel Ron Kostelnik realized that the ball was loose,
but he didn't see it either. "I kept watching Kapp,'" Kostelnik said,
"'because I figured he knew where it was."

What had happened was that fullback Bill Brown had inadvertently
kicked the thing. Defensive back Tom Brown, the same player
who had intercepted Don Meredith's pass on the fateful fourth down
in the 1966 championship game, located the football rolling upfield,
picked it up and, in his own words, "returned the ball about a quarter
of a yard.'"

Now Bart Starr's job was to hand the ball off to Anderson and
Wilson, run as much off the 1:47 left on the clock as he could, and
position the ball for an easy Chandler field goal. Chandler's field goal
traveled 19 yards, and the Packers had beaten the Vikings at last, 30 27.
Not only had both teams each registered fifteen first downs, they
had gained an identical 374 yards in total offense. Vince Lombardi
seemed more like the old Vince after the win, meaning that his post
game behavior with the media was terse and cold.

Lombardi's in-depth analysis of the really terrific game: "'We
scored more points than they did, so we won."

An hour and a half later, the Packers assembled at General Billy
Mitchell Field in Milwaukee to catch a chartered flight. Their destination
would be Santa Barbara and the same workout field where they
had prepared for their championship game against Kansas City eleven
months earlier.

This time, with the division title already locked up, the Pack
would be practicing for a meaningless regular-season game against the
Rams at the L. A. Coliseum. With Lombardi thirsty for an encore, he
felt that now was a good time to expose his team to some Super Bowl
atmosphere.

CHAPTER


PAUL CIZANNE WROTE that every time he applied his brush to the canvas
he could hear a chorus of angels rejoicing in heaven. He also said,
"There are two thousand politicians in every legislature, but there is a
C6zanne only every two centuries." Viewed from the context of artistic
achievement, the game that the Dallas Cowboys played to clinch the
championship of the Capitol Division in 1967 would gain no critical
acclaim as something that resembled in its own fashion a masterpiece
by C6zanne. Praying hands on velvet was more like it. After demolishing
St. Louis in a game that Tom Landry hoped would establish a
winning cadence that would sweep the team into the playoffs and
beyond, the offense conked out almost totally in the second half at
Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.

Dallas's defense played proficiently against the Colts. That, at
least, qualified as a first. The Cowboys squeezed four turnovers out of
Baltimore, rare largesse from a Don Shula team, but the Dallas oflense
hissed and gagged and squandered almost every opportunity.
Stymied by a zone defense in the deep secondary, Don Meredith
pitched up four interceptions. He managed to connect with Bob
Hayes for a 35-yard touchdown in the second quarter, and Dallas
actually led the Colts, 14-10, at the half. Then Dallas curled up into a
self-destructive little knot and second-half pickoffs by Bobby Boyd and
Rick Volk destroyed any hope of defeating the Colts. Baltimore wound
up winning, 23-17, and Dallas's record fell to 8-4.

"Disgusting." That was the word Landry used to describe his
team's offensive showing. He almost spat it out. Landry ripped his
quarterback. "You can't throw the ball up in the air on their three

THE ICE BOWL
	137


deep," he fumed. "That's just what they're waiting for. Meredith
should have taken his losses when he was under pressure."

True, Landry had not been the man standing midstream in a
collapsing pocket and hearing the elippity-elop of the onrushing Bubba
Smith and cohorts. Meredith, though, presented an account of the
action that coincided with the coach's. "I didn't call a good game. I
threw badly and I panicked," he said,

"After beating St. Louis the way we did, I really hoped that we
could come here and finally establish some momentum," declared the
frustrated Landry. "We haven't played good games back to back all
season, and to think that you can pull it all together, just in time, when
the playoffs start is not very realistic. Now look at Cleveland, the team
that we're likely to play in the first round of the playoffs. They've won
three straight now. That's the momentum that we're looking for and
don't have.

"But while we didn't beat Baltimore, we beat the Baltimore image.
This is the first time we've stayed on the field with them, and I
think the team realizes now that we are certainly capable of beating
them."

This would be a day when even Bubbles Cash would be upstaged,
Down in Houston a woman ran onto the field at the Oilers game. At first, everyone thought she might be Bubbles. Instead, the woman
identified herself as Terri Tail and outseored Bubbles in a key star, 43
to 40. At least Bubbles and the Cowboys fared better than another
Dallas team on that same day. The Dallas Tornado soccer team got
stoned, literally, in Singapore. One Dallas player, Jan Book, was
bonked on the head with a rock while the others scurried for cover. Vince Lombardi just thought those Baltimore fans, with their drunks
leaving the stands and all, were nasty. Dallas also fared better than the
man who founded the New York franchise in the ALL, Harry Wismer,
who died that Sunday. While losing, though, Dallas became the beneficiary
of events elsewhere. The Redskins and the Eagles, the teams
that were attempting to catch Dallas in the four-team Capitol Division,
played to a 35 - all deadlock, thus mathematically eliminating each
other.

The absence of blaring trumpets and drumrolls from the Cowboys'
title-clinching weekend was altogether appropriate. At least
owner Clint Murehison, Jr., probably felt that way. What the Cowboys
had been accomplishing on the field in 1967 seemed quite subordinate

	138
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


to events happening far behind the scenes in Murchison's playground
of big-time finance. It might not be inaccurate to state that Murchison
was a man genetically inclined to get what he wanted out of life.
Compare the recollection of William landolph Hearst's father that his
son, as a tot, "had insisted that we buy him the Louvre. Other than
that, he always got everything he wanted."

At the beginning of the century, Clint Murchison's father made
his living by trapping raccoons and selling them to Sears, l%ebuck.
Then Murchison Senior decided that oilfield speculation might offer
faster and bigger profits than the raccoon-trapping business. Maestro
of the handshake deal in those production reservoirs in East Texas that
had so awed Admiral Yamamoto, the Murchison family proceeded to
build one of the great American fortunes. Murchison Senior became
impatient dealing with banks in the Yankee provinces. "Trouble with
you guys up here, you're too slow," Murchison was once quoted as
saying. "[In Texas] we make the deal and let the paperwork catch up
later."

Clint Junior's approach to the world of commerce was similar.
One Dallas business analyst noted that in the era that gave birth to the
Cowboys franchise, "big oil ran Texas. They owned the banks. They
owned everything, essentially. When it comes to clout, Jerry Jones
could never even begin to compare with the power and influence of a
man like Clint Murchison in those days."

In terms of flamboyance, with his horn-rim glasses and his hair
chopped down in a flattop, Murchison made Ross Perot look like Mick
Jagger. Modest and impeccably mannered, Clint certainly worked in
defrance of the stereotypical bombastic Texan. But Murehison also
brandished widespread influence. When Clint Junior decided that he
wanted to marry Cowboys scouting director Gil Brandt's wife, that had
been accomplished with little delay. And when Clint decided that he
wanted a new ballpark for his football team, he got that, too, though
that project took a bit longer.

By the mid-sixties the Cowboys had taken on a swashbuckling
personality with their shiny silver uniforms and touchdown-on
demand attack. The Cotton Bowl had been an ideal showplace for
Doak Walker and the SMU Mustangs back in the 1940s, and it was
great for the manic crowd scene at the once-a-year TexasOklahoma
game. But the neighborhood surrounding Fair Park had been getting
South Chicago-tough. Skirmishes like the one that happened in the

THE ICE BOWL


end zone at the Rams game, when the drunk fan snatched the policeman's
pistol, would only be happening with more frequency. The
North Dallas swells whom Murchison had been courting as the ticket
base for his team had been growing reluctant to travel down around
Fair Park, where "Brother, can you spare a dime?" was getting replaced
by "Hand over your wallet, motherfucker."

Glint Murchison wanted something more polished for his Cowboys,
something in the downtown area among the brilliantly illuminated,
blandly designed Dallas skyscrapers that were all shaped like
cereal boxes. His eventual nemesis in this plan became Dallas mayor
Erik Jonsson, whose ambitions for the city did not include the Cowboys
as a priority. The mayor told Murchison that inserting the proposed
downtown stadium as part of a civic-bond package did not mesh with his own top priorities for the city. Jonsson, who ran a company
called Texas Instruments that owned the patent to a device called the
computer microchip, fit the image of a Scandinavian devoted to the
scientific ideal. Erik Jonsson would not be found among the Dallas big
shots with season tickets on the 45-yard line who whooped and
drooled when Bubbles Cash came jiggling down the aisle. The mayor,
in fact, didn't know a first down from a potato pancake.

"Glint scheduled a meeting with Erik Jonsson, who told him that
the Cowboys "are not in my plans right now' or words very close to
that," revealed Tex Schramm, who was a keenly involved bystander to
the stadium saga. "The new stadium had been Clint's big dream, his
big push. So when the mayor told him that the best the city of Dallas was willing to do for the Cowboys was to put a couple of million
dollars' worth of improvements into the Cotton Bowl, that was a blow.

"But Glint had also been anticipating that possibility and had
been gathering land just west of the Dallas city limits in Irving--site of
xvhat is now Texas Stadium," Sehramm said.

Glint wanted a new football tabernacle, and a renovated Cotton
Bowl with bigger washrooms hardly fit his vision. Murehison's idea
included an innovation that called for private boxes--football presidential
suites, actually, something called sky boxes. He could lease or
sell these, no matter how much the price tag. Murehison well understood
the grazing habits of the rich. The amenities included in the sky
box, with the comfortable seats and the open bar, remained secondary
to the actual appeal of the privacy.

The big allure would lie with the subliminal concept, the illusion


	140
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


of separation. People entered those boxes via private elevator. No
longer would they need to rub bellies with the tired and huddled
masses down there. But the proletariat could look up and gaze upon
the aristocracy, reclining behind the glass and swapping Dom Perignon-enhanced
profundities. What a place to be seen. Box holders
gazed at one another through binoculars. Such fun. Years after construction,
Highland Park High School, also billed as America's Rich
School after the America's Team concept finally popped, was involved
in a playoff game at Texas Stadium. Some of the high school kids,
lolling in their fathers' boxes, actually pitched cash out of the windows
and down onto the riffraff assembled beneath them.

While that kind of activity might not have been what Clint had in
mind, the sky box novelty became an overnight success. That strange
Texas Stadium design, the semidome effect with the big hole in the
roof, did present problems, Don Meredith, who retired before Texas
Stadium had been completed, pointed out, "The place looks like it
ain't finished yet." The hole in the roof created a bizarre sunlight-and
shadow effect on the field, making games difficult to televise.

"Well, the architect anticipated that problem and tried to prevent
it," said Tex Schramm. "He built a little model of the stadium and put
a wire arc over the top to simulate the path of the sun. And then he'd
tilt the stadium in this direction and that, attempting to minimize the
lighting problem down in the stadium. But something' got screwed up
and I'm not sure why." What didn't get screwed up was the fortunes of
the football team. After the Cowboys assumed occupancy of Texas
Stadium at midseason in 1971, they would advance as far as the NFL
championship game in fifteen of the next twenty-five seasons and win
that game nine times.

With the division title wrapped up after the Baltimore game, with
two games still left on the regular-season schedule, Schramm and
Murchison pulled the trigger and announced that the Cowboys would
be moving to Irving. Murchison, the futuristic owner, also made public
the scheme by which season-ticket holders would be required to purchase
a revenue bond. In order to sit between the 35-yard lines, fans
were obliged to cough up a grand a seat, a considerable sum in the
1960s. A $500 bond would be required to purchase season tickets
elsewhere in the stadium.

John Q. Public howled. The working stiff now faced exclusion
from the Cowboys' home games. Jack Lowe, chairman of the Fair Park

I I



THE ICE BOWL
	141

Association, facing the painful fact that the NFL's matinee-idol franchise
would be abandoning his Cotton Bowl, did raise some hell.
"What that stadium in Irving will be," he said, "is a private club."

Time would demonstrate that Jack Lowe knew what he was talking
about. Whether in the private suites or in the Texas Stadium
stands, the fans displayed gentrified dress and behavior. Indeed, the
audience appeared better suited for a ballet or at least a modern-dance
recital. Cowboys touchdowns were received with polite applause.


THE FINAL TWO games of the team's 1967 season--with the playoffs
locked up--took on the pace of exhibition games. The Cowboys did
manage to avenge their earlier embarrassment against the Eagles;
Philly got bounced, 38-17, and Craig Morton played most of the game
at quarterback. If anything, the game became noteworthy for one play.
Halfback Dan Reeves--the ex-college quarterback took a pitchout,
took off on what appeared to be a routine end run, then stopped,
planted his foot, and heaved a deep pass to Lance Rentzel. The play
worked for a 45-yard touchdown.

The same play had generated the same results two weeks earlier
against the Cardinals, Reeves to Rentzel for a 70-yard TD. It would
have worked against the Redskins, too, but Rentzel dropped the pass.
"It's amazing how accurate Reeves is with that pass," Tom Landry
marveled. "In practice he seldom misses."

If Green Bay Packers scouts were not taking copious notes about
Cowboy Danny Reeves and his halfback pass, they should have been,
because it was this play that was so significant in the Ice Bowl epic.


TWN DAYS INTO the month of December, the populace of eastern Wisconsin
hadn't seen a cloudless day. Antifreeze and brandy sales approached Guiness Book of World Records numbers. On Sunday, in
Madison, volunteer skin divers attempted to locate the remains of 26
year-old Otis Redding. His private plane had slammed into icy, fog
shrouded Lake Menona with "tremendous impact," and four other
members of Redding's band, the Bar-Keys, died with him.

The Green Bay Packers had skipped town for the week, inhaling
the hydrocarbons down in Southern California. Vince Lombardi's football
team had been evacuated to Santa Barbara on a working vacation.

	142
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


On Saturday the Pack would face the Los Angeles Rams. While Lombardi
continued to prevail in the throne room of national football,
another jealous prince, George Allen, had joined the gang of Tom
Landry, Don Shula and Bud Grant--all intent upon seizing the crown.

Mien--nervous, manipulative, and too brilliant to work forever as
George Halas's underpaid and overworked assistant--achieved instantaneous
results in L.A. For the first time since the Bob WaterfieldCrazylegs
Hirsch peak years during the Truman administration, the
Rams were smoking. L.A.'s roster, top to bottom, was composed
largely of less-than-ordinary talent. The Rams' best linebacker, Maxie
Baughan, back in his prime, had starred for the Eagles in the only
playoff game Lombardi ever lost. That had happened seven years
earlier.

George Allen constructed a team around two assets--his Deacon
Jones, Lamar Lundy, Roger Brown, Merlin Olsen Fearsome Four
some--and a hot quarterback, Roman Gabriel. The rest of the roster
was an assembly of spare parts that worked in excellent harmony. The
Rams, heading into game thirteen of a fourteen-game regular season,
could win the Coastal Division championship in the finale at home
against the Baltimore Colts. But first, they needed also to beat the
Green Bay Packers. The Pack already had clinched its playoff slot, but
Lombardi guaranteed the onlooking gallery that his Packers would
enter the Coliseum in Code Red status. Women and children, clear
the streets.

"Who the hell cares that you've won the division?" Donny Anderson
remembers Lombardi telling his team during the practices in
Santa Barbara. "This is a Saturday game, the only game on TV, and the
whole country will be watching this. You're the Green Bay Packers,
you're the world champions of football, and you're damn sure not
going to play dead."

Fresh off the roster of the Westchester Bulls, Chuck Mercein
now felt unable to conceal the elation that he felt when he saw his
name printed in chalk on Lombardi's pregame blackboard as the starting
fullback. Jim Grabowski's hurt knee would not respond to therapy,
and Ben Wilson had joined the casualty list on a temporary, basis.
"What an experience," Mercein recalled. "I'd been leading rusher for
the New York Giants. So what? Who wants to be remembered as a
leading rusher on a team that didn't win a damn thing? Now, because
Jim Grabowski had gotten hurt in Baltimore, I found myself in the

THE ICE BOWL
	143


starting lineup with this--this juggernaut." Educated in the IH,
League, Chuck Marceen decided that life was fair.

One week earlier, UCLA Heisman Trophy winner Gary Beban
had played the game of his life, and that still wasn't enough to beat
O. J. Simpson and USE. Sports-page critics largely agreed that the
game might rank as the greatest ever played in the L.A. Coliseum.
After the Packers-Rams showdown, they changed their minds. While a
paid audience of almost 80,000 enthralled witnesses cheered the
Rams" every move, the two teams traded touchdowns throughout the
afternoon. Lee Roy Caffey, the erstwhile South Texas watermelon
farmer, blocked a Bruce Gossett field-goal attempt in the first quarter.
Future Hall of Fame cornerback Herb Adderley grabbed the blocked
kick and returned the football to the L.A. 43. Then Bart Starr threw a
30-yard TD to Carroll Dale.

Green Bay's defensive secondary included two Hall of Famers,
Adderley and Willie Wood. But the other defensive backs, Bob ]eter
and Tom Brown, took the field with journeyman-type credentials. All
season the Packers had forged a winning record against a procession of
mediocre quarterbacks--Larry Rakestraw, Karl Sweetan, and so on.

Johnny Unitas, however, knew how to exploit the soft spots in the
Packers' secondary, and he'd done that in the final quick drive when
the Colts had beaten the Pack back in early November. Roman Gabriel,
enjoying his premier season, came equipped with advanced
stalking instincts similar to Unitas's. Here was a contest offering a full table of spicy ingredients. Some people intent on filming a documentary
on the primeval aspects of pro sports had wired Lombardi for
sound. Those experiments customarily bring embarrassing results.
This one certainly worked out that way. One of the few snippets that
could have been marginally acceptable for family viewing came early,
when the Packers' line opened a huge hole, but fullback Mercein was
tackled after gaining only nine yards.

"Holy Christ!" shouted Lombardi. "Who was that? Marceen? Jim
Taylor would have run forty yards on that play! Oh, well. Mereein's a
hell of a kid, and he's all we've got. You've gotta go with who you've
got."

As the game progressed, Gabriel pitched two touchdown passes
to Jack Snow, and the Rams claimed a lead in the third quarter. Trav
elin' Travis Williams supplied the boomerang effect on the very next
play. After fielding a kickoff four yards deep in the Green Bay end

Illl


	144
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


zone, Williams ran up the middle of the field, spun away from one
tackler, cut back, hesitated to pick up a block from Gale Gillingham,
and then sprinted down the sideline to score. This was Williams's
fourth kickoff return TD of the season, breaking an NFL record held
by Verda T. "Vitamin" Smith of the 1950 L.A. Rams. Williams's fantastic
voyage brought joy to the heart of Vince Lombardi. Paul Hornung,
bless his proud heart, had been a brave soldier. But this Travis Williams
looked more like Gale Sayers all the time.

Chuck Mercein then scored a Packers touchdown, running four
yards in the fourth quarter. When Green Bay, leading 24-20, stopped
the Rams on fourth down, it appeared that the game--and the Rams'
season--was about over. Dave Robinson blocked a Gabriel pass on the
fourth-down play. Had Robinson intercepted the ball, and he should
have, the linebacker would have scored. "That ball had "Dave Robinson'
written .all over it. I would have scored for sure," he said, "but
maybe it was not meant to be that way. I don't know." At that moment,
it seemed unimportant.

When the Packers couldn't move, Anderson dropped back to
punt. Less than a minute remained to play. But a split second after
Anderson's left foot hit the ball, he heard another thud. Tony Guillory,
one of an even dozen NFL players (including Bubba Smith) from
Beaumont, Texas, who had the same grandfather, had rushed through
the middle of the Packers' line and blocked the punt. From the Packers'
viewpoint, the football now was bouncing in the wrong direction.
Claude Crabb, a Rams defensive back, picked up the ball and ran it all
the way down to the five-yard line. With twenty-six seconds left,
Bernie Casey caught a pass from Gabriel and the Packers were beaten, 27-24.

When Guillory blocked Anderson's punt, he delivered the play of
the decade for the L.A. Rams. "It was about time we made a big play,"
Guillory commented. "I went right between the center and the guard.
I thought an 'up' back would get me, but no one even touched me. I
was there and I got the ball. That was all."

Packers receiver Boyd Dowler said, "'As the offensive team was
coming out, we were all hollering, 'They'll try to block it!' I was hollering
from the sideline. So were the others. They had nine men on the
line for the ball--I counted them--nine men and two safeties.'"

Both coaches blew some serious smoke at the assembled media
after it was over. "What a credit to pro football the Packers are,"
THE ICE BOWL
	145


proclaimed Allen, whose finest hour was still a week away, when the
Rams destroyed the Colts to win the division championship. "It shows
you, the way they played today, what a great coach Lombardi is.'" What
else could George Allen say? If his master plan gelled, his Rams would
meet Green Bay in the playoffs in two weeks, and his remarks had
been aimed to leave the Pack tranquilized.

Lombardi, in defeat, delivered a courtly and polished critique of
the event. "I am as proud of this football team as I can be. Their
performance was a credit to the profession and to football, the way
they xvent out and played as hard as they did with the division already
clinched."

While Lombardi uttered those words, he must have been thinking,
What in the hell is going on here? Against the two best teams,
Baltimore and the Rams, the Green Bay God Almighty Packers gave
away the lead in the final two minutes and were beaten because it
appeared that Lombardi's kicking teams had fallen asleep. The Colts
xvon by recovering an onside kick. Now this blocked punt nonsense.


WHEN THE TEAM returned to the frigid streets of Green Bay, Lombardi
lashed out at his Packers and pumped a season's worth of frustration
into the invective. The unfortunate primary target of Lombardi's late
season diatribe became none other than the neweomer, Chuck Marceen . The Rams' Tony Guillory had been talking about Chuck after
the game. Mercein had now been identified as the mysterious vanishing
'up' back who never touched Guillory while he breezed through
and blocked Anderson's punt in the final minute.

Mercein had been relaxing in the whirlpool--a bad place to be--
when Lombardi cut loose with his barrage. "Vince started in on me for
letting the guy in there--tore into me good. 'You didn't do anything!
You didn't block amjbo&j!' The whole team overheard it, of course. I wanted to sink down in the water and drown.

"But later on, in a meeting, we were watching the film of the play,
and Lombardi conceded that the Rams were pouring in there from
every direction and that I didn't have much of a chance. Nobody out
there knew what in the hell his assignment was supposed to be. He
didn't apologize necessarily, but he did tell the team that I hadn't been
the only one to mess up. For a newcomer, that meant a lot to me
because if he'd left things the way they were after that whirlpool en
	146
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


counter, it would have been devastating. From the edge of despair, I
felt almost elated."


TrtE wnaL CaME of the regular season was against Pittsburgh. The four
teen-game grind had been the most grueling ever during the Lombardi
tenure. The players had been battered. Jim Grabowski, the
coach had learned, was through for the year because of his bad knee.
This team that relied so heavily on its ground game now found itself
seriously low on stallions. Anderson, Marceen, and Travis Williams remained
as the only healthy running backs. One more injury and Lombardi
himself might have to suit up.

Many of the regulars, including Bart Starr, had been granted a
furlough for the final game against the Steelers. Don Horn, the man
that the coach envisioned as the quarterback of the future, played
most of the game. Even using the fill-in players, the Packers still figured
to beat the dead-end Steelers. But Pittsburgh won, 24-17, behind
Kent Nix, the man who almost beat the Cowboys at a point in the
season when the game meant something. "We did everything we
planned to do today, except that we didn't plan to lose," Lombardi
said. Meanwhile, out on the West Coast, Dallas duplicated the Packers'
feat, enjoying the scenery at Kezar Stadium and going through
what seemed like the motions in a 24-16 loss to the 49ers.

The real news took place down in the L.A. Coliseum. Baltimore
traveled there with plans to finish as the NFL's first unbeaten team
since 1942. Instead, the Colts were handed their heads when the
Rams routed them, 34-10. Both teams finished the season at 11-1-2,
but because the Rams prevailed in the head-to-head series, 1-0-1,
they advanced to the playoffs while Baltimore, with arguably the best
team in pro football in 1967, was eliminated.

"Our offense put some points on the board early," said Deacon
Jones, "and so we were able to dictate to Mr. Unitas what we wanted
him to do, and that was to pass." Or attempt to pass. Unitas, who had
thrown for career yardage that surpassed eighteen miles, was harassed
and beaten up by the Fearsome Foursome. They sacked Johnny U.
seven times, and in desperation he threw two fatal interceptions.

Now the children of Lotus Land would travel to Wisconsin looking
for more scalps.

CHAPTER


NOBODY WHO n,D occasion to cross paths with Vince Lombardi would
describe the coach as boringly predictable. In so many ways, Lombardi
stood out as a composite of contradictions. Some might partially explain
it by Lombardi's birthday--June 11 which students of the zodiac
recognize as a Gemini. Characteristics of persons born under that
sign primarily involve a duality of personality. Inconsistencies that
arise from what often progresses into a Jekyll and Hyde syndrome
serve as the root cause as to why most Gemini people carry such labels
as "the'er-do-well" and "no account." Also "card-carrying nut ease."
But Lombardi defiantly violated the Gemini archetype with his almost
Teutonic obsession with structure, preparation, punctuality. If you
worked for Lombardi, you set your watch to "Lombardi Standard
Time." Football players soon learned that when they arrived five minutes
early for a team meeting, in Lombardi's book that was five minutes
late and it cost them $50.

To Lombardi, the best part of the day happened at five o'clock in
the afternoon. That was when the Gemini facet seemed to kick in. At
five o'clock a transformation took place. Lombardi, the supreme commander
of allied forces, became Vince the happy-hour raconteur. A
major element of Lombardi's life centered around what he called the
"five o'clock club," when he would collect friends, associates, and various
hangers-on, throw down a few pops, and unwind. Lombardi could
and would pontificate on myriad topics. That was how Lombardi and
all of those around him helped maintain their sanity.

"Every year, when Vinnie and I were on the NFL competition
committee, we would meet for a week in Hawaii," recollected Tex
Schramm. "Lombardi always insisted on having a hotel room with a

	148
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


balcony that faced west. And he insisted that we all gather there in that
five o'clock social hour and he'd watch the sun go down and talk about
some of the goddamnedest topics you could imagine. Philosophy. Religion.
Quite the contrast from the popular image of the hardhearted,
tyrannical Green Bay football coach."

The gathering of Lombardi's five o'clock club on the Friday evening
before the Saturday rematch against the Los Angeles Rams in the
division playoff game occurred in his suite at the Pfister Hotel in
Milwaukee. The Pfister offered the kind of ornate amenities that Lombardi
was inclined to appreciate. When Vince took over at Green Bay,
his first edict called for the Packers to go first class in every way
possible. Which meant the team would be billeted in the kinds of
hotels that chased all the hookers out of the lobby. The Pfister qualified
in that regard, and the people who stayed there and patronized
the lounge seemed more inclined to sip good cognac than Pabst Blue
Ribbon and Everclear.

So the Pfister met Lombardi's test as his kind of place, and the
gathering in his suite for that Rams game included some of his kind of
people. Lombardi enjoyed the company of the big-time syndicated
columnists from both coasts--Jim Murray from L.A., Red Smith from
New York. He always felt that the reporters from Milwaukee and
Green Bay were too local, maybe parochial.

Writers with a national following had assembled in Milwaukee
two days before Christmas to witness what the smart money insisted
would be Lombardi's downfall. While completely dismantling those
tough Baltimore Colts to win the Coastal Division, George Allen's
Rams had looked like, well, the old Green Bay Packers. Now Green
Bay entered this contest with zero momentum, having suffered back
to-back losses to Los Angeles and Pittsburgh. Because of the multitude
of injuries, Lombardi would be starting what the media were
describing as "third stringers" at running back against the red-hot
Rams.

But none of that seemed to matter at the five o'clock club on that
Friday, where Lombardi was telling Red Smith and some others that


he'd never actually said, "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing."

What he had actually said, the coach was insisting, was that winning
isn't everything--and that the maximum 200 percent all-out, do
or-die effort was all that mattered. Somehow, some sportswriters had
bastardized the quote during the translation, Lombardi was saying

THE ICE BOWL
	149


now. Then Lombardi gazed at the ceiling and intoned, "As Saint Paul
wrote in the Epistles, 'Know ye not that those who run in a race run
all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.' ""

Nothing can break up a gathering of sportswriters more quickly
and more effectively than a hard dose of Scripture. The writers stumbled
out of the hotel suite, one of them muttering, "How about that?
The gospel according to Saint Vincent dePaul." Bed Smith, an inquisitive
type, decided to further investigate Lombardi's quotes. "I went
back to my hotel room, looked it up in a Gideon Bible and sure
enough, Vince had it right," Smith wrote. "The coach who worshiped a
God of peace taught a game of cruel violence, with total devotion to
both."

That's a Gemini for you. When Red Smith, much later, retold the
incident to Jerry Kramer, the guard noted, "'Vince has a way of making
saints sound like they would have made great football coaches."

If Lombardi seemed unperturbed on the eve of the Rams game,
the coach had undergone another complete personality transplant by
the time the Packers arrived at County Stadium on game day. "I
wasn't there in those early years, of course, but I had never seen
Lombardi so absolutely intense before a game," said halfback Donny
Anderson. "'And that included the championship game against Kansas
City the year before."

Lombardi told his Packers, in effect, that he was sick of reading
all the krap about the invincibility of the Fearsome Foursome. After a
decade of achievement, Lombardi was furious that his Packers were
appearing in the newspaper obituaries. George Allen's rams were not
the team attempting to win a third straight championship. The Packers
were. The Rams hadn't been winning long enough, and they hadn't
paid their dues yet. The rams seemed a little too damn cocky for
Lombardi's taste, and he wanted them destroyed. Annihilated. That
was Lombardi's pregame message to his football team.

"'He called it a crisis game," said Bart Starr. After the warmups
on a fast field at County Stadium--temperature at game time a jolly
plus-90 degrees--Starr thought back to a spring day in 1959. "It was
the first time I had ever met Vince Lombardi, and he had brought in
about eight or nine of us for what they now call a minicamp," Starr
said. "'He talked to us for about an hour and a half, but after only
twenty minutes I could tell what was going to be happening.

"After that first meeting, I ran down the hallway to a pay

	150
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


phone and called my wife--we were still living in Mabama in the off
season--and I said, 'Honey, we are going to begin to win.' He made
eve rything seem so clear. He was a teacher and a brilliant communicator."

Since getting hurt in the third regular-season game against Atlanta,
Starr had attempted to conceal the extent of the damage to his
right shoulder--even from the coach. "Well," says Starr retrospectively,
"he told us from the outset, in that first season back in 1959,
that once you establish the goal and the price you're willing to pay to
attain it, you must ignore the minor hurts, the opponent's pressure,
the temporary setbacks. So if ever there was an oeeasion to adhere to
all of that, here was the time."

All-pro offensive tackle Forrest Gregg recalls being emotionally
ready to take on the challenge of his career. "The Rams were a hot team--the hot team going to the playoffs. That Fearsome Foursome
was all that it was billed to be, too. Those were great players. But it
was cold in Milwaukee. Not by our standards but by theirs, and during
the pregame warm-ups, George Allen was on the field in a white shirt
and neelaie, presumably to show his team that the cold wasn't all that
bad. But when they came back out, George was so bundled up that
you couldn't recognize him."

The Rams scored first on a Roman Gabriel to Bernie Casey pass
for 9,9 yards. This happened after Merlin Olsen recovered a fumble.
The Fearsome Foursome appeared back on the job. Gabriel, at six
four and 9,35, looked like Goliath standing back in the pocket behind
enormous Rams linemen like Charlie Cowan, Tom Mack, and Joe
Seibelli. If Los Angeles had come into the game cocky, it seemed early
on that they had a right to be.

Then a Tom Brown punt return put the Packers in good shape,
and Travis Williams, now heralded as "the Roadrunner" in the revamped
Green Bay offense, sprinted 44 yards through the Rams' de
lense, Fearsome Foursome and all, to tie the game. Williams's run
seemed to stimulate a mean streak in the Green Bay defense that had
lain dormant in the game against L.A. two weeks earlier. When the
official called for the chains to measure what looked like a Rams first
down, Ray Nitschke snarled at the official: "Just give 'em the damn
first down. Let 'em have it. We aren't finished with them yet, and we
don't want to get out of here until we are."

Late in the first half, Willie Wood made the play that snuffed the

THE ICE BOWL 15]Rams
for good. Bruce Gossett attempted a field goal that would have
put L.A. back on top, but his kick misfired. Wood picked up the football
at the Green Bay one-yard line and ran it back 44 yards before
L.A. halfback Les Josephson could catch him. Starr, despite the bad
shoulder, pitched a 17-yard TD to Carroll Dale with only thirty-three
seconds left in the half. Lombardi's spirits must have zoomed. The
Rams were on the slab.

In the third quarter the Rams made one more run at the Packers
and the game was over. George Allen acknowledged: "The cold
weather had nothing to do with it. We just got outplayed, that's all.

"We got down to their 9.1, had a chance to tie the game and if we
did it's a brand-new game. Instead we got nothing, and then here they
came back again and scored again." For their efforts, the Rams would
play the loser of the next day's Cowboys-Browns playoff in an NFL
fiasco event that was known as the Playoff Bowl. Alien called it
"warmed-over stew. Boy, will that ever be an anticlimax. Funny thing,
we played twenty-one games, counting the preseason, and lost only
two. But it wasn't enough."

He also said that his team offered no excuses for the pounding
that they had taken from the Packers--and then proceeded to offer
one anyway. "We reached an emotional peak against the Colts last
week, and it was not humanly possible to get that high again," Allen
said. "When we Red 7--0 and moved within five yards of another touchdown,
if we scored at all down there, we'd have won. We had the
Inomentum and Starr has got to come to us. But Dave Robinson
blocked a field goal, and that picked them up; you could see it. It's like
when you have the bases loaded and nobody out, you need a run and
you can't get one."

A Rams assistant, Ray Prochaska, said, "We just didn't play well
and that's the whole damn thing. We scored one touchdown, and there
was no more enthusiasm for the rest of the game." According to Roman
Gabriel, the Packers "were better prepared than we were and
more inspired."

Deacon Jones bitched that "Forrest Gregg did some things that I
didn't go for. He held me on seven or eight occasions, and they only
called it once. Oh, well. What the hell. The Fearsome Foursome chose
today to play its worst game of the season." By missing out on a shot at
the Super Bowl, one compassionate writer pointed out to Olsen that
each of the Rams had "blown 820,000." Olsen bristled a little. "Money


	152
	MIKE SHB, OPSH[B.E


is never a part of my objective for xvanting to win," said the future
spokesperson for a floral delivery service. "Some guys said the money
gave us tremendous incentive, but I say baloney. I think we have too
much class and pride to sell ourselves for dollars."

Chuck Mercein, one of the media-maligned "third stringers," battled
his way into the L.A. end zone from six yards out in the third
quarter, and Williams completed the rout with another touchdown, a
short one, in the closing minutes. Meanwhile the Packers' defense was
playing stomp-butt throughout the entire second half, soiling Roman
Gabriel's uniform, A nexvsman suggested that special stunts might
have created express lanes into the Rams backfield. "Nuts," countered
Henry Jordan. "Consistent winners don't use trickery. In order to win,
you just have to play more football than the other guy."

After a newsman suggested to Bart Starr that the turning point
came in the second quarter, when Gossett missed the field goal and
Willie Wood ran it back, the quarterback quoted from Lombardi's
pamphlet of football disciplines: "'There's no turning point. You play
sixty minutes and every, one of them counts. We didn't particularly
pick their defense to pieces. We just had a lot of blocking."

When the game was over, Vince Lombardi was in a mood to talk.
People involved in professional motivation like to say that the ultimate
benefits that come from the accomplishment of a long-term goal are
derived from whatever has been gained during the journey to get
there. What the Green Bay Packers had accumulated in this forced
march to the NFL championship round largely consisted of cracked
ribs, wrecked knees, busted heads, and bad press.

In the process of trying to defend their championship, the Packers,
like the hunting jacket that the/d given the coach, had a target
painted across their backs. Every team in the league wanted a piece of
the Pack. Not since 1963, when Paul Hornung had been kicked out of
football for a season for gambling, had Lombardi experienced a more
trying, demanding campaign than this one. The nadir, for Lombardi,
concerned something that happened off the field. A feature about the
coach that appeared in Esquire depicted Vince Lombardi as a raging
tyrant and a terminal bully and compared his politics to those of a
"South American general." The worst part, for Vince, happened when
his mother called him, upset to the point of tears. The article quoted
the coach using coarse language, and Mama Lombardi was embarrassed.

THE ICE BOWL
	153


"There is a special satisfaction in winning this one," the coach
said. "Everybody had been saying that we were dead, that we were in a
patsy" division with the Bears, Vikings, and Lions, that we weren't the
Packers that we once were. They, were saying that we were too old. We
had something to prove, and we proved it.

"'We've handled the Rams' front four before and we handled
them today,. Yes, we had some special pass patterns today, and that
might have been why Bart Starr completed seventeen out of twentv
three passes, Our defense was superb. Defense is mostly a matter of
reaction, and we were quick off the ball all day. When the highest
scoring team in football needs two fumbles to score seven points, you
must be doing quite a job. We're still the champions, and maybe we're
still improving with age. If some of our veterans have a little less hair
and a lot more experience--well, we've got some youngsters who are
getting more experience, too."

Lombardi came forward with praise for everyone and everything,
even the condition of the playing field at County Stadium. That might
have been due to a run-in earlier that had involved Lombardi and the
groundskeeper in Green Bay. \once had chewed the guy out in front
of the team, Later he attempted to apologize. It didn't work. "You eat
me out in public and apologize in private, so I refuse to accept your
goddamn apology," the groundskeeper told the coach.

The coach rattled off the names of his offensive linemen: Gregg,
Kramer, Bob Skronski, Gale Gillingham, Ken Bowman, who had first
neutralized, then dominated the game so that by the end the Fearsome
Foursome had been reduced to the Quarrelsome Quartet. "I
think it's imperative that I give the offense the credit they deserve.
The newspapers and broadcasters never will. I know. I played in the
offensive line myself once upon a time."

Then, almost instantly, Lombardi dismissed the "crisis" win over
the Rams as yesterday's news. He shouted over the heads of the assembled
reporters, over to the locker area where his assistant coaches
were changing clothes. "'Meeting tomorroxv at nine-thirty! Meeting
tomorrow at nine-thirty!" Tomorrow was Christmas Eve, but the Packers
had an Ice Bowl coming up and needed to prepare.

Peace and joy prevailed throughout the whole fooball-besotted
state of Wisconsin, where they rescheduled Hallmveen if it conflicted
x4th a Packers game. Almosl the whole state, that is. A resident of
Mercer, Wisconsin, experienced a bad day when, one day before




	154
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


Christmas Eve, the IRS filed a lien against him, seeking more than
$920,000 in taxes and interest on the profits from the sale of distilled
spirits from 1921 through 1932. ABC had been running a sensationally
popular television series called The Untouchables, based on the activities
of the man's late brother, and he had never seen a nickel from
that. "Where's the justice?" wondered the man in Mercer, Ralph
Capone.


EXACTLY A WEEK to the day, before the Packers-Rams playoff game in
Milwaukee, one team from a high school in Abilene, in West Texas,
played another team from Austin for the upper-classification state
championship football title. The contest attracted considerable media
attention throughout Texas, primarily because the team from Abilene
featured a quarterback named Jack Mildren. In 1967, Mildren rated as
the most highly' coveted high school football player in the United
States. Sports Illustrated published a long feature story about the
coast-to-coast recruiting fren over Mildren.

That championship game was played at TCU Stadium in Fort
Worth during a sleet storm. Mildren's team trailed by a point, 20-19,
in the fourth quarter, but the quarterback sensation drove the ball the
length of the field into the teeth of the strong north wind. With seconds
remaining and the Abilene team facing third down on the Austin
school's one-yard line, Mildren called his last time-out. With a slick
ball on a slick field, facing that stiff wind, Mildren and his coach,
Merrill Green, decided not to risk a kick. Instead, Mildren
a quarterback sneak between his center and right guard.

But Mildren's feet seemed to skid when he took the snap and he was stopped short of the goal, and before the offense could line up
again, the game was over. The unbeatable high school team had been
beaten after all. Fortunately for the Green Bay Packers, Bart Starr
hadn't seen that play. Otherwise, he might have made a different
choice with the game at stake in the Ice Boxvl.


PIOSl'EII', AS USUAL, was the password in Dallas as 1967 came to a

close. With LBJ continuing to ink the presses to finance his xvar in
Vietnam, inflation prevailed throughout the worldwide economy.

THE ICE BOWL
	155


price of oil seemed certain to zoom straight up. For the petro barons
of Texas, the outlook could not have been rosier.

On Christmas Eve Sunday, the mood in the Cowboy Club's tent
saloon near the front steps of the Cotton Bowl was especially festive.
The Dallas fans felt confident that the Cowboys could move past the
Cleveland Browns for that long-awaited and much discussed championship
rematch against the Packers. Dallas had beaten the Browns on
the road in the first game of the year, and they should handle them
again in the raucous Cotton Bowl.

Despite a season fiddled by inconsistent performance on both
sides of the football, Tom Landry felt confident as well. The week of
practice had left the coach with the impression that the team was
solidifying at exactly the right time. In the locker room at midweek a
player in the bathroom noticed Landry standing at an adjoining urinal.
"Tom, how long have you been bald?" the player asked the coach.
Landry, his outlook brightened by the productive week of practice,
simply cackled and said, "I like a guy who lives dangerously." The
coach was similarly unperturbed when he found another player's yellow
Volkswagen parked in his own private slot at the practice facility,
though he was less than thrilled by the bumper sticker on the car:
"America: Fix It or Fuck It." But the preparations for the important
Cleveland game left no room for distractions from lesser concerns.

Dandy Don Meredith's household had acquired a new occupant--a
pet ocelot. Meredith, after his miserable showing against the
Colts, had played rather sparingly in the final two regular-season
games. Now, in the pre-playoff workouts, Landry conceded that his
quarterback had never appeared sharper. Bob Hayes looked quick too.
The bullet man had pulled up lame on the last play against Baltimore,
sprinting deep on a Meredith version of a Hail Mary play. His leg felt
good now. "I love this game," Hayes said shortly before the kickoff
against the Browns. "I love money, too. And this game today, this is a
money game."

In the press box before the kickoff against Cleveland, Tex
Schramm had been grousing to reporters that television executives in
New York Schramm still dealt with those characters on a daily basis
for the same reason that Wilfie Sutton dealt with banks--were warming
to the idea of calling the NFL-AFL championship the "Super
Bowl." Schramm shook his head. "I don't like it. It sounds hokey."

Tex's chagrin did not last long. The Cleveland game was over a




	156
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


little after it started, and Bob Hayes was at his gold-medal best, clearly
intent on operating at a performance level that surpassed any other
effort of the season. Early in the contest Dallas pulled away to a 21-0
lead, and one of the touchdowns came on an 86-yard Meredith-toHayes
completion that left the Brmvns' secondary appearing as if they
were running in xvet concrete.

Later, Bob Hayes set up another touchdown with a 68-vard punt
return. For the game, he gained 144 yards in pass receptions and 141
more on kick returns. Ernie Stautner and Ermal Allen, two of Landry's
assistants working upstairs in the press box and relaying information
back to the field via the phone, wound up working a short day. With
the Cowboys in front 38-7 in the third quarter, Landry told them, "If
we score again, just come on back downstairs."

"What do you mean 'if'? I'm calling it quits," laughed Allen. The
part of the contest that Landry found most pleasing had been the work
of his offensive line, particularly Ralph Neely, who was developing
some all-pro skills at tackle. During the AFL-NFL bidding wars, the
Cowboys had gone to court to secure Neely's services after they disputed
a contract he'd signed with the Oilers. Tony Liscio, an ex-Packer
who couldn't beat out either Bob Skronski or Forrest Gregg, had come
to Dallas and was developing some all-pro skills of his own. Dave
Manders was solid at center and John Niland, the player whom the
Cowboys had selected when they realized that they could not afford
Jim Grabowski, now played at a level that made that choice seem
prudent, too.

After the championship game of 1966, Landry had felt the offensive
line had been the one element of the game where Dallas was
clearly inferior to the Packers. Dallas still was not as good up front as
the Pack. But the line was closing the gap. It ripped some big holes in
the Cleveland defense all afternoon, and Dallas finally wound up winning,
59.-14. Green Bay just thought it had played impressively against
the Rams.

Even Tom Landry seemed a little awed by the Cowboys' onslaught.
"You'd have to say it was our greatest game ever, considering
the quality of the competition," the coach said. His players realized
that those words represented strong commentary because Tom Landry
had never been one for overstatement. Landry liked his game plan for
the Browns, too, and said as much. "We had a sound game plan and

	THE ICE BOWL
	157


the players believed in it. Yon have to establish a running game against
Cleveland."

One thing dampened Landry's afternoon. Pete Gent, healthy
again after his bad back injury against the Giants, had entered th
game while Bob Hayes caught his breath after another huge gain.
While throwing a block on a Cleveland linebaeker, Gent hit the
ground and heard a crunching sound when backup fullback Walt Garrison
was knocked on top of him. Gent's right ankle had been dislocated
and his right leg broken. "Enroute to the hospital, I made a
mental note to save up my pain pills for next week," Gent recalled. "'I
knew I'd be watching the Packers game on TV, and if we lost, I'd need
the pills."

"Ohh,'" Landry said when told of the X-ray results on Gent. "'I
hate to hear that. With the Packers coming np, you need all your
players. That's a bad break for our team." Not to mention the rotten
break it was for Gent.

Across the tunnel, in the Browns' dressing room, the players
stuffed equipment into canvas bags as quickly as they could. After a
day like this one everybody wanted to make a hasty exit. Owner Art
Modell, clad in a fu coat, seemed especially shell-shocked. "I've
never, never seen a Browns team thrown around like that in an important
game," Modell said, wearing an expression that seemed to say,
"One of these days I'm going to move this team to Baltimore."

Cornerback Ben Davis quietly explained that covering Bob Hayes
had not been the happiest experience of his life. Angela Davis, the
antiwar activist accused and later acquitted of terrorist activities, was
the Cleveland cornerback's sister. Another Browns defensive back,
Mike Howell, said, "I got burned all day, but I don't feel too badly. It's
to be expected with that guy [Hayes]. You can't compare him with
anybody."

Frank Ryan, the Browns' cornerback with his doctorate in physics,
offered this analysis: "'Obviously we had a game plan. It just didn't
work too well." Blanton Collier, the Browns' coach, echoed Ryan and
then spoke the obvious: "We didn't contain Haves at all. He had a
fantastic day and he really, hurt us."

Dallas also scored on a long interception return by Cornell
Green, which the Dallas cornerback felt had been particularly gratifying.
Published reports earlier in the week included quotes from




	158
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


Browns receiver Gary Collins, who said, in effect, that he planned to
eat Green's lunch, just like he always had.

"I don't think I said that," Collins said. "You don't say that about
an alI-NFL man. Not if you're a sane man, and I think I'm sane. I've
had my good days, and Cornell has had his. He had the better one
today."


Ovzrt ON rHZ Cowboys' side, the players began to drift out into the
chilly Texas December air. Tom Landry stopped Don Meredith at the
dressing room doorway.

"Merry Christmas, Don," the coach said.

"Yeah. I think it's gonna be all right," the quarterback answered.

CHAPTER


LONG-RANGE METEOROLOGICAL FORECASTERS gazed at their upper-atmosphere-pressure
charts and determined that the temperature in Green
Bay for the one o'clock kickoff against Dallas should hover around
seventeen degrees. That estimate hardly conformed to the fabled
c.oach's ideal for Packer Weather. On New Year's Eve, in that region
where the Fox River connects into the bay off Lake Michigan, those
seventeen degrees amounted to bikini weather. Season-ticket holders
at Lambeau Field could not be sure what to bring to the game--
brandy or coconut oil.

Another forecast, the one from Las Vegas, pegged the Green Bay
Packers as a six-and-a-half-point favorite to beat Dallas and move from
there to the Super Bowl to play the Oakland Raiders, Oakland was
playing Houston for the ALL title, but that contest would be a formal
itv. Al Davis clearly had the superior team. With the Cowboys and
Packers, however, pregame suspense was expanding quickly.

Packers scout Wally Cruice had sat in the Cotton Bowl press box
and watched as Dallas demolished the Cleveland Browns. Cruice did
not feel he was disclosing any military secrets when he said, "If the
Cowboys play like that against us, it will be too bad for the Packers." Vince Lombardi had watched the rout on television and agreed that
against the Broxvns, Dallas "was unstoppable. It looks like they're going
to be rough to handle.'"

L.A. coach George Allen said that his Rams had left all their
emotion on the field after their big win over Baltimore, that his team
was psychologically drained and flat against Green Bay, After displaying
such a passion for the kill in beating L.A. 2S-7, would the Packers




	160
	MIKE SHIOPSHIIE


show up a little less hungry against Dallas? Lombardi doubted that would be a problem.

The teams uttered all of the proper platitudes as the week progressed.
Bob Lilly was looking for a "dogfight" on Sunday. Said he:
"The Paekers are clutch players, and they play like champions are
supposed to play." Lee Roy Jordan worried about the Cowboys'
mental aspect, nmv that the team was again being called onto the
tenter stage of the football universe. "The tension is really building,"
Jordan said. "Here it is, only midweek, and we're sky-high already."
Linebaeker Chuck Hmvley was somewhat more specific as he outlined
his concerns about the title game: "The Packers always have the best
game plan that we fate. They attack our defense better than any other
team in the league."

Twenty-nine years after the fact, Bart Starr would agree. "Coach
Lombardi always enjoyed preparing for the Cowboys--more than any
team. That's because he felt that Tom Landry, and that containment
defense that the Cowboys used, were a special challenge. He had all
the respect in the world for Landry," Starr said.

When Lombardi and Landry had coached together with the New
York Giants, the two assistants literally ran the team for head coach
Jim Lee Howell. "The Giants didn't have a head coach. They had a
head smile," said sportswriter Jerry Izenberg. "Jim Lee Howell had a
great personality and took care of the media. Lombardi and Landry
were clearly the people in charge of football operations. Lombardi
with the offense, Landry with the defense. The Giants in those days
were like two separate teams."

Lombardi, understanding Landry's theory of defense because of
the men's association in New York, tried to read the other coach's
mind whenever he prepared to play' the Cowboys. But he knew, too,
that their previous working relationship could very well act as a
double-edged sword. What worried him most about Landry and the
Cowboys entailed some events in the championship game of the season
before. In Lombardfs nine seasons as head coach, the Packers
xvould participate in ten postseason games. Of those ten games, Green
Bay's splendid and ever reliable defense yielded three rushing touchdowns.
One had come in the only postseason game Lombardi ever
lost, when Philadelphia beat the Pack in 1959. Ted Dean scored from
five vards on the play that won the game for the Eagles.

The other two running touchdowns had been stored by Landry's

THE ICE BOWL
	161


Co\vboys in the game at the Cotton Bowl when Don Perkins and Dan
Reeves raced in with first-half long gainers. Lombardi never said so
until after he had retired, but those two runs--with Dallas attacking
Green Bay's strength--had troubled the hell out of him. So Landry, Vince feared, might have located other soft spots in the Packers' defense
for this rematch.


T DALLAS ENTOURAGE arrived on Friday afternoon via a chartered 727
that landed in Green Bay. The Cowboys players appeared relaxed and
tea@. "I thought that this time Dallas would probably beat Green
Bay," said Frank Luksa, who had been covering the team for the Fort
Vorth Star-Telegram since its early, years. "This Dallas team had tremendous
speed and Green Bay--well, they were playing at home but
had been getting old. For Dallas, a lot of us just sort of felt a suspicion
that its time had finally arrived."

"Even back then, never had there been a professional franchise of
such excesses," Luksa continued. "'They won big and lost even bigger.
They had a quarterback in Don Meredith who liked to sing in the
huddle. And they had the basketball player, Cornell Green, starring at
coruerback. He's the one who put his tight pad into his pants backwards
and almost became a soprano after his first practice.

"'Then you look at the guys running the thing--they could not
have been more opposite. Tex Schramm--gregarious. He liked to socialize
with sportswriters, for God's sake. And then Landry--aloof,
private. No time for small talk or idle chatter. He was always lost in
thought, like he was concentrating on something that might be happening
next week, or next year. What a cast of characters. This was a
different kind of football team. You know, nobody ever wrote any
books called North Cincinnati Forty or North Atlanta Forty.

"But before the Packers' game, up there the day before the game,
I thought they were ready to beat Green Bay."

The team boarded two buses at the airport for the drive over to
Lambeau for a loosening-up session. The Packers had just finished.
The Dallas media corps got into rented cars to ride to the stadium.
Lombardi would be holding a press conference. Since the NFL championship
was at stake, a national assembly of media had flocked into
Green Bay. Many had arrived in Wisconsin for the Rams game of a
week earlier and had stayed on. Lombardi, like most successful




	162
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


coaches, tended to regard his dealings with the media as a necessary
nuisance, but through the years, he'd learned to become more tolerant
of the needs of reporters. In one-on-one sessions with certain journalists
Lombardi was sometimes more open and cooperative than many
other coaches. Those mass-interview situations--like the prechampionship-game
press conferences or any postgame scene in the dressing
room, when he faced a firing squad of twenty or more quill pushers
throwing out questions-had been the ones that made Lombardi often
behave like a saber-toothed tiger with a case of hemorrhoids. He also
felt that some reporters, in a group setting, tossed out questions just
for the sake of asking questions. Dumb questions, often, although
Lombardi deemed himself sole arbiter of what did or did not qualify as
a dumb question.

Just off the Cowboys' charter, the Texas-based reporters had trouble
with the icy streets in Green Bay enroute to Lombardi's big press
conference. "The roads were slippery as can be and--horror of horrors-we
arrived five minutes late for this scheduled press conference,"
said Luksa. "I tried to slink into the back of the room, hoping
that Lombardi hadn't seen me or that nobody had even noticed our
arrival. Everybody knew his attitude about being on time. Five minutes
late--might as well have been five hours as far as Vince was
concerned.

"Toward the end of the press conference I finally asked a question,
and that's when Lombardi nailed me for being late. "I've already
answered that,' he snapped. But when the thing was over, his mood
lightened considerably. He escorted some of us--Tex Schramm was
alongdown into the basement of the stadium. He wanted to show off
his technological marvel."

Before the season, Lombardi had invested in an underground
heating system designed to prevent the turf at Lambeau Field from
freezing in the late-season games--like this one. Electric coils, about a
foot apart, ran the length of the field, six and a half inches beneath the
surface. Lombardi had bought the apparatus from a sales rep named
George Halas, nephew of Green BW's longtime rival from the Chicago
Bears. Not only had Lombardi agreed to buy the underground heating
rig, the world's largest electric blanket, from a man named Halas, he'd
appropriated $80,000 of Packers funds for its purchase and installation.
In those days, for that eighty grand, Lombardi could have bought
a new front four, plus maybe a reserve tight end and a placekicker.

THE ICE BOWL
	163


"'The reason that he bought the thing," theorized Tex Schramm,
"was that he alwws wanted optimum playing conditions for his team
and the other team as well. Frankly, an ice-hardened field would probably
xvork to the Packers' advantage in a game like this against a team
like ours. But Vince, as everybody knows, was a person of genuine
character, and he had real strong feelings about taking unfair advantage
of a situation. He didn't think that should be a part of normal
competition." What Schramm was saying here served as a denial of
Cowboys' visions of Vince Lombardi tiptoeing through some lower
cavern at Lambeau with a flashlight at 3 a.m. and unplugging his field
warming device. Lee Roy Jordan and George Andrie, in fact, both
claimed that they could see Lombardi ordering the plug pulled on the
underground gismo.

Through the years, Tex Schramm said that he felt he knew Lombardi
better than he knew Tom Landry. "I never really knew Tom
Landry. I don't know that anybody did," Schramm said.

"Anyway, Lombardi was sure proud of that heating system and he
was clearly having fun down in that control room, showing off the
gauges and dials and all that goddamn stuff," Schramm said.

"When Dallas took the field to practice at Lambeau Field, the
underground system was turned on and the smoke or steam was pouring
up from the field like the mist coming off moors," remembered
Frank Luksa. "It looked like a scene from the Hound of the Baskervilles. It looked sort of eerie. But the field conditions were fine and the
weather was all right. About twelve degrees and not much wind. With
those circumstances, I liked Dallas's chances even better."

Another member of the Dallas press troop, Steve Perkins, picked
the Cowboys to win by fourteen points in the Saturday Times Herald. (Steve Perkins, during World War II, had worked as a reporter for Stars and Stripes, the U.S. military daily newspaper. At a cocktail party
in Honolulu a woman introduced Perkins to Edgar Rice Burroughs. "The Edgar Rice Burroughs?" Perkins is said to have blurted out.
"Well . . . I'm the writer," Burroughs confirmed. Perkins said he was
a writer, too.)

The traveling Dallas press corps had acquired a certain reputation
around the league. One of them, Gary Cartwright (working in New
York by the time of the Ice Bowl) at a press reception before a DallasMinnesota
preseason game in Birmingham, asked Vikings coach Norm
\'Tan Brocklin about rumors that the "Dutchman" might be gay. No



	164
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


such rumors ever existed, of course, but Cartwright was just interested
to see what might happen if he asked the question. Eyewitnesses recalled
that several peace-makers were required to remove Van Brock
lin's fingers from Cartwright's throat.


THE NIGHT BEFORE the championship game against the Packers, the
Texas reporters had gathered at a big table at Fuz Thurston's restaurant.
"We involved ourselves in many hours of deep research, and, as I
recall, spirits were served," said Frank Luksa. When he returned from
Thurston's to his hotel late in the evening, the sportswriter vaguely
recalls detecting a chill in the air ....

While the press corps remained in Green Bay, the Cowboys players
and coaches took buses over to Appleton, about 25 miles outside
Green Bay on Highway 41, where they spent the night. Landry
predesigned the arrangements, thinking that Appleton might offer a
quieter surrounding than Green Bay, where loud and excited Packers
fans would be pouring into town like lemmings from other locations
around the state. Party time had commenced full steam, and Landry
didn't want his players disturbed.

While some pro coaches like to sequester their teams in out-of
the-way hotel settings even before home games, Vince Lombardi liked
to leave his players to their own devices. He felt that they'd be better
rested spending the night in their own beds at home with their families.

Donny Anderson had flown his parents and his brother and sister
in-law in from Texas to see the game. "'It was a spur-of-the-moment
thing. I thought that maybe this might be the last time ever that a
championship game would be played in Green Bay. You never really
know, and I wanted them to be here to see it," Anderson said,

"We'd had a good workout at the field that afternoon. A light
workout but a good one. The weather seemed fine. I ran some wind
sprints and worked up a good sweat. My jersey was wet. I knew that
we were ready to play Dallas," said Anderson, by then turning out
nicely' as the million-dollar bonus boy. "That night I went to dinner
with my folks, I don't remember where, and then I sent them back to
their hotel and I went home to the town house that I was renting with
Jim Weatherwax and went to bed early."

During the workout, Bart Starr's shoulder felt as pain-free as it


i

THE ICE BOWL
	165


had at any time since he'd been belted by Tommy Nobis back in the
third game of the season against Atlanta. "It wasn't too cold but, more
important, there was no wind to speak of," Starr said. "I thought the
tealn was relaxed and ready."

Starr's parents had traveled from Montgomery, Alabama, to
xvatch the rematch with Dallas. "I stayed home and had a quiet dinner.
We could have gone to a restaurant, even on a big night like this one,
in Green Bay,. The fans were great and enthusiastic, but really unobtrusive
when it came to respecting the privacy of the players. But I
wanted to stay' home and review the game plan one last time. That was
my routine. I slept very well that night. But then, I always did, for
some reason, before a big game."

Tackle Forrest Gregg remembers leaving the Saturday practice at
Lambeau Field just as the Cowboys were arriving for their warmup
session. "I remember going over to Don Meredith--we'd both grown
up in towns in East Texas not far from each other. I was older but we
were sort of kindred spirits. Frankly, I was very worried about the
Cowboys. They had really matured as a team and I was grateful that
we were playing them in Green Bay. I commented to Meredith about
the weather and how the playing eld looked all right. There wasn't
much grass left, but it seemed passable. Meredith looked around and
said, 'Yeah, man. This ain't half bad.' A lot of our players went out and
had a few the night before the game, but I stayed home. They had
apartments in Green Bay by then. I figured that I would be able to
stand up and play football, that the conditions would allow the best
team to win, and I went to bed with visions of sugar plums."

Chuck Mercein spent the night by himself. His wife, expecting a
second child soon, was visiting her parents down in the Chicago area.

Vince Lombardi, Jr., with his wife and two children, had traveled
from Minnesota to xvateh the game. The coach's son, then twenty-ve,
was attending night law school. "The setting at my parents' house was
the same as it was before any home game. My father was relaxed by
now and upbeat. If you were going to be around him, the day before
the game was the time to do that," Lombardi says. "Early in the week
he'd be tense, preoccupied. But after Thursday the game plan would
be installed, there wasn't much else he could do about the preparations,
and [he] was inclined to unwind some. That was the mood before
this game against Dallas. He had some people over, I don't recall
exactlv who they were. He had a couple of scotches with the guests,



	166
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


and then they all went to dinner someplace. I didn't accompany them.
One of our kids was sick, and we were up all night with him."

After midnight, things began to change in the world outside the
Lombardi house. Like Sam Houston's Texas army sneaking through
the woods to prepare its sneak attack on General Santa Anna's Mexican
army at San Jacinto, a powerfnl, unexpected and silent force was
cascading down from the Arctic and across the skies above upper
Wisconsin. With the temperature at plus eight degrees around midnight,
the winds picked up, and then the nercury began a harsh descent.


CHUCK MEBCEIN, ALONE in his apartment, had set the alarm on his clock

radio for 7:00 A.M. "I was still in a not-quite-awake state after the radio
came on, and I thought I heard the announcer say something about
thirteen degrees below zero," said Marceen. "I knew, actually, that I
had heard that, but I wasn't sure exactly where it was thirteen below.
But I knew that/f he was talking about Green Bay, then it was important
as far as the football game was concerned.

"I called the weather bureau at the airport, and the man there
confirmed it. Yep. Minus-thirteen and due to get colder. I got up, went
to church, and got to the field as quick as I could because I knew this
was going to be a different kind of football game."

In the motel in Appleton, where the Cowboys were headquartered,
George Andrie heard a chirpy voice at the other end of the line
when he picked up his wake-up call. "The lady said, 'Good morning,
it's seven o'clock and the temperature is fourteen degrees.' Then she
paused for effect and said, 'below zero.' Well, I thought it was funny,"
the Cowboys' defensive end recalled.

"So I hollered over to Bob Lilly. He was my roommate for eleven
years on the road with the Cowboys. I said, 'Hey, Bob. Watch this.'
Then I took a glass of water and tossed it against the inside of the
window. The water turned to ice, froze solid, before it could drip
down to the windowsill.

"See, I was from that part of the xvorld, remember, and had
played in stuff like this, or at least similar to this before, and Lilly, he
was a Texas guy. All this time, I'd been playing down there in all that damn heat his kind of weather--and now I felt sort of glad that we
were turning the tables.


i

THE ICE BOWL
	167


"But . . ." said Andrie, "when Lilly saw that water freeze there
on the window, I thought that I'd just pulled a dumb stunt. All of the
color just drained right out of his face. I got dressed quickly and went
off to church. I was a Catholic and they held a special mass for us. I
don't know what Lilly did the rest of the morning--maybe they had
church for guys like him, too, although he sure as hell wasn't Catholic-but
when I left the room, I knew that he was going to be plenty
worried about what it was like outside."

In another part of the motel, linebaeker Lee Roy Jordan received
the same wake-up call. "I didn't know if I heard her right, then the
phone rang again and it was one of our players, and I don't remember who , and he said, 'Did you hear what the damn temperature is?" All I
could do was go to the window and look outside. I just stared. I wanted
to see what thirteen below actually looked like.

"The motel where we stayed there in Appleton was sort of horse
shoe-shaped. From my angle I could see most of the other rooms in
the place," says Jordan, now reciting what might be his most vivid Ice
Bowl recollection after twenty-nine years. "In almost every window I
could see somebody just like me--a Dallas football player staring outside,
wondering what it would feel like when we finally went out
there."

When the news reached Tex Sehramm, he said that the crackerjack
minds of the Dallas Cowboys' executive force, smartest young
franchise in the history of pro sport, lapsed into a panic mode. At least,
that happened to Tex Schramm. "'I knew two things--first that I was
worried about how or if the team might make it to the stadium back
over in Green Bay in time to make the kickoff. I didn't know what the
highway conditions might be. So I had somebody get on the phone
and try to get us a police escort. And with the traffic and all, I was
thinking our buses might need an alternate route."

That priority handled, Schramm then found himself digging
through the Yellow Pages, searching under "Sporting Goods Stores."
Surely, he figured, there would be plenty of retail outlets in Appleton
open on a New Year's Eve Sunday and selling wholesale supplies of
golf gloves. So what if the temperature was approaching what might be
a record low for the planet Neptune? Back in Texas, everybody played
golf on Sunday.

"We knew that we might not be equipped to play a game in
weather like that," Schramm concedes now. "The Cowboys had never




	168
	MIKE SHROPSHIP, E


THE ICE BOWL
	169


played in anything like that, and we didn't have any idea what to
expect. We were completely unprepared. We found a hardxvare store
that would open up and sell us some gloves, but they sure as hell
weren't golf gloves. But what the hell, I remember thinking then. At
least Vince had installed the underground heating system, so I knew
that the field, at least, would be all right."

Back down the road toward the east, in Green Bay', lifelong locals
awoke surprised, concerned, and even alarmed at what had happened
so unexpectedly during the night. This was the coldest December day
in Wisconsin since 1924. Press-Gazette sportswriter Lee Remmel received
a phone call before 7:00 a.m. "We were a good paper but had a
small staff and so practically everyone who worked at the paper, even
on the Metro side, would be at Lambeau Field with some kind of
assignment. I was going to hitch a ride with a city-side reporter, and he
called and said, 'Guess what the temperature is outside? Just guess.' I
looked at the thermometer outside my kitchen window. Well, that was
a shock. Temperatures like that were not unprecedented in Green
Bay. But I knew that there had never been a football game played in it
here. That thirteen below had been the official temperature at the
airport. Other thermometers around town were registering a minus
twenty."

Bart Starr woke up early. He was going to attend services at the
Green Bay First United Methodist Church downtown. "I always went
to the early service, but in Green Bay, churches even scheduled the
second service to let out in time for the game." Starr's father, visiting
from Alabama, planned to accompany him. His father had been a
career military, man who had fought in General Douglas MacArthur's
troops in the Pacific. The Green Bay quarterback had been taught
hard-line lessons by his father about the importance of confronting
adversity. The father had served as an excellent warm-up act for the
son's eventual exposure to life under Vince Lombardi. "I hadn't heard
what the temperature was, but when my father and I went outside for
the drive to the early church services, it was apparent to both of us that
conditions for the game were going to be absolutely brutal. But neither
of us even mentioned the weather on the drive to and from
church," Start remembered. "It was a non-topic." . . .

Forrest Gregg received an early-morning call from Jim Grabow
ski. "Jim lived in the same apartment unit as I did, with my wife,
Barbara, and our little kids. Grabowski said his car wouldn't start, and

then asked me how cold I thought it was. I looked out the window and
the sun was out. I told Jim that I figured it was around zero and would
probably get up to twenty by the afternoon. Then he told me the nexvs,
that it was minus-fourteen and wasn't going to get any better. I went
outside to see if my car would start. It did, but I knew then that it was
going to be a bad day."

Donnv Anderson, now in his second season, had established a
pregame morning ritual before home games in Green Bay. "I'd get up
and drive over to the Downtowner Hotel and eat a light breakfast in
the coffee shop. I was kind of a regular there. This place where I lived
had a heated garage. I hadn't listened to or watched any newscasts
during the morning, and as I drove through town to get nay breakfast I
still didn't know that anything out of the ordinary might be happening,"
said the Texan. "But then I noticed quite a few people in the
driveways, starting their cars with jumper cables. That was unusual,
because those folks knew how to keep their cars running in cold
weather.

"When I got to the hotel, I saw a couple of guys I knew in the
parking lot and they yelled at me: 'Good luck, Donny. It's gonna be
cold today.' And I said, 'Yeah. It'll be about like last week down in
Milwaukee.' And one of them said, 'Uh-uh. It's going to be real cold.
It's already about fifteen below.' I went into the coffee shop and asked
a waitress who I knew if that was really true. She told me that not only
was it true but that the chill factor was going to be about minus
seventy.

"'I wasn't due at the stadium until eleven a.m. to get taped, but I
figured that today it might be a good time to show up a half hour
early."

If Vince Lombardi had been calm and convivial the night before
the game, his mood altered when he learned about the unheard-of
temperatures that strangled the town on the day of the championship
game. His son, Vince Junior, drove the coach to Lambeau Field on the
morning of the Ice Bowl. "He was agitated. Really concerned. I'd
never seen him quite that way on game day," the son said. "The reason?
He was xvorried about the heating-coil apparatus at the stadium.
He was afraid that the thing might not work in temperatures like this.
And he worried that if the thing didn't work, he'd be accused of tampering
with it to make the field worse for Dallas."
Sportswriter Frank Luksa woke up at a reasonable hour to make



	170
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


the one o'clock ,kickoff. He left the hotel and rode to the stadium on
one of several press buses provided by the NFL. "I had plenty of time
that morning and didn't need a wake-up call," he said. "Or, if I did get
one, they didn't mention the temperature. So I didn't realize that
anything was particularly out of the ordinary when I climbed on the
bus carrying a portable typewriter, a briefcase, and a hanging bag with
all my stuff inside.

"But I was on one of the last press buses to leave the hotel. Heavy
traffic was clogging the entry to the stadium, and the bus was going to
have to go down to the end of a street, and make a U-turn to reach the
press gate. I had some work to do early and decided to get off the bus
and walk the rest of the way, thinking that would be quicker.

"So I jumped from the bus, carrying my typewriter and the rest of
my stuff, walked about fifteen feet and slipped and fell on my ass--and
then landed on my back in a ditch. That when I found out how cold it
was. I thought I was going to freeze in place and that they wouldn't
find me until the next spring thaw. I'd never---ever--experienced anything
like that in my life."

Somehow, the displaced Texan climbed from his predicament and
advanced, stunned and sputtering, toward the press gate at Lambeau
Field. "That was the first and only time, in about thirty-five years'
worth of covering NFL football games, that I walked through the gate
and nobody asked to see my press pass. Nobody stopped me. Nobody
asked me for a ticket. I had ice and crap all over me, and I guess they
thought I was the Abominable Snowman."

Luksa, like the CBS-TV technicians and other working news people,
remembers hoping that the Lambeau Field press box "might offer
some warmth. What I found instead was coffee that froze in paper
cups in a matter of seconds.

"They were busy with some kind of squeegee device, scraping the
frost off the press-box windows from the inside. I had some things to
write to transmit back to the paper, and I remember the ice crystals
falling off the windows and into my typewriter. And I remember that I
kept thinking, I'm inside, thank God. And I wondered how those poor
devils out in the stadium seats and down on the field were ever going
to survive."

CHAPTER


ON NEW YEAR'S EVE in Wisconsin, 1967, the iceman cometh. Then the
iceman looked around, inhaled deeply, and promptly booked himself
onto the next available flight to the Fiji Islands. Late in the autumn of
1967 Charles de Gaulle presented his worldview to an inquiring essayist.
Among other offerings, de Gaulle opined, "You may be sure that
the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of--plus
some that are beyond the imagination."

So de Gaulle would have felt justified, perhaps even pleased, by
the spectacle unfolding on an early Sunday afternoon amid the deepest
interior province of the Great American Heartland. Normally stable
adults accompanied by good numbers of children filled a vast arena
in defrance of climatic conditions unfit and dangerous to any living
organism. They had come, and actually paid to come, to witness an
exhibition in which men wearing odd padded regalia knocked one
another down and on this day also earned style points for falling down
on their oxvn.


DOWN IN MILWAUKEE, the sunrise temperature reached the lowest December
reading since 1924. In the Green Bay Packers' locker room
Donny Anderson had been thinking the same thing. "I arrived there
early, after I heard about the chili factor. Most of the other players had
already arrived and were having their ankles taped and were sipping
from cups of hot beef bouillon. Vince--you could always recognize his
handwriting--had made the usual notation on the blackboard. It read,
'12:10 kickers; 12:20 team.' Which meant that the people doing the
kicking--Don Chandler with Bart Starr, the holder, and Willie Wood,



	17-0
	MIKE SHROPSHIIE


the return guy--went out a little early to warm up, and then the rest of
us would follow. Although I was the punter, of course I played offense,
too, and usually went out with the second group.

"Well, on this day," Anderson remembered, "those three went
out and then came trotting back inside. They had ice in their eyebrows.
You know, there were about ten Texans on that Packers team,
and three of us had lockers together, me and Lee Roy Caffey and
Tommy Joe Crutcher. And when the kick guys came back we just sort
of stared at each other, and I said, 'They're crazy if they play this
game. It's just too cold. People are going to get frostbit and we're
going to break our legs.' I was concerned about the people who were
sitting down in the stands, too. Of course, those fans in Green Bay,
they'd all come out if it was a hundred below."

Come out, of course, they did, although the customary pregame
bar-hopping activity was toned down. Most of the spectators took extra
precautions against the fierce elements and came bundled in gear
suitable for a prolonged ice-fishing expedition. Of course, it might
have felt like springtime for some pilgrims from areas like Eau Claire
and Park Falls, where the cold reached minus 24 degrees. But when
the wind blew hard through Lambeau Field, the crowd realized that
they were seated in the great and fierce outdoors. If these fans wanted
to see the game, the inhumane natural setting inside the stadium provided
the only recourse. Also in 1967, Green Bay and the surrounding
territory remained subjected to the TV-blackout regulations.

"Most of the fans, or a lot of us at least, brought sleeping bags and
tucked ourselves into those to watch the game," said one Packers fan.
"One person I'll never forget, a young woman, came to the game
wearing high heels, a short cocktail dress and a lightweight jacket.
Even before the game this woman had turned purple. I'm sure that
she was from Dallas."


TEx SCHRAMM'S WIFE, Marty, customarily joined Alicia Landry in the

stands at Dallas Cowboys road games. "Alicia and I tried to buy a hot
dog at a concession stand beneath the stadium before the game
started," said Marry Schramm, "but the catsup and mustard were frozen
solid in their little packets. Inside the stadium, when we got to our
seats, some of the Green Bay fans recognized who we were-or at
least they recognized Alicia. We were wearing topcoats, appropriate

THE ICE BOWL
	173


for a cold day in Texas, and the Green Bay' fans realized that we were
underdressel for a day like this. We weren't prepared. Conditions like
that were foreign to us.

"So they gave us plastic bags to literally wrap around our bodies,
and if it had not been for that I think we might have frozen to death.
When the gane started it was so cold that when I got any moisture in
my eyes, my eyelids actually froze tightly shut."


IN THE PRESS box, Tex was busily scraping the ice off the window in
front of him with the wooden stirrer from his coffee cup so that he
could see the game. Earlier, he had prowled the field while the team
warmed up--relieved that the Cowboys' buses had arrived safely from
Appleton in time to make the kickoff. The game would proceed on
schedule, all right. They could hardly call the thing off, else the beer,
cigarette, and automotive sponsors of the national telecast would
loudly protest. Schramm made a note to meet with Pete Rozelle still to
discuss a contingency plan for future occasions like this, when some
unforeseen calamity created a circumstance that was potentially hazardous
to players, officials and spectators. That meeting would be at a
later time. On this day Pete Bozelle, the NFL commissioner and an intelligent man, had chosen to bypass the contest in Green Bay and
devoted his day to the ALL championship match in Oakland.

In the television booth, not far from Schramm, lay Scott was
preparing to describe this Cowboys-Packers collision to the American
viewers. Scott's assigmnent from CBS required him to call the first
half. Jack Buck, who then was assigned to all Cowboys telecasts (after
three seasons, Buck had still not mastered the reality that the Dallas
tight end was named Pettis Norman, not Norman Pettis), would take
over for the second half and Scott would retreat downstairs to conduct
postgame interviews. A third person working in the CBS booth, Frank
Gifford, would act as the color man for both halves. The window of the
television booth had been pulled open because Scott insisted on working
in an open booth, no matter the weather, to get a better feel for
the stadium atmosphere outside.

"'Jack Buck brought a bottle of whiskey to the game and poured
us all a big shot into our coffee cups just before the kickoff," remembered
lay Scott. "Even strongly' laced with the booze, the coffee still
froze, just after we went on the air Gifford said, 'I just took a bite of



	174
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


coffee.' I wasn't sure that the viewers knew what Frank was talking
about. God almighty, it was cold and I was simply grateful that we
were at least not perched up on a rooftop, like I'd been for that
Packers-Giants game in 1962."

Green Bay sportswriter Lee Remmel recalled: "Usually the Packers
would bring in a college band or a good high school band for the
halftime show, and the Packers had their own band that played "The
Star-Spangled Banner' before the games as well as the Packers" song.
But best I can remember, the bands were silent for this game. They
were afraid the instruments might stick to the musicians' lips and
they'd rip the skin off after they played.'"

During pregame preparations, while Tom Landry retained his
normal pose as the human computer, the rest of the team, if not in
turmoil, had been completely distracted by the unexpected severe
winter conditions. "There was no talk of strategy. All that we concentrated
on was how to dress for weather like this," said George Andrie.
"And in the pregame warm-up I knew that heated-field machine
wasn't going to work, Being from that part of the country, I'd seen it
before. The ground was getting hard, and it was obvious that it would
freeze and the footing would be a nightmare.

"We had some gloves, but then Ernie Stantner, the defensive line
coach, came to me before the game and said he didn't want me wearing
the gloves. He thought there might be fumbles and stuff and that
the gloves would keep me from maybe recovering one."

In the pregame workout Starr recalled, he tried to ignore the
wind and the weather. "But it was . . . oh, boy . . . it was cold out
there. Still, the job was to ignore that. I could grip the ball just fine.
This had been a tough year for me earlier in the season and for a lot of
the other players, too. No season, ever, had we gone through a tougher
year with injuries, but we were now exactly where we had worked to
be. That was all that would matter."

One Packer, Jim Grabowski, put on a uniform and, despite his
bad knee injury, was hoping to make a heroic effort to get into the
game. But he slipped on the risky turf and reinjured the knee.

Chuck Mercein, clopping around the field in the pregame drills,
recalls being almost more curious than cold. "The condition of the
field was strange--getting hard but not smooth like an ice surface,'"
the fullback said. "Here's the best way to describe it--imagine a

THE ICE BOWL
	175


stucco wall laid horizontal. The actual surface of the ground was rough
and pointy, with thousands of little clods of dirt and clumps of mud
already" freezing solid to the turf. And the field was already getting
hard. It was dreadful.

"I hadn't dressed any differently than I would for any other game.
I mean, I didn't put on any rubber suit underneath my uniform or
anything like that. What stood out to me in the pregame warm-up was
Bob Hayes, over on the Cowboys' side of the field. He had his hands
jammed down the front of his pants and that's how he played
practically the entire game. That's how the defense knew for sure
before a play that Hayes wouldn't be involved in a pass play, He'd
come up to the line of scrimmage with his hands tucked into his
pants.

"'Well, I hadn't been with the team that long, but I knew all about
the Packer Weather attitude and that had a lot to do with how I
dressed. This was the Packers' home field and I was like the rest of the
players, all prepared to go do this macho thing out in that meat
freezer. My contacts had frozen solid to my eyeballs, but I was ready
and willing to show as much or more mettle than any of the old
veterans.

"And I realized one thing: We were cold, but it was colder for the
Cowboys, and you could see it. They were over there cutting holes into
stockings to make face masks, or ski masks. Before it started, they
weren't focused on the football aspect of the game at all."

Donny Anderson, who would start at running back alongside
Mercein, had decided to remember that while he was a Texan, he had
been brought up on what amounts to the Texas polar ice cap, in the
northernmost reaches of the Panhandle, where the cold wind loves to
howl and torture all of humanity. "Back in Texas as a kid, working
outdoors on the farm, or the ranch or whatever it was, I learned that as
long as your feet are warm, then you can stay warm. I wore some
kangaroo-skin football shoes laced up tight as a glove. Underneath my
uniform I wore long handles, but they were cut off above the knees
and above the elbows. That probably wasn't enough, but we had heaters--those
blower-type things--behind our bench. I stayed away from
those, and out on the field, when the game started, I kept my hands
from freezing by sticking them in the front of my football pants or, in
the huddle sometimes, I'd also stick them under the armpit of Gale


	176
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


Gillingham, one of our guards. After a while, I quit noticing the
weather."

After all, according to the Lombardi ideal, if pain is simply a state
of mind, who can be bothered by a little bite of the real thing?


THE OFFICIALS ASSEMBLED the captains at midfield. The National Football
League had selected veteran Norm Schachter as the referee for
the championship game. Schacter had been involved in two rather
controversial games for both teams during the season. He had worked
as the head official in the Packers' opener against Detroit, when Lom
bardi had raised a ruckus at the end, claiming the game ended two
seconds too early and therefore cheated the Packers out of a field-god
attempt that might have won it. And Schachter had been the referee at
the Cowboys' fracas at New Orleans, when Dallas couldn't run a play
for nearly fifteen minutes, unable to hear signals over the boos and
shouts of 83,000 enraged fans.

Dallas won the coin toss and Don Chandler prepared to kick off.
The Packers would own a marginal wind advantage for the first quarter-although that wind, blowing steadily at nearly twenty miles an
hour from the northwest, felt unbearable, like onrushing death. On
the Green Bay sideline, Lombardi wore a long overcoat and one of
those fur hats favored by Soviet premiers enroute to make a speech at
the Kremlin. As Tom Landry stood facing Lombardi across the field,
he was dad in something that looked like a mink coat.

When Chandler's toes met the football, he felt as if he had just
kicked a shotput, but the ball connected with a wind current and Sire
Stokes fielded it at the Dallas five-yard line and returned it to the
Dallas 33. On the first scrimmage plav, with the Packers' defense
poised to stop fidlback Don Perkins, Don Meredith faked in that direction
and flipped a sideline pass to Hayes. The play gained exactly 10
yards and a first down. That was clearlv a hopeful beginning for the
Dallas offense, but it also proved to be the last meaningful contribution
of Bob Hayes, the famed game-breaker, for the day. If the Dallas
Cowboys came into the contest with a distinct advantage in any particular
area, it was the constant threat of an insta-touchdown from Hayes.
The week before, in the playoff game against the Browns, Hayes rampaged
for 281 yards on receptions and returns. Hayes, however, was
not enthusiastic about Packer Weather. Hated it. Already defeated by


THE ICE BOWL 	177


the minus-70 wind chill, Hayes, after that first 10-varder along the
sideline, would contribute only six additional yards total offensive for
the remainder of the Ice Bowl.

After the initial first down, Dallas rapidly swallowed a large gulp
of xvhat reality would be offering to the streamlined Cowboys offense
for most of the remainder of the game. After Dan Reeves ran for four
yards on Dallas's initial try from the ground, Meredith looked for
Lance Rentzel on a slant pattern down field and missed his receiver
badlv. On third down, Reeves tried another run, but Herb Adderley,
coming up quick from his cornerback post, nailed the runner for no
gain. From the Dallas 47, punter Danny Villanueva kicked the ball to
Wood, who returned it two yards to the Packer 18.

"When I went into the huddle for our first offensive possession, I
no longer felt the cold. I couldn't hear the crowd. We had prepared all
season for this and I was eager to get started," recalled Bart Starr, On
the Packers' first offensive play, Starr handed the ball to Donny
Anderson, who gained five yards but lost the football when hit by
Chuck HoMey. The first real break of the game went in Green Bay's
direction, though, when the fumble bounced at the feet of Chuck
Mercein, recently of the Westchester Bulls and now recovering a
Packers fumble in the NFL championship game. Starr, needing a confident
Donny Anderson running the ball, ran the haloack again, this
time for four yards, and then called the same play. Anderson gained
four more yards, and the Packers, seemingly ready now to roll, had a
first down.

Starr began to mix his offensive calls, but his first effort to throw
the ball downfield to Boyd Dowler never left the ground. Both Bob
Lilly and Andrie, finding some good traction on the rapidly hardening
field, penetrated hard through the Packers line, decking Starr for a
nine-yard loss. On second down, Start finally got the football airborne.
Tight end Mary Fleming, running a medium-length pattern across the
middle, couldn't catch the pass, but Dallas was flagged for interference.
Green Bay owned a flesh set of downs at its 31.

Green Bav knew that Dallas owned data on a printout sheet that
showed the Pack tended to run the power sweep in a situation like
this. Start further realized that Tom Landry, knowing of Lombardi's
long devotion to the running game, would gear his defense to stop that
because the Cowboys had no chance of winning here if they couldn't.




	178
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


So on first down, Starr pumped a pass to Donny Anderson, who outran
a linebacker and gained 17 yards. Starr wanted to establish an early
offensive rhythm and figured he could best accomplish that by forcing
the Cowboys' defense to start guessing before every play. Now Green
Bay pounded the Dallas midsection, first with Anderson and then with
Mercein, but those two visits into the meat grinder gained only five
yards. On third down, though, Dallas picked up its second defensive
penalty of this early drive, a holding call that gave Green Bay yet
another first down, now in Cowboys territory at the 42.

Starr stuck with the running attack now, but Bob Lilly, the all-pro
and on fire early in the Ice Bowl, was totally dominating Packers guard
Gale Gillingham, and he buried Anderson for a two-yard loss. Linebacker
Dave Edwards tackled Mercein after a short gain. Starr, looking
at third down and nine, searched the field for another key
component in the Packers' offensive repertoire, Carroll Dale, and for
the first time in the game the Packers connected with a wide receiver
on a slant-in pattern.

The play gained 17 yards. Now Starr looked for his other wide
out, the six-foot-five Dowler, and when that failed to connect, the
quarterback went back to Carroll Dale--not over the middle this
time but on a sideline route. Dale caught the pass and by the time
Cowboys safety Mike Gaechter pushed him out of bounds, the Packers had control inside the ten. After Anderson picked up another
yard, Starr, noticing man-for-man coverage on his split end,
changed his play at the line of scrimmage and fired a quick shot to
Dowler, slanting inside, and the veteran star, a half-foot taller than
three members of the Dallas secondary, pulled down an eight-yard
touchdown pass.

That opening drive contained all of the enviable characteristics of
Green Bay's artistic offensive pedigree. The march contained sixteen
plays--eight running and eight passing. Better yet, it covered 82 yards
and chewed almost seven minutes off the clock. Bart Starr's Act I drew
a standing ovation. After the Cowboys' defense returned to the sideline,
Lee Roy Jordan went for the box that contained the gloves that
Schramm had ordered that morning. "The coaches didn't want the
defensive players wearing the gloves, in case we might miss out on a
turnover. They were these cumbersome canvas work gloves, the kind
that I used back on the farm when I was carrying a hoe in the cotton

THE ICE BOWL 179


field. I didn't care what the damn things looked like. I put 'em on and
wore them the rest of the game."

Even more disturbing to Jordan than the ease with which Green
Bay had scored on its first drive was something he saw on the Dallas
sidelines. "Tom had icicles an inch and a half long sticking down from
either nostril," Jordan said. "He looked a little . . . weird.'"

With that opening-drive touchdown, it looked as though Green
Bay had delivered a staggering psychological blow to the freezing
Cowboys. One touchdown, in the minds of some of the thundering
Lambeau Field fans, probably seemed enough. The Packers received
another nice break on the next kickoff. Chandler appeared to mis-hit
the football. It rolled downfield, bounced off Cowboys' special-team
player Larry Stephens, then went out of bounds before anybody else
touched the ball, and now Dallas was stuck back at its own fourteen.
Don Meredith handed off to Don Perkins for five yards and then
threxv the little sideline pass to Hayes for five more.

Perkins, who had scored one of those so-rare playoff rushing
touchdowns against the Green Bay defense the year before, got the
call on the next three plays. Those three carries gained an even 10
yards and another first down. But Meredith clearly looked like he was
groping. Between two incomplete passes, Ray Nitschke blasted Perkins
down for no gain. Two Dallas possessions, two Dallas punts.
Green Bay got the ball back at its own 34,

Now the Cowboys' defense became surly. Lee Roy Jordan, feeling
more comfortable in his Farmer Brown work gloves, leveled
Mercein for no gain on first down. Start looked for Dale again, but
burned twice on the last drive, the Dallas secondary double-covered
the Packers flanker. Start overthrew him intentionally, and when
Jethro Pugh smothered Mercein after a three-yard gain it was the
Packers' turn to punt. Anderson launched a high kick and the odd spin
that the left-footed punter put on the ball seemed to confuse Rentzel,
who was set back to field the punt opposite Bob Hayes. Rentzel appeared
momentarily hypnotized by the falling football, staggering beneath
it like a member of the 1962 Mets infield who'd lost a pop-up in
the sun. Finally Rentzel fielded the ball after signaling a fair catch.
Ron Kostelnik and Lionel Aldridge, alerted to Don Meredith's growing
tendency to hand the ball to his fullback, smacked Perkins down
for no gain, and the first quarter ended with that play, Dallas on its
oxvn 33 and down 7-0.



80


|



MIKE SHROPSHIRE


AFTER TWO MEREDITH passes fell incomplete, Bart Starr took the field
in the second quarter with two new backs, Travis Williams and Ben
Wilson. Right away, Wilson banged into the Dallas secondary and ran
13 yards before Mel Renfro could pull him down. Next Williams ran
seven yards and into Cowboys territory. If the rocketlike Williams,
hottest of the Green Bay backs over the second half of the season,
could somehow maintain his footing on the treacherous turf, Dallas
figured as precertified DOA. Williams now pounded ahead for two
more and, facing third down and one, Start decided again to try to
outguess the Dallas defense. He faked the ball to fullback Wilson,
whose simulated plunge into the middle caused safety man Renfro to
hesitate for the nanosecond required for Dowler to slip away
downfield. Starr's perfectly timed 43-vard throw resulted in Dowler's
second touchdown of the afternoon. Green Bay now Red, 14-0, and
with 12:10 still to play in the first half, the main challenge the Packers
faced appeared to be merely avoiding pneumonia.

An eternity remained on the game clock, but Meredith seemed
frustrated already and pressed the issue. A first-down pass to Hayes,
whistling down the field on a deep route, was nowhere near complete.
Hayes had been so tightly covered that Meredith then gave up any
hope that a one-punch TD to the Bullet would be a possibility. Perkins
again gained nothing on second down, thanks to Nitschke, and
Adderley intercepted Meredith's pass on the next play and
counterpunched 15 yards to the Dallas 32. Not only, was Dallas freezing
on the outside, it appeared that internal hemorrhaging had set in
as well.

Wilson gained nothing on the first down, though. Linebacker
Dave Edwards knocked down Starr's next pass and then Andrie
knocked Start himself down for a 10-yard loss. Instead of transforming
the game into a 21-0 laugher, Green Bay found itself punting.
"Even after we jumped out 14-0, I was concerned about Dallas,"
Starr said. "Their front four was playing hard. I had a sort of feeling
that Dallas was going to come back somehow." Frankly, after a 1967
season full of bad hops and wall-to-xvall contusions, in weather like
this a cakexvalk seemed too much to ask, Starr was thinking. Still, after
Anderson's punt died at the Dallas nine, the Cowboys' offense was

1THE ICE BOWL
	181


looking more and more feeble. Aldridge, Kostelnik, Nitschke, and
Robinson brutalized three Dallas running plays. Punt time, Cowbovs.

From exactly midfield, the Pack's repla'eement backs, Willians
and Wilson, went nowhere on three plays. That sadistic arctic wind
now had shifted slightly from northwest io north and had intensified.
On a normal day, Donny Anderson could have kicked a pumpkin farther
than he did his next punt, which traveled, counting the roll, 16
yards. Txvo Dallas running plays gained a net three yards. Meredith
looked br Hayes in the flat and completed the third-down pass. Caffev
and Bob Jeter knocked Haves down after an advance of only, on
yard--and that was the final occasion that the most potent missile in
the Dallas attack arsenal would advance the football as much as one
inch for the remainder of the afternoon. Now, six Dallas offensive
possessions had resulted in five Danny Villanueva punts and one Meredith
interception.

Starr's premonition that Dallas could and might shortly create
some unpleasant sensations in Packerville became real. After Willie
Wood ran Villanueva's punt back to the Green Bay 31, the Packers
received their first penalty of the game, a five-yarder for illegal motion.
A small but unwelcome omen. On the next play Starr attempted to
drop back deep on a pass play and turned to discover that Willie
Townes, Dallas's left defensive end, had slipped a block. Starr retreated
further, and as his footing faltered, Townes advanced like a
leopard stalking a baby antelope. When the defensive end finally
grabbed his prey,, the football bounced loose.

George Andrie, firing into the Packers' backfield from the other
side of the line, picked up the football at the seven-yard line and
carried it across the Green Bay goal line. "Cold weather did not affect
that play," said Start. "I should have tucked the ball away when I saw
Townes coming, but he simply batted the thing loose.'"

Andrie clearly recalled the reception he received on the Dallas
sideliue. "'Old Errie Stautner, the line coach, came running over and
yelled, 'See! See! If you'd been wearing gloves, you wouldn't have
made that play!' I just said to hell with that. With or without the
gloves, I was going to score that touchdown.'"

Now the Cowboys looked pumped up. The next Packers offensive
series quickly stalled. Trax% Williams gained a vard; then Ben Wilson
couldn't hold Starr's pass. Even after Dallas jumped offside on third




	182
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


down, Jethro Pugh rumbled over the Packers center and threw Starr
down onto the cold hard ground for a five-yard loss.

Dallas had the ball now in Packers territory for the first time in
the game, but again, the Cowboys' offense looked even more futile
than Green Bay's. After Reeves gained two yards on first down, Dallas--obviously willing to attempt anything, no matter how foolish--
tried a flanker reverse on the ever hardening Lambeau Field surface.
Henry Jordan threw Frank Clarke down for an eight-yard loss. Meredith,
who'd thrown for 16 yards against the Packers' defense, took a
third-down stab at Rentzel, but that only brought Villaneuva back onto
the field.

His high kick seemed to paralyze the reliable Packers safety, Willie
Wood, who flubbed the catch, and Phil Clark recovered for the
revitalized Cowboys at the 17-yard line. "I misjudged the ball for a
moment, then tried to catch it anyway, because if I didn't I could see
the thing rolling dead at our one- or two-yard line. Obviously, when I
blew the fair catch, the outcome was much worse than that."

Dallas's offense advanced three yards in three plays. Villanueva,
though, kicked a 21-yard field goal. Now the score stood at 14-10 as
the first-half clock ran out. Dallas hadn't made a first down in the
entire second quarter--didn't come close--and still somehow had
scored those ten points.

As Chuck Mercein watched from the sidelines he was thinking,
"Boy, that's not like us. The Cowboys hadn't done a damn thing all
day, and then they pick up that fumble and they're only a touchdown
behind. And then Willie Wood, always sure-handed and who never
fumbles, he fumbles one, too."

As halftime neared, Forrest Gregg, anchor of the Packers' offensive
line, worried that the Pack attack might have landed its only blow
and now wondered if Green Bay's 14 points might have to suffice.
"The wind . . . the cold . . . the conditions of the field. Everything
was deteriorating fast," he said.

"The effort to block anybody became very difficult. The sweep,
which was the play that set up our entire offense, wasn't working
anymore. The guards couldn't get the footing that they needed to get
in front of the ball carrier. The field was hard as a rock, and it was
treacherous. I worried about falling down on every play. Not from fear
of being hurt when I hit the icy surface. But you don't play football fiat
on the ground.

TIlE ICE BOWL
	183


"When the game started, the Cowboys looked colder than we did,
and they were. You could tell. But they really fooled us all. They had
made a great effort to stay that close, ad by the half we had all gained
great new respect for the Cowboys."

Vince Lombardi trotted behind his Packers into the halftime
dressing room and muttered to his defensive coach, Phil Bengtsen,
"'The pendulum just swung Dallas's way."




CHAPTER


BEFORE THIS COWBOYs-PACKERS FOOTBALL EPIC that contained so many elements of triumph and despair, of suffering and salvation, the term
"frozen tundra" maintained a standard definition in the geological
texts. It meant "a level or undulating treeless plain characteristic of
arctic or subarctic regions--consists of black mucky soil with a permanently
frozen subsoil--supports a dense growth of often conspicuously
flowering dwarf herbs."

In the post-1967 era, after NFL Films got hold of the term,
"frozen tundra" came to mean "once-in-a-century football game
played on a surface like greased asphalt with a snbstructure of electric heating coils that conked out in the clutch."

After both teams sat through almost identic halftime seminars
that were somber and etched with anxiety, they returned to the field.
"We thought we were still in charge," said Green Bay's Chuck
Mercein, "'but we knew we still had football to play and that it was
time to hunker down."

The players were not certain whether the winners would be
claiming the National Football League championship or the Stanley
Cup. Between periods, they should have brought out the Zamboni
machine. While some traction remained available in the center of the
field, between the hash marks, the real estate along the sidelines had
become frozen and forbidding. Instead of blowing that $80,000 on his
underground dirt-warmer, Vince Lombardi probably should have installed
guardrails. Any activity beyond the middle of the gridiron resembled
the practice runs by the Jamaican bobsled team at the
Calgary Olympics.

Players from both teams realized that a huge crowd must be

THE ICE BOWL
	185


watching all of this because they could hear deafening cheers, punctuated
by groans and growls. From where the teams were situated on
the field, though, they couldn't actually see the fans, who were hidden
in a dense veil of frosted breath.

Barbara Gregg, whose husband Forrest's playing career encompassed
eleven seasons in Green Bay, was one fan who decided that she
had endured enough. At the start of the third period she and another
Packer's wife abandoned the stands. They would take in the second
half in the Lambeau Field parking lot inside the Gregg family automobile
and absorb the action on the car radio. "But we ran the battery
down, and so we kept track of the game watching the stadium
scoreboard, screaming and cussing," Ms. Gregg said.

Green Bay had the option to receive the second half kickoff, but
Lombardi could not be sure if that was any advantage. The Packers'
offense had generated two picture-perfect scoring incursions on their
first three possessions of the game, After that, the offense looked like
something choreographed by Sir Charles Chaplin. But the Pack got a
break on the kickoff. Dallas was intent on kicking the ball away from
Travis Williams, with his handsome TD resume. But Danny Villanueva,
perhaps too cautious, fired off a kick that Lee Roy Caffey,
playing on the front perimeter, fielded at his 37-yard line. Linebacker
by trade, Caffey trudged ahead to the 44 before he was tackled, and
the Packers opened the second half advantageously positioned.

Right away, however, the Cowboys' defense displayed its second
half intentions. If tackle Bob Lilly had been psyched out earlier that
morning when roommate George Andrie had thrown the glass of water
against the windowpane to illustrate the cold, he'd gotten past that.
On first down, Lilly stuffed Donny Anderson after a three-yard run.
On second down, Jethro Pugh leveled Bart Starr for a four-yard sack,
and on third down Dallas cornerback Mike Johnson, burned on the
Packers' first touchdown, retaliated when he knocked a pass away from
the much taller Boyd Dowler, Anderson then hit a mediocre punt, and
for the second time in the game receiver Lance Rentzel, standing at
his "23-yard line, "let the ball play him" instead of vice versa. Rentzel
missed the catch, and Phil Clark, who recovered Willie Wood's fumbled
punt near the end of the first half, landed on top of this one, too,
but not until the football had rolled down to the Dallas eleven.

Don Meredith launched Dallas's second-half offensive with a
seven-yard completion to halfback Dan Reeves, and when fullback




	186
	MIKE SttI0PSttlI{E

Don Perkins followed that with an eight-yard gain the Cowboys made
a first down for the first time in twenty-three consecutive play, s going
back to the first quarter. After enduring an afternoon's worth of frustration
and battering from the Packers" defense, Dallas had found a
little spark. On the next play, Meredith passed to Frank Clarke, now
substituting at split end for the ineffective Bob Hayes, for fourteen
yards. For the first time in the football game the Cowboys had made
consecutive first downs.

The assault continued. Reeves ran for 8, then 20 yards before
Caffey pulled him down at the Green Bay 39,. Reeves lunged to the 29,
then Meredith probed the middle of the packers' defense and connected
with Rentzel for 11 more. But it was the Pack's Caffey, one of
those frozen Texans who had been so apprehensive about playing in
this ridiculous cold before the show began, who now took command of
the football game. Seeing that Meredith was becoming ever more
reliant on Reeves, perhaps the one player who could instinctively
maintain his balance on this ice floe, Caffey anticipated a running play
and tackled the halfback for a four-yard loss. Meredith missed Rentzel
on second down, looked for his flanker again on third down but took a

	, . or the first time that afternoon, Meredith left the pocket

	fierce rush F 	,- 2 	¢,llv crambled for a vital

	and took off. It appearecl tlaat the nau 	: s

	first down, but Caffey again rescued Green Bay. The linebacker tack
	Red
Meredith and the football, which rolled loose. Herb Adderley re
	covered
the fumble at the 13-yard line,

		Anderson tried to bang ahead to place the Packers in safer range

	from their own end zone, but two plays gained one yard each. First

	Lee Roy Jordan, then Pugh, tackled Anderson violently. Now Green

	Bay appeared stuck in a prolonged offensive drought. The Packers had

	not made a first down of their own for seventeen straight plays. Since

	Starr had thrown his second TD pass to Dowler early in the second

	quarter, the Packers had not run a play that had gained more than four

	yards. In fact, after Dowler's TD, Green Bay's run-pass production

	chart indicated no profits but an appalling minus-34-yard deficit. Starr,

	though, now corrected the doxvnward spiral and hit Carroll Dale for a

	12-yard first down. But that prosperity proved only temporary. On the

	next play, with Lilly occupying both guard Gale Gillingham and center

	Ken Bowman, Andrie, from his end position, rumbled past tackle Bob

	Skronski and pinned Starr to the Lambeau concrete for a massive 16
	yard
loss.

THE ICE BOWL
	187


"'If it was cold, I didn't know it," said Andrie, "'\with the adrenaline
pumping like mine was, you didn't feel any cold." With the Cowboys'
defense back to avoid long throws to either Dowler or Dale,
Starr handed the ball instead to Anderson, who gained 16 yards on two
carries, but Green Bay was still nine yards short of a first down.

Anderson, who might have been feeling some foot fatigue,
punted the ball once again, and Rentze! eyed Anderson's punt as if it
were Cleopatra's asp. He dropped the thing. This time, at least, he
fumbled forward three yards and Rentzel himself fell on the ball at the
Green Bay 46.

On first down Reeves, handling himself on the ice like Wayne
Gretsky, ran through the Packers' defense for another 11 yards. Caf
fey, again, had to haul Reeves down. This Reeves act was turning into
a one-man show. Meredith threw to Reeves and then handed off to
him, but Ray Nitschke and Caffey had forecast what was coming. With
Dallas facing third-and-five at the Packers' 30-yard line, Meredith got
sacked by the blitzing Caffey, who by now was earning MVP stripes.

Landry decided now that Dallas should attempt a long, 47yard
Villanueva field goal. What a strange call. Villanueva couldn't aave
made that kick under optimum circumstances, and even if through
some divine intervention he did it now, Dallas would still trail. Willie
Wood caught Villanueva's dead quail at the four-yard line and returned
it to the Green Bay 27, Two runs by Anderson presented a
third-and-four situation. By now, however, Dallas's defense was decisively
whipping the Packers' line on virtually every play,. According to
Landry's computerized actuarial tables, it was time for Starr to throw.
Dave Edwards blitzed and dumped the quarterback for a four-yard
loss. Anderson punted and Hayes made a fair catch at the Dallas 45.
\'\qth a shadow moving across the football field, the ice on the "tundra"
began to sparkle as the afternoon wore on. As the chill factor grew
more cruel by the moment, both teams appeared to adopt a tactically
conservative approach. On first down, Perkins jabbed the football five
yards, and the third quarter ended with the football resting squarely
on the 50-yard line.


FROM THE FIIST day that undrafted free agent Dan Reeves reported to

Cowboys training camp in i965, Lando, had been impressed. The
coach overlooked the fact that during the annual rookies skit Reeves




	188
	MIKE SHROPSHIPE


THE ICE BOWL
	189


had mooned an audience that included Landry's xvife, Alicia. Landry
detected that the former South Carolina quarterback offered all kinds
of nice intangibles. Reeves was versatile, resourceful, owned an uncanny
knack for the end zone, and was endowed with football smarts
that rivaled those of the coach.

Between quarters, with the teams sxvitching ends, Reeves offered
a tip to Meredith, who was open to any suggestion by now. Since
nothing else seemed to work, Reeves told the quarterback, why not try
the halfback-option pass that had clicked to Rentzel for long touchdowns
against St. Louis and Philadelphia? Yeah, thought Meredith.
Why not?

On the opening play of the fourth quarter, Reeves took the pitch
from Meredith. The Packers' defense bit nicely. Here he comes
again--the ice-skating whiz. Willie Wood came up quick from his
safety position to provide run support. Flanker Rentzel had played the
entire Ice Bowl in a sleeveless jersey. Out there in agonizing thermal
cold that could permanently damage human flesh, this Rentzel presentation
truly qualified as indecent exposure.

For an instant, Packers defensive backs Tom Brown and Bob
Jeter noticed Reeves with the ball but did not anticipate what was
coming. Willie Wood did. As Rentzel broke on his deep-pass pattern,
he heard Wood yell, "Oh, shift"

Reeves, who had so often awed Tom Landry with his accuracy on
the option pass in practice, heaved another bull's-eye. Rentzel was
alone, behind the secondary. He might have dropped two straight
punts, but this time he caught the ball cleanly at full stride, just as he
entered the Green Bay end zone. With eight seconds elapsed in the
fourth quarter, Dallas had taken the lead, 17-14. "When that happened,
it seemed to get colder over on our sideline. Damn right it
did," said Chuck Mercein.

Again Villanueva kicked the ball away from Travis Williams.
Tommy Joe Crntcher fielded the punt and Green Bay owned the ball
on its 34. Dallas was immediately flagged for pass interference, and
the Pack moved ahead to the 48, only to watch the savagely efficient Dallas defense assert itself once more. Mercein got tackled for no
gain. Pugh sacked Starr. Lee Roy Jordan batted down a pass. Anderson
punted again. Green Bay was running its Rockettes offense. One,
two, three--kick.

Dallas returned the favor. Txvo short runs and a long pass, no

good, to Hayes. Reeves probably should have tried the option pass
again. This time, though, Dallas got stuck with a 15-yard face-mask
penalty on Wood's punt return--the only flagrant-foul call of the entire
game. In a contest where brutal intensity ruled the day, with
combat ferocious along the front lines, no player was flagged for holding,
clipping, or unnecessarily rough play.

Starr completed a pass to Dowler for 13 yards, and the Packers now were at the Dallas 34. Lambeau Stadium started to erupt. Green
Bay was behind, and while the team was not about to panic, some fans
were starting to clutch their chests. Three plays generated nothing,
though, and Don Chandler missed a 40-yard field goal. "By now, the
field was causing us problems to the extent that some players were
getting better footing, or better traction, than others," said Starr. "And
it was difficult for me to determine who was and who wasn't, so we
might have been out of sync a little."

Now starting from its own twenty, Dallas put together two first
downs. Green Bay's defense jumped offsides to give the Gowboys the
first one. Meredith connected with Clarke again for ten more yards. If
Dallas were to mount a scoring drive here, it would be curtains for
Green Bay. The defense could not allow that to happen. But Dallas
stalled once more, and for a final time Villanueva put his proud old
foot into the ball. Wood caught the punt and returned it nine yards.

Bart Starr took his offense onto the field. The goal line beckoned
in the distance, now 68 ice-choked yards away. The Lambeau Field
clock read 4:45, all the time that remained for Vince Lombardi's proud
ambition to claim a third straight championship. On the sideline Vince
Lombardi, Jr., began edging toward the Packers' dressing room. "I
figured that it was over . . . that they'd lost the damn thing, that
there was no way," Lombardi Junior said. He wanted out of the cold.

Bart Starr thought about making a quick speech in the huddle but
couldn't think of anything meaningful to say. Damn the torpedoes, full
speed ahead? Give me liberty or give me death? Remember the
Alamo? Get serious.

"I just looked into the eyes of some of those guys--Boyd Dowler,
Jerry Kramer, Bob Skronski, Forrest Gregg--we'd been working together
for ten years, and it all came down to this drive. We all realized
what had to be done," said Starr, "and there was no point in putting it
in words."

"Yeah, yeah. There was definitely a feel of urgency now in that




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	MIKE SHROPSHIIRE


huddle," said Mercein. "But there was calm, no panic, no desperation.
I looked at some guys and nobody was looking downward, nobody's
eyes were frantic. We were single-purposed, focused and determined.
There was no feeling that we would not succeed."

Jerry Kramer, who had been playing guard for the Packers while Marceen was still in junior high school, wasn't so sure. When the Pack
offense took the field for the final drive, Kramer recalls thinking to
himself, Maybe this is the year that we don't get it done--that it all
ends ....

Halfback Anderson put his faith in Starr for this drive. "I had
confidence that Bart would do something, find something, that would
get us down there," he said.

So the drive began. Starr threw the ball to Anderson in the right
flat for a six-yard gain. "The condition of the field by now was really
poor," Anderson said. "I don't think any of us had ever had any prae
flee playing on something like this. Now the players with better athletic
instincts, the lighter guys, started taking over. The bigger guys
were having trouble just standing up. And because the field was so hard and so slick, as an offensive player I felt I had an advantage now
because I could anticipate what I was going to do." The players with
better athletic instincts that Anderson described also realized that lateral
movement would be impossible.

After the swing pass to Anderson, Marceen bolted forward for
seven more yards and a Packer first down at the 38. "That was a big
play for me, personally," said Marceen. "I got tackled near our bench.
That first down was a confidence-builder, and the guys were shaking
their fists and yelling encouragement."

In fact, that first down seemed to energize the whole offense.
Starr said he felt like he might be at the control of what physics calls
"the irresistible force." Quickly, he rifled a 13-yarder to Dowler;
Green Bay had crossed the continental divide of Lambeau Field and
moved to the Dallas 42. Vince Lombardi, Jr., stopped his slow retreat
to the Packers' dressing room and headed back toward the bench.

Disaster came. Starr called the famous Lombardi sweep, and Dallas
end Willie Townes broke through the stampede of Packer blockers
and tackled Anderson for a nine-yard loss. "Let's just say it like it is--
or was," commented Mercein. "That was my fault. On the sweep, the
tight end and the tackle block down, the guards pull, and the fullbaek's
job is to block the end. On this particular play I went straight at him,

THE ICE BOWL
	i91


but Townes made a sudden inside move. He got by my left shoulder
and I didn't get my helmet on him. Townes read the play and he made
a helluva play, and believe me, I felt absolutely terrible. That's a key
block. That's what made Jim Taylor great. Any fullback who plays up
here has to make that block. And most of the time I did. But every
play isn't perfect. I went back to the huddle knowing that Chuck
Mercein didn't do a good job on that block."

Second and 19. The drive appeared to be in serious jeopardy, and
with it the outcome of the Ice Bowl game and the reputation of the
entire Vince Lombardi dynasty.

As the players returned to the huddle, Anderson approached Bart
Starr. "I'm open over here if you need me." Anderson had been
watching the positioning of linebaeker Chuck HoMey. "'On pass plays
my job is to block HoMey if he blitzes," Anderson said. "But now,
after we hit Dowler downfield on that pass, HoMey was dropping back
and giving support to the weak-side safety. Dowler was a big target,
and with Howley moving downfield I had about five or six yards of
open space."

Consecutive passes to Anderson, who maintained his balance and
ran upfield for 12 and 9 yards, enabled the Packers to overcome the
second-and-19 problem. "On both plays, Anderson was a secondary
receiver, and on one of those plays he had to turn and make a good
play just to get the ball---and then take off down the field. Those plays
to him weren't called in the huddle," said Starr. "But Anderson and Marceen are both smart players who can think out there on the field,
and Mercein came to me with the same suggestion that Donny had
given me." With less than two minutes now remaining, Green Bay had
moved 38 of the 68 yards to the Dallas goal line.

Starr then threw another first-down pass, his third straight, to a
player coming out of the backfield. This time it was Marceen. "I had a
situation on my side of the field that was the same as it was on Anderson's
side," Mercein said. "The linebacker, Edwards, was dropping
straight back. Bart was aware that he could get away with those swing
passes. They were safe plays and they were good plays. I saw the pass
coming to me, to my inside shoulder. I was wide open, and when that
happens the quarterback often lays it in there differently. Maybe that
happened, maybe the wind blew the ball off-course a little--anyway, I
always had good hands, and I had to make kind of a heck of a nice
catch."







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	MIKE SHtOPSHIRE


Mercein ran past two defenders who couldn't maintain enough
leverage to make the tackle. "'I was running at about eighty percent
speed. If I ran at a hundred percent I just wouldn't be able to keep my
feet underneath me," said Marceen. Certain Dallas defenders, notably
Howley and Coruell Green, would not discover that until it was too
late. Marceen "'ran out of field" but not until he had gained 19 enor
inous yards. "And I made it out of bounds and stopped the clock, and
that didn't hurt us any, either," he said.

Eleven yards now separated the Packers from the end zone, a
mystic little chunk of land that for the eleven men on the field, along
with twenty-nine others on the bench and one well-known coach, now
came to symbolize a divine place in the eternal hereafter.

The remaining passage to the end zone would not be a simple
task, though. Green Bay' had run out of room. Those swing passes to
Anderson and Marceen would not work anymore. Starr had one play
up his sleeve that might take the place of the passes to the backs.
"George Andrie, the defensive end, lined up a little off the scrimmage
line, and I asked Bob Skronski, our tackle over there, if he thought he
could get to Andrie and maybe seal him off," said Starr. "Bob said he
thought he could."

So Starr made the ealh "Fifty-four give.'" Later, Lombardi referred
to Starr's decision as "one of the most inspired calls in championship
history; . . . it was superb." In the nomenclature of most
coaches, the play that Starr called on first down from the eleven is
known as the Old Sucker Play. "'Coach Lombardi would never demean
an opposing player as a sucker, so he just called it the give play," said
Starr. Fifty-four give is designed to first appear to be a sweep in progress.
The guard, in this ease Gillingham, pulls to his right and the
tackle, Lilly, moves with the guard in pursuit of what he thinks will be
the sweep. Instead, Starr then hands the ball to the fullback, Marceen,
who runs into the area that Lilly would have vacated. "It's a play we
run a lot but hadn't in the lee Bowl until that point," said Starr.

"The play was set up to take advantage of the exceptional talent of
Lilly,," Lombardi would say later. "Lilly had been tearing us up all day.
He was the heart of the Dallas defense. That just shows you what a
team can do when it takes advantage of the opponent's strength."

Marceen located the defensive void created when the unbloeked
Lilly chased Gillingham down the line. "'Also, Skronski got the necessary
shield against Andrie, who then slipped down," said Marceen.

1I

THE ICE BOWL
	193


Fifty-four give gained eight yards. Now the Packers were at the gate
xvay to the championship. Anderson took a straight handoff from Starr
and reached the one, where the Packers had a first down. The clock
showed less than a minute to play and was running, while Lambeau
Field seemed to rock and sway underneath the screaming frenzy in the
stands. Bart Starr said, "I knew we had reached a point where we
could not afford any setbacks."

Starr gave the ball to Anderson on first down. "Well, I think I
scored," Anderson says now. "I was under a stack of players, and I was
on top of the football and the football was on the goal line. Lee Roy
Jordan was yelling, 'Fumble! fumble!' I think hoping to distract the
officials from seeing where the ball was. Anyway, they didn't give me
the touchdown and placed the ball right there at the goal line," said
Anderson.

Starr called the same play, and this time Anderson slipped on the
ice as he came out of the starting blocks and barely managed to clutch
the handoff. "At first Donny seemed like a guy running and tripping
over some marbles," said Marceen, who had an excellent view of the
whole play. "That could easily have resulted in a fumble. My heart
almost stopped." Green Bay still needed that final foot--the world's
longest foot--and the clock now showed less than twenty seconds.
Nineteen. Eighteen. With thirteen seconds left, Bart Starr signaled for
Green Bay's last time-out. "In situations like this before, I knew what
Lombardi liked to do," said Forrest Gregg. "So before Bart went over
to the bench, I told him to tell lmmbardi not to try that sweep. We'd
get tackled in the backfield for sure if we did."

Starr trotted to the sidelines to visit his coach. Green Bay faced
three alternatives. Kick a field goal to tie the game and force an overtime.
Throw a pass. If that didn't work, the clock would stop and the
Packers could run, pass, or kick again on fourth down. Or the Packers
could roll the dice and attempt a running play, knowing that if they did
not penetrate the goal stripe against the compressed Dallas defense,
no time would be left available to reassemble and run another play.

Starr knew what he wanted to do. "I told the coach, 'I can make it
in on a sneak. Kramer and Bowman can get underneath Pugh on a
wedge block, and I've got good footing.' We had to go to that side.
Jethro Pugh had a tendency to stand up at the snap. On the other side,
Lilly stayed low and he would have buried me alive. There have been
many different reports about what was said during that time-out and




	194
	MIKE SHROPSHIBE


who actually called the play," said Starr. "'But I presented the case for
the sneak, and the coach said, 'Do it and let's get the hell out of here."
And that was all that he said."

Back in the huddle, Starr called, "Brown right, thirty-one wedge,
on one." Brown right, thirty-one wedge is not a quarterback sneak.
That's a dive play to the fullback. But the blocking assignments remained
the same.

Anderson said, "The sneak call made complete sense. I'd nearly
fallen down on the play before, and now we had a situation where the
backs were four yards from the goal line and the defensive linemen
were one foot from the goal line. I was supposed to block down on the
end, and when I heard the cheer, I figured it was Chuck who had
scored. I didn't find out it was Bart until I got back to the bench."

"Well, I was very, excited when Bart called thirty-one wedge. That
was my play," said Marceen. "So I was rather astonished when I
plunged ahead to take the handoff and saw Bart carrying the ball in
instead. I had to put the brakes on quick because if I'd run into him
from behind, the official could have penalized me for trying to help
advance the runner."

Starr not only scored, but scored with ease. The double-team
block by Kramer and Bowman was executed with perfection. They
pushed Pugh back from the goal line like he was a big sled.

"I hadn't thought about the weather all day," said George Andrie,
who had played the game of his life. "But when I looked over there
and saw the official with his hands raised, signaling touchdown, I remember
thinking, Goddamn, it's cold out here. That was the first time
I noticed it."

Bart Starr now says that people constantly question the wisdom of
attempting that sneak with no more time to play. If the effort had
failed . . . "We could have run that play ten times, and it would have
worked all ten times," he believes.

Announcer lay Scott remembers the moment. "'After the first
half, Jack Buck was to call the second half, and my job was to go to the
sideline and interview the winning team. There was no press-box elevator
at Lambeau Field at the time, so I walked through stands and
stood next to the Packers bench.

"'I still say that final Packers drive," Scott declares, "was the greatest
triumph of will over adversi that I have ever seen in any football
game. No pass was dropped, nobody fumbled, and you cannot imagine

THE ICE BOWL
	195


the condition of their hands. They were like bricks. After the game
somebody told Lombardi that some of the Cowboys might have suffered
frostbite, and he said, 'Losers get frostbite.' But lemme tell you
something. In the Packers' dressing room I saw players shaking their
fingers and shaking their hands. The Packers were frostbitten, too.
They were cold. It's hard to imagine a game filled with so many ifs and
so many ironies being played in those conditions. It was terrible."

Dallas sports columnist Blaekie Sherrod, leaving the press box
well after the game was over, noticed that crews had already been at
work sweeping out Lambeau Field. "What I remember most x4vidly
about that game was that the cleanup crew had stacked up the
damnedest collection of pint bottles you ever saw in your life."

Unfortunately for the Dallas team, they'd had no access to any
elixirs that might have better enabled them to brave the chill. Even
Tom Landry admitted that he and his players "suffered all day" in the
dreadful Wisconsin cold. Don Meredith was furious. "That wasn't a
fair test of football," he said. After the game George Andrie said, "I
cried. I swear. Actually shed tears. That's the only time I ever did that
after a football game. I was that devastated. I truly was. But it was like
when somebody close to you dies, you just go on. I mean, it wasn't like
the end of everybody's careers. We were all going to come back next
year and do it again. So we all went and climbed back on the plane.
And then we all got loaded."

Tex Sehramm walked over to the Packers' side to congratulate
Lombardi. "Vinnie was joyous, and I think surprised that we had come
as close as we did," Tex said.

"We felt elation but more than that, we felt relief," said Forrest
Gregg. "We knew that the next game we played was the Super Bowl in
Miami, and we knew that we would be in the sunshine."

Donny Anderson recalls Lombardi's "coming up, putting his arm
around me, hugging me, and saying, 'Today, you became a man." But
that game, in that last drive, was the best I ever played for the Green
Bay Packers. All the hard work. All the discipline. All the good and all
the bad were right there in my lap. You know, the guy [Lombardi] just
pushed you past every limit that you thought you had. That's what it's
all about and that's what every Packer went through.

"Bart. Hornung. Taylor. McGee. Just name 'em. Vince brought
you to another level. After the game I remember sitting in front of our




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	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


lockers and talking. We thought right then that we might have just
played in the greatest football game of all time."

When Lombardi Junior drove the coach back to the house, father
told son, "We've got the Super Bowl coming up, and you just watched
me coach my next-to-last football game." What a time to schedule an
exit. But no man ever recognized and appreciated the value of timing
in the sport of football more than Vince Lombardi did.

EPILOGUE


The eleven little men who ran out on the field at the last were like
bewitched figures in another world, strange and infinitely ronuTn
tic, blurred by a throbbing mist of people and sound. One aches
with them intolerably, trembles with their excitement, but they
have no traffic with us now. They are beyond help, consecrated and
unreachable--vaguely holy.


--F. Scott Fitzgerald in his short story
THE BowL, published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1928.


Iv BART STARR'S NINE-AND-A-HALF-INCH TOUCHDOWN--"one small step for

man, one giant leap for the Green Bay Packers"--gave birth to an
everlasting football legend, survivors of the Ice Bowl fell into a postpartum
malaise monents after the ordeal had come to an end. Players
felt as if they had just been aroused from a cryogenically induced
coma. The sensation that their joints were lined with ground glass told
them that all of this had not been a strange dream.

In the sanctity of their dressing room, the Green Bay, Packers felt
cranked up on the dark adrenaline that flows after one has experienced
the fright of having narrowly dodged a bad traffic accident. This had
been too close a call, and only after the game did the Packers begin to
realize how very close they had come to losing. That final scoring drive
had put the team on a precarious tightrope. One bobble, one blown
assignment, one flop on the ice--and the championship was lost.

Halfback emeritus Paul Hornung watched the Ice Bowl from the
Packers' sideline. "I'm just glad Bart scored," he said. "Otherwise,
there would have been hell to pay."

Vince Lombardi talked about Bart Starr's touchdown: "We gain




	198
	MIKE SHROPSHIRE


bled. We won. It was as simple as that. Everybody loves a gambler, but
not when he loses. Want to know the real reason why we went for the
touchdown instead of the field goal? Because I didn't want all those
freezing people up in the stands to sit through a sudden-death overtime.
I've been accused of lacking compassion. But that just shows I'm
not without compassion."

Broadcaster Ray Scott, Lombardi's old friend, stood nearby holding
a microphone when the coach made the comment about the fans
in the stands. "I just laughed. The reason that Vince didn't want the
overtime was because he was freezing too and he just wanted to get his
fanny out of there!" Scott said.

If the Packers were marginally shaken by their narrow escape
from the infamy of defeat, the Cowboys' frustration in losing was amplified
by the gnawing awareness of how tantalizingly close they had
been to winning the Ice Bowl. "We could have won. We should have
won," said Lee Roy Jordan. What made it worse was that the Cowboys
did not know until the game was over and they had boarded their
chartered jet back to Dallas that Green Bay had been out of time-outs
when Starr scored the touchdown.

Sports columnist Blackie Sherrod remembers the amazement on
the face of linebackers coach Jerry Tubbs when he heard that. "Tubbs
said, 'What? They were out of time-outs? God. What a ridiculous call.'
Clint Murchison was sitting in the front of the plane. He didn't usually
offer much critical commentary about the football games, but Clint
acted flabbergasted that Green Bay would gamble on that sneak. He
just shook his head and called it dumb luck."

Professional football players--unlike their major league baseball
counterparts--are rarely known to offer excuses after big losses. Most
of the Cowboys, however, had been vocal in expressing their opinions
that the weather conditions at the Ice Bowl prevented them from
winning the game. Wrote Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times: "The
theory could be advanced that neither team had the advantage because
it was cold for the Packers, too. That's like saying that the shark
had no advantage over the swimmer because both were in the water."


Iv a'rE PACKERS answered the ultimate challenge in the fourth quarter
of the Ice Bowl, so too did many of their fans. Impaired by antifreeze
of the soul that had been ingested during the game, many brave spec

!THE ICE BOWL
	199


tators encountered difficulty finding their cars in the Lambeau Field
parking lot. And when they did, the cars often refused to start because
of the cold. Auto repair shop owner Paul Massulini, in his service
truck, stayed busy outside Lambeau Field past nine that night, reviving
dead engines. He cleared $425 for his efforts--a handsome day's
payoff by 1967 standards for a man and his jumper cables.

Green Bay bar owner Ray Bilotti said his customary postgame
profits did not reach expectations after the Ice Bowl game due to the
condition of the fans. "There had to be an unbelievable number of
drunks sitting out in that cold drinking brandy," said Bilotti. "They
were on the floor by the time they entered here. They would be stone
sober because of the cold, and the minute they hit the heat inside our
place--wow! They just started to pass out all over the place."


IN LOMBARDI'S LAST game on the Packers" sideline, Green Bay flattened
the Oakland Raiders, 33-14 in Super Bowl II. His intentions to retire
as the coach had been made public by Ray Scott's brother, Hal, on a
television neweast in Minneapolis. In an odd twist, Hal Scott said that
Lombardi's decision to quit had coincided with the appearance of the
hatchet-job feature article that appeared earlier in the fall in Esquire. Vince Lombardi, Jr., closer to the source than Hal Scott, offered another
suggestion: "I think he just felt his veteran players had heard all
the same speeches so many times through the years that maybe they
wouldn't work anymore and it was time to let somebody else give it a
try. There's no doubt that he was awfully fatigued."

With Vince Lombardi serving as head coach from 1959 through
1967, the Green Bay Packers posted ninety-eight wins, thirty losses,
and four ties. Somebody would write: "Vince Lombardi retires as the
greatest coach of all time--one foot better than Tom Landry."

After the Ice Bowl season, the Packers and Cowboys franchises
ventured off in opposite directions. It required a quarter-century for
the Packers to resurrect the greatness. But in Dallas--"The outcome
of that Ice Bowl game had been a tremendous disappointment, but I
know that the game provided a big turning point for the Cowboys,"
says Tex Schramm now. "If the America's Team concept for Dallas
ever had any validity, that all started with the Ice Bowl. The way
Dallas played Green Bay that day, even in losing at the last, won the
admiration of the whole country."




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	MIKE SHROPSHIIE


Sportswriter Frank Luksa said, "Dallas got its britches shot off by
Cleveland in the playoffs in the two years following the Ice Bowl, and
then the Cowboys took off. What a cast of characters. They bring in a
Bible-totin" halfback from Yale--Calvin Hill--and after that Duane
Thomas, one of the all-time characters. They lost to the 49ers on the
famous catch by Dwight Clark, but they beat the Vikings on the amazing
Hail Mary pass, Roger Staubach to Drew Pearson. What a ride."

Jerry Jones pulled the plug on the Landry-Schramm merry-go
round in February 1989, proving that, eventually, nobody lives happily
ever after. Jones fired Landry and made it evident that he was taking
over Tex's job . . . so Schramm soon quit. At the press conference
that left Cowboys fans gasping, Jones said that he was in charge of the whole operation, "from joeks to socks." One visiting sportswriter from
Philadelphia wrote that Jerry Jones reminded him "of the banjo player
in Deliverance.'"

Landry now makes a happy mint on the value of his face and
name, endorsing health-care-insurance plans and other ventures that
are largely associated with the senior population. Tex Sehramm owns
two houses, one in Dallas and one in Key West, Florida, and he spends
the majority of his time at the latter.


LOMBARDI LEFT GREEN Bay to coach the Washington Redskins in 1969.
Washington finished 7-5-2, the 'Skins' first winning record in fourteen
years. It looked as if Lombardi might establish a new football dynasty
on the Potomac. But the coach was diagnosed with colon cancer in
June of 1970. The cancer spread elsewhere unchecked, and Vince
Lombardi died shortly after seven o'clock in the morning on September
3, 1970.

Ice Bowl participants from both teams are now flung throughout
the United States. Don Meredith felt deflated emotionally after the
Ice Boxvl, but he did realize at the time that God was soon going to
give him Howard Cosell. With ABC's Monday Night Football serving
as the platform, the comedy duo of Meredith and Cosell became even
hotter than Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Meredith now lives in Santa
Fe, New Mexico, a mountain art colony occupied mostly by Texans
and Californians. He tells most inquiring journalists where to stick it
and plays golf almost every day.

Lee Roy Jordan got rich in the lumber business and lives in Dal

[ttE ICE BOWL
	201


las. Bob Hayes served a little time in the Texas state pen on drug
related charges, but he overcame that and, as of spring 1997, was
1Mng in Jacksonville, Florida. Lance Rentzel was arrested for "flashing"
a Dallas girl late in the 1970 season, when the Cowboys were enroute to their first Super Bowl. Rentzel never played another game for
the Cowboys, but he wrote a book about his experience. Rentzel lives
in the Washington, D.C., area and is involved in a computer business.

Dan Reeves coached successfully in the NFL, particularly at
Denver, where he took the Broncos to a couple of Super Bowls. After
writing North Dallas 40, Pete Gent moved to what is known as the
Texas Hill Country to continue his literary career. He now resides in
western Michigan and is involved in turning out scripts for a television
siteom about a sports agent and writing novels. Gent recalls bumping
into Tom Landry a couple of years ago at an NBA basketball game in
Dallas: "I said, 'Well, Tom, how's life outside football?' and he said,
'Ah, it's not so bad, Pete.' Then he laughed and said, 'I think you've
been trying to tell me that for years.' He was very cordial and while a
lot of gys thought Tom was difficult to play for, he was a father figure,
and he made you think twice about the things you were doing off the
field."


Four PLA''ERS ON the Packers' Ice Boxvl team are deceased. Henry
Jordan died of a heart attack at age forty-two. The man who played
next to Jordan in the Packers' front four, Ron Kostelnik, was killed in
an auto accident, but it was determined that he, too, had suffered a
heart attack before the wreck occurred. Lee Roy Caffey, possibly the
best player on the field on that particular Ice Bowl Sunday, died in
1994 of a cancer very similar to Lombardi's. Travis Williams, the
rookie Roadrunner who displayed such immense promise in 1967,
never seemed to develop his talents as a halfback. According to a
teammate, Williams became a "street person" and later died.

Fuzzy, Thurston still resides in Green B, and his Fuzzy's Shenanigans
sports bar thrives there. Don Anderson runs a cellular communications
company in Dallas. Those students who engineered the
demonstration at Grambling in 1967, complaining about the college's
image as a football factory, might have been surprised to learn that
even products of the professional gridiron assembly line can make
good outside the jock realm. Willie Davis earned his M.B.A. at the



	202
	MIKE SHB.0PSHIIE


Universi of Chicago while still playing at Green Bay. He then moved
to California, bought some radio stations, got rich, and has sat on the
boards of Sara Lee and MGM.

Forrest Gregg was inducted into the National Football League
Hall of Fame on the same day as Bart Starr, Frank Gifford, and Gale
Sayers. He then coached the Cincinnati Bengals to a Super Bowl.
Gregg has the distinction of having participated in the three coldest
pro championships played in the modern era, if not ever--the 1962
Giants-Packers game, the Ice Bowl, and the 1981 Cincinnati-San
Diego championship game that he coached for the winning side. "Actually,
the wind chill at that game in Cincinnati was colder than the Ice
Bowl," he said. "But the players had better cold-weather equipment,
like electric hand xvarmers inside their jerseys, that was not available
when I played. Also, the game was played on artificial turf and the
footing was all right.

"That 1962 game was bad, too," Gregg said. "The xvind was blustery
and there was no grass at all on the field at Yankee Stadium. But
for overall miserable conditions--the cold and the slick, ice-solid
field--that Ice Bowl game was the absolute worst. Nothing will ever
top that, I don't think."

After Phil Bengtsen and Dan Devine failed in their efforts to
restore the Packers to glory,, banners appeared at Lambeau Field: A

NEW START WITH BART! But Starr's head-coaching experience in Green

Bay ended badly, too. Starr found prosperity back in his home state of
Alabama, and he now owns a Birmingham-based company that specializes
in health-care-oriented office real estate nationwide.

In the winter of 1997, Starr declared that scarcely a day goes by
that he does think about the Ice Bowl game. "No. I have put that in
the back of my mind," he said. "I'm proud that I pla;ved in that game
and proud of my Packers career. But once that is over . . . it's in the
past, and that's Where it should remain. What matters in life is what is
taking place now and not then."

If the players from the Ice Bowl share one common posteareer
characteristic, it is this: Professional football leaves a lasting impression
on the skeletal frame. The shoulders. The knees. The back. All these
guys might as well have gone over Niagara Falls in a washtub. George
Andrie aches in about four key locations whenever he brushes his
teeth. "Pro football is not like golf. I used to like to hit guys on every


THE ICE BOWL
	203


play and to- to make them suffer," says Andrie. "'And look how it
affects me now!'"

Vince Lombardi, Jr., has four children of his own. The youngest
of those, in early 1997 a first lieutenant in the U.S. Air Yoree at
Wright-Patterson'in Dayton, Ohio, has had some experience coaching
football at the prep school level and thinks he might want to coach
somewhere full-time after leaving the military. Imagine the grandson
of the everlastingly celebrated Lombardi soeday prowling the sideline
of Lambeau Field. Lombardi Junior cautioned his son about the
realities of coaching football, stressing that this is a tough, overly competitive,
and often cruel profession.

"I wouldn't know about that," the kid responded. "'I've never lost
a game."



ATE
	December 31, 1967
	DAY OF WEEK
	Sunday
	STARTING TIME
	1:11 P.M.

HOME TEAM
	Green Bay Packers
	VS. VlSlTOI
	Dallas Cowboys
	AT
	Green Bay

WEATHER
	Clear, Cold
	TEMPERATURE -13 	WIND AND DIRECTION
	Northwest at 15

OFFICIALS
	REFEREE Norm Schachter
	UMPIRE
	Joe Connell
	LINE JUDGE
	Bill Schleitaum

LINESMAN
	George Murphy
	BACK JUDGE
	Tom Kelleher
	FIELD JUDGE
	Fritz Graf


DALLAS 	GREEN BAY



	Offense 	Defense
	LE
	Hayes
	LE
	Townes

	LT
	Liscio
	LT
	Pugh

	LG
	Niland
	RT
	Lilly

	C
	Connelly
	RE
	Andrie

	RG
	Donohue
	LLB
	Howley

	RT
	Neely
	MLB
	Jordan

	TE
	Norman
	RLB
	Edwards

	QB
	Meredith
	LH
	Green

	HB
	Reeves
	RH
	Johnson

	FB
	Perkins
	IS
	Gaechter

	FL
	Rentzel 	RS
	Renfro

	Walker, Hays, East, Boeke,

Wilbur, Stephens, Stokes, Banham,

Garrison, Villanueva, Clark, Shy,

Daniels, Rhome, Clarke

LINEUPS


Offense
	Defense

	LE
	Dowler
	LE
	Davis

	LT
	Skoronski
	LT
	Kostelnik

	LG
	Gillingham
	RT
	Jordan

	C
	Bowman
	RE
	Aldridge

	RG
	Kramer
	LLB
	Robinson

	RT
	Gregg
	MLB
	Nitschke

	TE
	Fleming
	RLB
	Caffey

	QB
	Starr
	LH
	Adderley

	HB
	Anderson
	RH
	Jeter

	FB
	Mercein
	IS
	Brown (Tom)

	FL
	Dale
	RS
	Wood





Crutcher, Williams, Flanigan,

Long, Chandler, Hart, Weatherwax,

Hyland, Rowser, Brown (Bob), Wilson,

Wright, Thurston, McGee




DID NOT PLAY



Morton, Tubbs, Gent


DALLAS Andrie (1), Rentze] (1)

I

Villanueva (2)
Villanueva (1)
Viilanueva (1)

Cowboys

Packers


I Bratkowski, Horn, Grabowski, Brown (Alien)

		Ill
	IIIII


INDIVIDUAL SCORING
	GREEN BAY
	TOUCHDOWNS
	Dowler (2), Starr (1)





P.A.T.'S

FIELD GOALS
FIELD GOALS MISSED

Chandler (3) Chandler (1)





1

0

	7


2
	3
	4

	10
	0
	7

	7
	0
	7

Total
17




21


ELAPSED

TEAM
	PERIOD 	TIME
Packers
	1
	8:50

Packers
	1
	8:50

Packers
	2
	2:41

Packers
	2
	2:41

Cowboys
	2
	10:56

Cowboys
	2
	10:56

Cowboys
	2
	14:28

Cowboys
	4
	:08

Cowboys
	4
	:08

Packers
	4
	14:47

Packers
	4
	14:47

SCORING PLAYS



		DETAIL ON SCORING PLAYS

Dower, on eight-yard Starr pass

Chandler, PAT

Dowler, on 46-yard Starr pass

Chandler, PAT

Andrie recovered Starr fumble and ran 7 yards

Villanueva, PAT

Villanueva, on 21-yard field goal

Rentzel, on 50-yard pass from Reeves

Villanueva, PAT

Starr on one-yard quarterback sneak

Chandler, PAT

	Visit
		Home

		SCORE
	0
		6

	0
		7

	0
		13

	0
		14

	6
		14

	7
		14

	10
		14

	16
		14

	17
		14

	17
		20

	17
		21




TIME OF GAME,

2:30


DTY
	Green Bay, Wisconsin
	FINAL TEAM STATISTICS
	DATE
	Dec. 31, 1967


	Green Bay Packers
	VS.
	Dallas Cowboys

	TOTAL FIRST DOWNS

	FIRST DOWNS RUSHING

	FIRST DOWNS PASSING

FIRST DOWNS BY PENALTY

TOTAL YARDS GAINED (NET) YARDS GAINED RUSHING (NET)
YARDS GAINED PASSING (NET)
GROSS YARDS GAINED PASSING

TIMES THROWN & YARDS LOST ATTEMPTING TO PASS
PASSES ATTEMPTED
PASSES COMPLETED

AVERAGE GAIN PER PASS ATFEMPT

PASSES INTERCEPTED BY & YARDS RETURNED
NUMBER AND TOTAL YARDAGE OF PUNTS
AVERAGE DISTANCE OF PUNTS

NUMBER AND TOTAL YARDS PUNTS RETURNED
NUMBER AND TOTAL YARDS KICKOFFS RETURNED
NUMBER OF PENALTIES AND TOTAL YARDS PENALIZED
NUMBER OF FUMBLES AND FUMBLES LOST
NUMBER OF RUSHING PLAYS
AVERAGE GAIN PER RUSHING PLAY

TOTAL OFFENSIVE PLAYS (Inc. times thrown passing)
AVERAGE GAIN PER OFFENSIVE PLAY


	CDALLAS
	GREEN BAY

	11
	18

	4
	5

	6
	10

	1
	3

	192
	195

	92
	80

	100
	115

	109
	191

	1--9
	876

	26
	24

	11
	14

	3.8
	4.8

	0-0
	1--15

	8--313
	8--230

	39.1
	29

	0--0
	5---19

	3--43
	3-- 10

	7--58
	2--10

	3--1
	3--2

	33
	32

	2.8
	2.5

	60
	64

	3.2
	3.1


Ieeves


Totals


Player


Meredith


Reeves


1otals


Att.


1


1


1


17


13


33


Art.


25


1


26


DALLAS

Net
Yards


-2
-8

9
51


42


92


DALLAS

Comp.


10


1


11


Avg.


-2


-8


9


3


3.2


2.8


Yds.
Gain


59


5O


109


Long
Gain


-2
-8
9
8
11


11


Long


14 50
50


INDIVIDUAL RUSHING

	Yds

	Lost
	TD


	. 	0

	8
	0

	0
	0

	0
	0

	13
	0


23


GREEN BAY


			Net
		Long
	Yds

	Player
	Att.
	Yards
	Avg.
	Gain
	Lost
	TD


	Anderson
	18
	35
	1.9
	9
	11
	0


	Mercein
	6
	20
	3.3
	8
	0
	0


	Starr
	1
	1
	1
	1
	0
	1

	.


	Williams
	4
	13
	3.2
	7
	0
	0
	Wilson
	3
	11
	3.7
	13
	2
	0

	0 Totals
	32
	80
	2.5
	13
	13
	1


INDIVIDUAL PASSING


GREEN BAY


Yds.

TD Int. Player Att. Comp. Gain Long TD Int.


0
	1 Starr
	24
	14 191
	43
	2
	0


1
	0


1
	1 Totals
	24 14 191 43
	2
	0



Io.


1


2


3


3


2


3ALLAS
Yards
3

24
16
11
61


Long


3


14


10


7


50


PASS RECEIVING


TD's


0


0


0


0


1


Player


Dowler


Anderson


Dale


Mercein


Williams


No.


4


4


3


2


1


GREEN BAY Yards

77
44
44
22
4


Long


43 17
17
19
4


TD


2


0


0


0


0


Player


Villanueva


No.


8


VISITORS

Yards IAverage

313 | 39.1


Blkd


0


PUNTING Long t Player

	44
	Anderson


No.


8


HOME


	Yards
	Average

	230
	29


Blkd


0


Long 38


..... . 		...: 	¢ 	- .....,-.-:

NPlayer


Hayes


Rentzel


No.


0


0


Yards


0
0


Long


0


0


Fair

Catch


2
3


PUNT RETURNS

TD's t Player 0 Brown


	0
	Wood


No.


1


4


Yards


-2
21


Long


-2
10


Fair

Catch


0
2


TD's


0


0


No.


1


2


Yards


28
15


Long


28 15


KICKOFF RETURNS

	TD's
	Player

	0
	Crutcher

0 Caffey

-


	Weatherwax


No.


1


1


1


Yards


3
7
0


Long


3


7


0


TD's


0


0


0


No.


Yards


	INTERCEPTIONS

Long ] TD's
	tPlayer

	Adderley


No.


1


	Yards
	Long

	15
	15


TD's


0


= = L -- --

......


---


INDEX



Adams, Bud, 78-79

Adderley, Herb, 12, 37, 102, 103,

112, 143

the Ice Bowl and, 177, 180, 186
Aikman, Troy, 9

Mdridge, Lionel, 12, 59, 72

the Ice Bowl and, 179, 181
Mien, Ermal, 156

Allen, George, 71-75, 95, 142, 14445,
150, 151, 159

Anderson, Donny, 37, 57, 61, 83,
105, 108, 128, 132, 134,
135, 142, 144, 145, 146,
149, 201

the Ice Bowl and, 164, 169, 17172,
175-81, 185, 186-91,
193-96

rookie season, 76-82

Andrie,
	George, 4, 24, 46, 72, 92,
98, 113, 114-17, 202-203

the Ice Bowl and, 116, 163, 16667,
174, 177, 180, 181, 185,
186-87, 192, 193, 194, 195


Baltimore Colts, 20, 24, 33-34, 4647,
58, 107-109, 122, 12627,
136-37, 145, 146, 148
Barney, Lem, 61
Bass, Dick, 74
Bass, Mike, 57

Baughan, Maxie, 73, 142
Beasley, John, 134
Beban, Gary, 143

Bednarik, Chuck, 36

Bell, Bert, 22

Bengtsen, Phil, 125, 183, 202
Berry, Ray, 58
Bilitnikoff, Fred, 111

Blaik, Colonel Earl "Red," 31
Blanchard, Jamie, 40
Blood, Johnny, 29
Boeke, Jim, 73, 74
Bowman, Ken, 153

the Ice Bowl and, 186, 193, 194
Boyd, Bobby, 136

Brandt, Gil, 44, 110, 115, 138
Bratkowski, Zeke, 86, 101-102, 103,

104, 105, 129, 132, 134

Brodie,
	John, 130

Brooks,
	Robert, 9

Brown,
	Bill, 132, 135

Brown,
	Jim, 47, 58

Brown,
	Paul, 30

Brown,
	Roger, 73, 74, 142

Brown,
	Tim, 113-14

Brown,
	Tom, 12, 15-16, 37, 135,
143, 150

the Ice Bowl and, 188

Bryant, "Bear," 65-68, 74, 91
Buck, Jack, 173, 194
Burke, Vern, 98
Burns, Jerry, 125

Butkas, Dick, 18, 83, 84, 110, 111


Caffey,
	Lee loy, 12, 37, 82, 130,
133, 143, 181,201



212


Caffey, Lee Boy (cont.)

the Ice Bowl and, 172, 185, 186,

187

Canadeo, Tony, 30, 37
Cartwright, Gary, 94, 163-64
Casey, Bernie, 144, 150

Cash, Bubbles, 119-21, 137, 139
Chandler, Don, 62, 80, 84-85, 132,

135

the Ice Bowl and, 171-72, 176,

179, 189

Chicago Bears, 16, 21, 71-72

-Green Bay rivalry, 6, 83-85
Christiansen, Jack, 130
Cioci, Lou, 66
Claiborne, Jerry, 64-65
Clark, Phil, 182, 185
Clarke, Frank, 45, 67, 121

the Ice Bowl and. 182, 186, 189
Cleveland Browns. 20, 41, 47-48,

49, 69, 80, 94, 95, 110, 127
28, 141, 155-58, 159, 200

Coffey,
	Junior, 86

Collier,
	Blanton, 128. 157

Collins,
	Gary, 158

Cosell, Howard, 53, 93, 95, 200
Costello, Larry, 111
Cowan, Charlie, 150
Cox, Fred, 105, 132, 134
Crabb, Claude, 144
Cruice, Wally, 159 Crunch, The (Toomay), 93
Crutcher, Tommy Joe, 130, 134

the Ice Bowl and, 172, 188
Cuozzo, Gary, 121
Curry, Dan, 37


Dale, Carroll, 61, 86, 105, 133-34,

143, 151

the Ice Bowl and, 178, 179, 186

Dallas,
	Texas, 22-23, 42-43, 66, 69,
91

INDEX


Dallas Coxvbovs. 2-6, 66-69, 109

10, 151

founding of, 22, 24-25

in the NFL East, 25

1966
	NFL championship game,
15-18, 69, 73, 81

1967
	NFL championship game, see Ice Bowl

1967 regular season, 45-50, 69
75, 95-100, 113-23. 136-37,

140-41, 146, 155-58
rebuilding of, 39-45, 64
Dallas Texans, 19
Davis, Al, 20, 159
Davis, Ben, 157

Davis, Willie, 12. 28, 34, 38, 72,

129, 130. 201-202

Dean, Ted, 35, 160

Deters, Harold, 73

Detroit
	Lions, 59. 60-63, 83, 101
103, 110, 128

Devine, Dan, 202

DiMaggio, Joe, 80, 91-92, 124
Dischinger, Terry, 41

Dowler, Boyd, 18, 38, 62, 84, 133,

144

the Ice Bowl and, 177, 178, 185,

186, 189, 190, 191

Dupre, L. G. (Long Gone), 24


Edwards, Dave, 67

the Ice Bowl and, 178, 180, 187,

191

Eller, Carl, 105 Esquire, 33, 152, 199
Evans, Doug, 12


Farr, Mel, 61

Favre, Brett, 8, 12-13

Finley, Charles O., 91-9"2

Fleming. Mary, 35, 128

the Ice Bowl and, 177

INDEX


Ford, Bill, 110

Fredrickson, Tucker, 110

Freeman, Antonio, 13


Gabriel, Roman, 71, 73, 142. 143,

144, 150, 151, 152
Gaechter, Mike, 40, 47, 114

the Ice Bowl and, 178

Garrison, Walt, 157

Gent, Pete, 4, 40-45, 49-50, 94,

96-97, 157, 201

Gibbs, Sonny, 24, 41

Gifford, Frank, 49, 173-74, 202
Gillespie, Earl, 54
Gillingham, Gale, 144, 153

the Ice Bowl and, 175-76, 178,

186, 192, 193

Gipp, George, 13, 28

Goss, Tiny, 31

Gossett, Bruce, 143, 151, 152

Grabowski, Jim, 18-19, 37, 56, 57,
61, 83, 84, 105, 108, 112,
127, 142, 146

the Ice Bowl and, 168-69, 174
Graham, Otto, 96, 111, 122
Grambling University, 129, 201-202
Grant, Bud, 106, 131, 132, 134, 142

Green,
	Cornell, 39-40, 47, 48, 67,
71, 114, 121, 157-58

the Ice Bowl and, 161, 192
Green, Ernie, 128
Green Bay Packers, 9

-Chicago Bears rivalry, 6, 83-85
early championships of, 29
founding of, 28-30

NFL championship games from
1960-1966, 15-18, 35-37,
69, 73, 81

1967 regular season, 55-63, 83
87, 101-109, 127-35, 141
46

ovnership of, 19, 30

213



Super Bowl II and, 196, 199

Super Bowl XXXI and, 1-2, 6-14

Gregg,
	Forrest, 38, 59, 112, 150,
151, 153, 202

the Ice Bowl and, 165, 168-69,
182-83, 185, 189, 193, 195,
202
Gremminger, Hank, 37
Grim, Bob, 133, 134
Groza, Lou, 127
Guillory, Tony, 144, 145


Halas, George (Papa Bear), 16, 19,

22, 24, 72, 83-85, 142
Hall, Whaley, 66
Hanberger, Chris, 95-96

Hanner, Dave, 32, 37, 62, 84, 125
Harlan, Bob, 10
Harris, Richie, 122
Hart, Doug, 134
Hart, Jim, 123
Hawkins, Alex, 108

Hayes,
	Bob, 18, 40, 45, 47, 49, 94,
98, 99, 119, 120, 123, 136,
155, 156, 157, 201

the Ice Bowl and, 175, 176-77,

179, 180, 181, 186, 187, 189
Hickey, Red, 41
Hilton, John, 99
Hitzges, Norm, 4-5
Holmgren, Mike, 6
Hood, Dwight, 58

Horn, Don, 57, 102, 128, 146
Hornung, Paul, 16-17, 18, 35, 37,

85, 105, 131, 144, 152, 195,
197

retires from Packers, 56, 57, 76,

80

Houston Oilers, 45-46, 78-79, 159
Howard, Desmond, 8, 14
Howell, Jim Lee, 30, 160
Howell, Mike, 157



NDEX


Howley, Chuck, 48, 67, 98, 113

the Ice Bowl and, 160, 177, 191,

192

Huff, Sam, 49, 55, 66

Hyland, Bob, 57


Ice Bowl, 14, 112, 116, 141, 154,

159-200

the fans, 172, 184-85, 198-99
the weather, 159, 166--77, 179,

182-83, 184-85, 186, 188,
194, 195, 198, 202
Irvin, Michael, 2-3
Izenberg, Jerry, 160


Jeter, Bob, 12, 37, 134, 143, 181

the Ice Bowl and, 188

Johnson, Leotis, 89

Johnson, Lyndon B., 43-44, 70, 154
Johnson, Mike, 71, 185

Jones, Deacon, 72, 74, 142, 146,

151

Jones, Homer, 49

Jones, Jerry, 2-5, 138, 200
Jonsson, Erik, 139

Jordan,
	Henry, 12, 38, 72, 79, 86,
110, 152, 201

the Ice Bowl and, 182

Jordan,
	Lee Roy, 64-68, 70-71, 74,
93-94, 113-14, 118, 200
201

the Ice Bowl and, 160, 163, 167,

178-79, 186, 188, 193, 198
Josephson, Les, 73, 151
Jurgensen, Sonny, 95, 122

	Kemp, Jack, 17
Keyes, Brady, 99
Kilmer, Bill, 98
Kilroy, Bucko, 71
King, J. T., 77

Kostetnik, Ron, 12, 37, 72, 135, 201

the Ice Bowl and, 179, 181
Kramer, Jerry, 16, 38, 61, 85, 103,

149, 153

the Ice Bowl and, 189, 190, 193,

194

Kramer, Ron, 35



Ladd, Ernie, 46

Lambeau, Curly, 13, 59

founding of Packers and, 28-30
Lambeau Field, 7-8, 10, 14

underground heating system,

162--63, 168, 169, 174, 184

Landry,
	Alicia, 23--24, 25, 172-73,
188

Landry, Tom, 4, 17-18, 54-74, 89
90, 93-94, 99-100, 113, 121,
122-23, 136-37, 141, 142,
155-58, 160--61, 163, 187
88 ALL and, 46
coaching style, 116-17, 161, 174
early years as coach, 24-25
Flex defense of, 67-69

the Ice Bowl and, 160-61, 164,
174, 176, 177, 179, 187,
188, 195

rebuilding the Cowboys, 39-45,

50

Lang, Israel, 114
LeBaron, Eddie, 24, 92
Levens, Dorsey, 13
Lewis, D. D., 93

Lilly, Bob, 14, 24, 67, 72, 93, 99

the Ice Bowl and, 160, 166-67,


ILilly, Bob (cont.)

177, 178, 185, 186, 192-93,
194
Lipscombe, Gene "Big Daddy," 59
Liscio, Tony, 156
Livingston, Warren, 71
Lombardi, Harry, 33
Lombardi, Marie, 30, 55

Lombardi, Vince, 2, 27-28, 43, 51,
57-58, 60, 63, 75, 77-78,
86-87, 101-109, 112, 126
32, 142, 143, 145-53, 160
61, 176, 177
background of, 31
grass drill of, 32-33, 37, 38
hired as coach, 30-31
the Ice Bowl and, 159-62, 164,

165-66, 169, 171, 176, 183,
185, 192, 193-94, 195-96,
197-98

Lambeau Field underground
heating system and, 162-63,
169, 184

1966
	NFL championship game,
16, 17, 18

obsession with promptness, 147,

162

Scott and, 51-55

Super Bowl II, 196, 199
taboos of, 60, 81
total authority as coach, 124-27
training camps of, 31-33, 37, 79

80, 87

Lombardi, Vince, Jr., 6, 23, 27-28,

60, 129, 196, 199, 203

the Ice Bowl and, 165-66, 169,

189, 190



Los Angeles Rams, 21, 56, 62, 91,

135, 142-45, 146, 148-53,

159

Fearsome Foursome, 72-74, 142,

146, 149, 151, 153


215



214
	INDEX


1967 Cowboys game, 69-75, 95
Lowe, Jack, 140-41
Lujack, Johnny, 52

Luksa, Frank, 5, 21, 25, 161, 162,

163, 164, 169-70, 200
Lundy, Lamar, 72-73, 74, 142


McCormick, Tommy, 62, 125
McGee, Max, 18, 32, 38, 81, 102,

195

Mack, Tom, 150
McKay, John, 130--31
Mackbee, Earsell, 105

McLean, Scooter, 30, 32, 33, 54
McNally, John, 29
Mandarich, Tony, 9
Manders, Dave, 156

Mara, Wellington, 110, 112
Marshall, George Preston, 21
Marshall, Jim, 105
Martin, Abe, 90-91
Martin, Curtis, 13
Mason, Tommy, 132
Maule, Tex, 66--67
Meaders, Ed, 74

Mercein, Chuck, 109-12, 128, 133,
134, 142-43, 144, 145-46,
152

the Ice Bowl and, 165, 166, 17479,
182, 184, 188, 190-92,
194
Meredith, "Chigger," 48, 49, 93, 96

Meredith, Don, 15, 17, 18, 46, 47,
48, 49, 67, 73, 74, 89-97,
100, 118, 121, 123, 136-37,

140, 155, 158, 200-201

the Ice Bowl and, 161, 165, 176,
177, 179, 180, 181, 182,

185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 195
Merger between NFL and ALL,

18-20, 45-46, 107
Michaels, Lou, 108






216


|


INDEX


Mildren, Jack, 154

Minnesota Vikings, 44, 49, 103-106,

131-35, 200

Modell, Art, 157

Monday Night Football, 94, 95, 200
Morton, Craig, 46, 95, 97-100, 110,

141

Murchison, Clint, Jr., 22-25, 45,

137-40, 198

Murdock, Les, 58
Murray, Jim, 148, 198
Myers, Jim, 116


Namath, Joe, 20, 49, 65

Neely, Ralph, 156

New England Patriots, 2, 11-14
New Orleans Saints, 56, 97-98, 117,

120-21, 131

Newton, Nate, 3

New York Giants, 16, 20, 24, 25, 31,
55, 59, 66, 104, 107, 110
11, 112, 160

1962
	NFL championship game,
36

1967
	Dallas game, 48-50, 69
New York Jets, 20, 49
Nilartd, John, 19, 156

Nitschke, Ray, 12, 17, 18, 33, 38,
79, 102, 127, 130, 133, 134,
150

the Ice Bowl and, 179, 180, 181,

187

Nix, Kent, 57, 98-99, 117, 146
Nobis, Tommy, 86, 119, 165
Norman, Pettis, 39, 99, 173
Nutting, Ed, 116

INDEX


Page, Alan, 104, 105
Pearson, Drew, 200
Perkins, Bill, 66
Perkins, Don, 47, 67, 90, 121, 123,

161

the Ice Bowl and, 176, 179, 180,

186, 187

Perkins, Steve, 47, 48, 96, 163
Pettibone, Richie, 84

Philadelphia Eagles, 5, 35-36, 100,

114, 117, 137, 141, 142, 160
Phillips, Red, 134

Pitts, Elijah, 27, 57, 59, 61, 62, 84,

105, 107, 108, 127
Pittsburgh Steelers, 20, 24, 98-99,

117, 146, 148

Plum, Milt, 63, 102, 103
Price, Jim, 66
Prochaska, Ray, 151
Pugh, Jethro, 39, 72

the Ice Bowl and, 179, 182, 185,

186, 188, 193, 194

Pyle, Mike, 109


Quinlan, Bill, 37


Rakestraw, Larry, 84, 143

Reeves, Dan, 40, 47, 49, 73, 90, 96,
98, 118-19, 122, 123, 141,
161, 187-88

the Ice Bowl and, 177, 182, 185,

186, 187, 188, 189
Remmel, Lee, 30-31, 124-26, 168,

174

Renfro, Mel, 40, 114, 121

the Ice Bowl and, 180

Rentzel, Lance, 4 45, 49, 73, 95,

99, 122, 123, 141, 201
the Ice Bowl and, 177, 179, 182,

185, 186, 187, 188

Rice, Grantland, 15

Richardson, Willie, 108

fRidg'ay, Colin, 40

Ringo, Jim, 37

Robinson, Dave, 12, 15, 18, 37,

102, 144, 151

the Ice Bowl and, 181

Rote, Kyle, 49

Rowser, John, 57, 61

Rozelle, Pete, 19, 22, 25, 69, 120,

173

Ryan, Frank, 47, 48, 127, 157
Rymkus, Lou, 59


St. Louis Cardinals, 122, 123, 136
San Francisco 49ers, 20, 41, 130,

131, 146, 200

Sayers, Ge, 71, 83, 84-85, 202
Schachter, Norm, 62, 176
Schenkel, Chris, 36
Schmidt, Joe, 59, 62-63
Schnelker, Bob, 125
Schramm, Martyr, 21, 172-73
Schramm, Tex, 70, 74, 92, 120, 122,

147-48, 155, 161
background of, 20-22
building the Cowboys, 22, 24-25
the Ice Bowl and, 167-68, 178,

195, 199-200

NFL-AFL merger and, 18-22,

45-46

Scibelli, Joe, 150

Scott, Ha], 199

Scott, Ray, 36, 51-55, 60, 173-74,

194-95, 198

Sharockman, Ed, 133, 134
Shechter, Leonard, 33
Sherman, Allie, 36, 49, 111
Sherrod, Blackie, 119-20, 195, 198
Shula, Don, 47, 107, 122, 136, 142
Simpson, O.J., 130-31, 143
Skronski, Bob, 38, 46, 153

the Ice Bowl and, 186, 189, 192,

193

217



Smith, Bubba, 137, 144
Smith, Jackie, 123
Smith, Preston, 89
Smith, Red, 36, 148, 149
Smith, Verda T. "Vitamin," 144
Snow, Jack, 143
Stallings, Gene, 65
Stallings, Larry, 110

Starr, Bart, 4, 16, 27, 38, 71, 80,

112

the Ice Bowl and, 116, 154, 160,
164-65, 168, 171-72, 174,
177-81, 185-94, 195, 19798,
202

1967 regular season, 59-63, 83--
85, 86, 101-105, 107, 108,
119, 128, 131-35, 143, 146,
149-53
Staubach, Roger, 15, 97, 111, 200
Stautner, Ernie, 156, 174, 181
Stephens, Larry, 179
Stern, Bill, 53-54
Stokes, Sire, 176
Studstill, Pat, 102

Super Bowl, 20, 155

I, 16-18, 81-82

II, 55, 82, 159, 196, 199
XXXI, 1-2, 6-14
Sutherland, Jock, 35
Sweetan, Karl, 102, 103, 143
Switzer, Barry, 3, 4-5
S,vmank, John, 32, 37


Tarkenton, Fran, 49, 104, 107
Taylor, Charley, 95

Taylor,
	Jim, 36, 37, 80, 90, 105,
108, 131, 191, 195

leaves the Packers, 55-56, 57, 79,

83

Texas Stadium, 138-41

Thomas, Duane, 200



	218
	INDEX



Thurston, Fuzzy, 7, 38, 80, 81, 127,

201

Tittle, Y. A., 16, 49

Toomay, Pat, 93

Townes, Willie, 48, 72, 96

the Ice Bowl and, 181, 190, 191
Tubbs, JerD,, 68, 198


Unitas,
	Johnny, 46, 107, 108, 143,
146


Van Brocklin, Norm, 35, 44, 104,

132, 163-64

Villanueva, Danny, 95, 122

the Ice Bowl and, 177, 181, 182,

185, 187, 188, 189
Vinatieri, Adam, 14
Volk, Rick, 108, 136


Wade, HenU, 88-89

Washington Redskins, 21, 25, 9597,
111-12, 122, 137, 200

Weathervax, Jim, 59

Weeks, Dick, 58
White, Reggie. 8
White, Robert Allen, 43
Whittenton, Jesse, 37
\qetecha, Ray, 125
Wilbum, J. R., 99
Williams, Erik, 3

Vqlliams, Travis, 57, 127, 128, 14344,
146, 150, 152, 201

the Ice Bowl and, 180, 181, 185,

188

Williamson, Fred, 17, 18

\\qlson, Ben, 56, 57, 134, 135, 149

the Ice Bowl and, 180, 181
Wismer, Harrv, 137

Wood, \\qllie, 12, 38, 78, 143, 15051,
152

11-2,

the Ice Bowl and, " "' 177,

181, 1S2, 185, 187, 188, 189
Wright, Steve, 133


Ziolkowski, Bob, 58