It's December 31st, and on this day in 1967, as Green Bay packers linebacker Ray Nitschke put it, it was the worst day for football.

And it was also the best day for football.

This, of course, was the NFL Championship game, better known as the Ice bowl, between the Green Bay packers and the Dallas Cowboys.

It's officially the coldest game ever played in the NFL.

At kickoff, the temperature was minus 16 with a wind chill of minus 46.

And this was the epitome of the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field.

Cowboys running back Dan Reaves said many years later that nobody has an advantage in that kind of weather.

It was miserable, tight end Lance Rensel said.

It was like playing on a piece of marble.

Cowboys wide receiver Bobby Hayes ran pass patterns with his hands tucked in his pants, which kind of makes it tough to a catch a pass or b indicate that they're actually going to throw the ball to you.

It was so cold, the referee's whistles didn't work and when they tried, their lips froze to it, so they resigned themselves to just yelling all day.

In fact, the opening tweet made quite an impression on Dallas Bob Lilly I.

Think the thing that probably I remember better than any was the first play of the game when the referee blew the whistle and when he pulled it out of his mouth, he pulled part of his lip off and the blood started dripping down his chin and it froze in an icicle.

There was an electric grid installed under the field that was supposed to unfreeze the ground, but that also was not working on this day.

Amazingly, the seats at Lambeau Field were packed.

More than 50,000 showed up that day to watch their veteran packers attempt to maintain their dominance in the NFL against a much younger and faster Cowboys team.

The packers jumped out to a 14 nothing lead on a pair of Bart star to Boyd dollar touchdown passes.

But the Cowboys were able to take advantage of two Packer miscues to get on the board.

First, a seven yard scoop and score by George Andre and then a Dallas field goal after another fumble recovery pulled the Cowboys to within four at the half.

The score stayed that way until the fourth quarter.

And on the first play of the fourth quarter, this happened.

The Cowboys have it at midfield, facing second and five Meredith on a pitch out to Reaves.

But this one's going to be a halfback option.

Rensel, all by himself, takes it in for the touchdown.

A 50 yard strike as the packers were caught napping.

That 50 yard halfback pass from Reaves to Rensel gave the Cowboys a 17:14 lead and the Packer crowd went silent.

With 4 minutes 40 seconds to play in the game, the packers started their final drive on their own 32 yard line.

Using running back Chuck Mercine as a receiver, Starr marched the packers down the field.

Starr takes the snap from center, he's back to throw, he flips the pass, it's complete to Chuck Mercine.

He's at the 25, the 20, down to the 15 and out of bounds and about the 11 yard line.

Chuck Mercine, the taxi squad refugee.

As Dallas coach Tom Landry later remarked, it was the most important play of that drive and it gave them the chance to score.

The packers moved the ball down to the one and with 16 seconds to go and facing a third and goal, head coach Vince Lombardi called the team's final timeout.

Instead of settling for a game tying field goal, which is what many would have thought the conservative coach would do, he decided to let Starr call his own number and try to find the footing on a frozen field to score the game winner.

If he failed, the clock would run out before they could get a field goal off.

Defensive tackle Bob Lilly tried to dig a rut in the ice to gain a foothold for himself and Jethro Pugh and considered calling a timeout to get a screwdriver or a jackhammer to dig the hole, but he did not.

Here's the call that day from ted Moore for AM 620 WTMJ.

Here are the Packers.

Third down, inches to go to Bader, 17 to 14.

Cowboys out in front.

Packers trying for the go ahead score.

Starr begins the count, takes the snap, he's got the quarterback down and the packers are out in front, 20 to 17.

There's 13 seconds joined on the clock and the Green Bay packers are going to be world champions.

NFL champions for the third straight year.

People pouring out of the stands, we're going to have a problem kicking this extra point.

That play was simply called 35Wedge.

Pugh slipped backward when Jerry Kramer hit him and Starr followed that block into the end zone for the touchdown.

There was a little time left on the clock after the packers kicked the extra point, but after two Cowboy incompletions, the packers won the NFL championship 2117 and then two weeks later would beat the AFL champ Oakland Raiders to win Super Bowl 2.

Now it is interesting to hear Moore's call from that day because he remarked that the packers were world champs.

And at that point in pro football the NFL considered the AFL to be second tier subpar.

So this was the last NFL championship game that actually was considered to be more important than the Super Bowl.

By the time Super Bowl 3 finished with the surprising AFL representative Jets holding the trophy, the super bowl finally took on higher status.

From the Ice bowl to another game that was impacted by the weather.

On this day, this time in 1988, in a game that became known as the Fog bowl, or by its other name, the greatest game nobody saw this was a divisional playoff game between Philadelphia and Chicago played at soldier field.

Bears vs.

Eagles.

Mike Ditka vs.

Buddy Ryan.

Even while winning a Super bowl together, those two did not get along.

And from the very beginning of the Ditka era, when George Papa Bear Halas installed Ryan as the defensive coordinator and then went out and hired Ditka to be the head coach, they hated each other.

They had nearly thrown punches at each other at halftime of a game in Miami back in 1985.

So there was drama rolling into Soldier Field already.

The game started off with nearly perfect weather, though sunny skies and a game time temperature in the mid-30s.

That was forecasted to be the weather the entire day in Chicago.

But shortly after the Bears Kevin Butler kicked a 46 yard field goal, a fog rolled into the stadium.

I'll tell you what's coming over Soldier Field.

It is a fog.

A heavy fog now is setting in over Soldier Field.

Look at it rolling.

Everything.

Yeah.

Coming right over the top of the stadium on the south.

The Eagles were able to respond with a quick drive and a gradually thickening fog to kick a field goal of their own to make it 179 at the half.

And by the time the teams came back in the third quarter, the fog had gotten so thick that players couldn't see more than 15 or 20ft in front of them.

On television, field side cameras would pick up the start of a play and then the players would disappear into the mistake.

On pass plays, especially those going away from the press box side of the field, it was nearly impossible to see what the result was.

Vern Lundquist and Terry Bradshaw were calling the game that day for CBS.

Second down and seven from the 23.

Quick emotion.

Cunningham will throw or run shot for the fourth time.

Wait a minute.

He got rid of the ball, Vern.

He must have.

And completed it to somebody.

And we're not trying to make light of this, but it is actually impossible for us to see the field.

So we are doing the broadcast off the monitors.

The fog wreaked havoc throughout the second half.

Passes seen at the last moment were tipped and intercepted.

Field goals were missed.

Phillies.

Randall Cunningham did complete 27 passes for 407 yards, but he had three intercepted and the Eagles also had two touchdowns called back due to penalties.

Each team only managed a field goal in the second half and Chicago escaped with the 2012 win in one of the oddest games in the history of the league.

On this day in 1972, Pittsburgh pirate Roberto Clemente was killed when the plane he was in crashed.

Clemente was on the way to Nicaragua on a humanitarian aid mission following a deadly earthquake there on December 23rd.

Clemente had not planned on making the trip, but after three planes he sent with supplies were diverted by corrupt Nicaraguan government officials, never reaching survivors of the quake, Clemente decided to board the fourth and ultimately ill fated flight in an effort to personally escort the supplies to those who desperately needed them.

The plane he was in had a history of issues.

It was overloaded and it did not have a sufficient flight crew.

It crashed in the Atlantic shortly after takeoff.

Clemente was 38 years old we've talked about numerous ties in football over the course of the past year on this podcast, but I've never mentioned one single basketball tie.

And that's because there's only been one of them, and it happened on this day in 1935.

But it was a bit unintentional.

This was a game between Notre Dame and Northwestern at the old Patton Gymnasium in Evanston.

This was not the highest scoring of games.

With 10 minutes left, Northwestern led 2014, but the Irish shut Northwestern down the rest of the way and they started a slow, methodical comeback.

By the time the final horn sounded, though, the scoreboard read Northwestern 20, Notre Dame 19.

The teams shook hands and then they headed off to their locker rooms.

But there was a discussion going on at the scorers table.

The official scorer and the scoreboard operator had forgotten to credit Notre Dame's Ray Meyer with a free throw he'd made towards the end of the game.

So when it got put up on the scoreboard, the game was now tied at 20.

But by this point the players had already showered and Notre Dame was heading to the team bus.

It was too late to decide the game at that point, and when no continuation date could be agreed upon by the two teams, they decided to let it stay on the books as a tie, becoming the only basketball game to end that way.

Time now for today's Nothing to Do With Sports Fun fact.

Alright folks, new year coming up, new goals to be set.

What did you say?

7?

11?

You know the convenience store sells about 45 million gallons of big gulps every year say whaaat?

So let's go people, we've got some work to do.

What did you say?

Hey, this is Steve White, the host of this Day in Sports History.

Thanks for listening to this episode and if you enjoyed the episode or you're a fan of the podcast, can I ask you to do me a favor?

I made the short list for the best sports Talk podcast in 2024 and I'm asking for your vote.

I've put a link in the show notes that will take you to the page and if you have a moment, click that link and cast your vote for my podcast.

I would certainly appreciate it.

Thanks to all those who have voted and again, thanks for listening to this podcast in 2024.

Have a happy and safe New Year's celebration and I'll talk to you Tomorrow to get 2025 started with another this Day in Sports History.

This has been an original thrive sweet production.