Citation Needed - The Ice Bowl

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

The 1967 NFL Championship Game was the 35th NFL championship, played on December 31 at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin.[1] Because of the adverse conditions in which the game was played, the rivalry between the two teams, and the game's dramatic climax, it has been immortalized as the Ice Bowl and is considered one of the greatest games in NFL history. NFL 100 Greatest Games ranked this game as the 3rd greatest game of all time. It is still the coldest game ever played in NFL history.

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Because this is the internet and that's how it works now I'm Eli Bosnik and I'll be the quarterback tonight But I'll need some of the meanest greenest defensive line this side of Green Bay No, first up three men who are sure whether or not the things I just said were football words Slash made any sense heat Cecil and Noah. It's offensive. I found your line often. I am a Wisconsin 10. That ain't much, but it's a living. That's all I'm going to say. It's a living.

Yeah. So the Packers D line is good, but I don't think they're a top 10 unit. Right. We'll see how Rayshon and Gary back bounces back from an injury plague season, though. But it could be. It's really going to come down to how they develop the next gen talent like Wyatt, Brooks, and of course, Van Nass. Okay, you have an essay of this. All right. Now also joining us tonight is Tom. Tom is here. Oh my God. Is this going to be about the New Jersey Etruscans winning the Stanley Series Bowl or whatever? The Etruscans so bad though. I can't do it. The whole essay. Billionaire money, I will buy a team and call it the Etruscans. Billionaire money, I will buy a team and call it the Atruskings.

Billionaire money, I will do it. And jerked off at a massage parlor to celebrate before we begin tonight. I'd like to take a moment to thank our patrons. Patrons in another universe, Keith and Noah start a fantasy football podcast. You never hear my voice and I'm their friend from work who died the first day he tried driving for uber Thanks to you I'm here talking about football for money as the world turns If you'd like to learn how to join their ranks be sure to stick around till the end of the show and with that out

Of the way, tell us Cecil what person place thing concept phenomenon or event will we be talking about today? Sorry, I was just daydreaming about what you said. Today we're going to be talking about the ice bowl. Yeah, you're a big boy. It's not the coldest thing that's going to happen on this show, though. Holy shit, man. And Noah, I mentioned it ever so briefly. You're doing a football thing.

Is that because you hate me and Tom or? Okay, yeah. So this one demands at least some explanation. Okay. So this episode is slated to drop one day before the Baltimore Ravens and Kansas City Chiefs kick off the 2024-25 NFL season as the only thing I'm thinking about right now. Plus, Tom actually suggested this topic to me. So I'm actually only torturing you.

Well and the listeners who don't like football. Yeah, I did suggest this. I'll admit that. But I am also a meat machine powered almost entirely with my own regrets. So yeah. Oh, okay. That makes so much more fucking sense. So yeah. So no, but a quick heads up to the people who don't like football. Yes, you're not into football, but you know what else you're not into? New Coke and really old French ladies, right? That makes one of us know a one.

I wasn't talking to you, you like football. I'm talking to people who don't like football. So, but no, but the whole idea of this show is that you learn about new stuff. And I did not pick this subject because it was like the greatest football game of all time, right? If I did that, this would be an essay about Super Bowl 42, wherein the New York Giants upset the New England Patriots otherwise perfect season with the assistance of the greatest throw catch combo in the history of football,

nay, the history of sports, nay, the history of parabolic trajectory. Save it, Tyree! What is happening, bro? But we're not doing an essay about that. Sorry, Heath. We're not doing that one. Instead, we're going to do a story about a game mostly known for being colder than a white walkers taint. Okay. But more importantly, if you talk about football during the essay, does that mean that you and Cecil will talk about something that I like during the break?

Probably not. No. No. Okay. like during the break? Probably not, no. Okay, well then there is no God no allegiance. Well, that's the whole point of our career, okay? So, no, but also a quick note to our listeners outside the US who might think I am using the word football wrong. I promise I will also do an essay on your type of football too,

just as soon as you play an iconic championship game in weather so cold that one of the spectators freezes to death, okay? Well, in soccer's defense, lots of people die after that. That doesn't count. All of them, in fact. Bravo. So what was the ice bowl? It was the coldest game of NFL football in the league's history. At kickoff, the temperature was 13 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

That's 25 below Celsius. But that's downright bombing compared to the wind show, which was an Arctic 48 below zero. Yikes. Which is actually close enough to where Fahrenheit and Celsius meet that it doesn't really fucking matter which one I'm using there But yeah, it was super fucking cold at least five players got frostbite And as I said at least one elderly spectator actually died from exposure in the stands before the game was over And the saddest part is the guys who were supposed to paint the other letters on their bodies didn't even show up

Sad frozen J. We got the B in it. We can do brrrrr. That's about it. Everybody else was down. Now, so the thing that made the Ice Bowl so memorable isn't just that it was really fucking cold. It was also a great game.

Or I'm sorry, it was a close game, right? It was sloppy as all fuck and it was kind of terrible by modern standards, but it came down to the wire at least. And of course, it was also a close game, right? It was sloppy as all fuck, and it was kind of terrible by modern standards, but it came down to the wire at least. And of course it was also a championship game. It was basically the equivalent of the Super Bowl at the time, which I guess demands at least a little explanation since the team that won the Ice Bowl then went on to win the Super Bowl.

Does it though, Noah? I will give you $11 for it not to. Okay, let me speed this up. Eli said, sports ball as a clever take down of the entire concept of athletics just now, duly noted. And congrats on that. Really, really good take down. And now we can do the episode about a subject.

Thank you. Well, now you've preempted all my jokes. Fuck off, not a whole show. This is gonna be the one that takes us apart It's pulling at the fabric already I can feel it. I think jokes is generous And that's it wrap it all up That's why we're being so fucking cold. Yeah, so okay. Don't know why everyone's so mean to me. I'm always so nice to everybody else All right, so the very concept of professional team sports is younger than a lot of people realize, but you can't really have teams representing cities until you have the infrastructure to move

them around on a regular basis. Oh my God. And you know, you really can't have infrastructure until you harness fire. So if you think about it, the ice bowl historically could have only happened because the Etruscans harnessed fire way back in fuck all classes. All right. Don't give me ideas, Tom. So OK.

So pro team sports crop up after railroads. There were team sports before that. Lacrosse goes all the way back to the 12th century, but it would be like exhibition level stuff before the railroads nationalized it, right? Like the local police department's baseball team would take on the local Chamber of Commerce's team or something like that. But that all started to change in the late 1800s as baseball teams sort of started to organically coalesce into Major League Baseball, which wouldn't officially form under that name until 1903.

American football followed shortly thereafter in 1920, when 10 semi-professional teams formed the National Football League. But to be honest, football didn't really hit its stride with the American sports fan until the advent of television. See, football worked really well for early television because in early television you really couldn't see what the fuck was going on, right? But in American football, nothing's going on most of the time. Right. So that very rarely matters.

There's plenty of downtime between plays so that they can explain to the audience what those few grainy blobs they just saw were. And because of that, by the 1950s, football had risen to become the most popular of all televised sports. Yeah. And mansplaining the blobs became an art form that lives on. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Football.

The game is so exciting it owes its popularity from not seeing it happen. That's it. No, it is though. That is true. So by 1959, the NFL expanded to 12 teams, the Bears, Browns, Cardinals, Colts, Eagles, Giants, Lions, Niners, Packers, Rams, Steelers, and a racial slur that wouldn't get changed for another 60 fucking years. Yeah, I'm afraid to ask what the original mascot for the Steelers was.

But that wasn't enough to satisfy the national thirst for men running into one another every 45 seconds or so. So a second league, the American Football League, was founded in 1959. Now these two leagues would merge in 1966 and create what would later be called the Super Bowl, right? The champions of each league would play against each other. But at first, this was officially called

the AFL-NFL World Championship Game. Now, what you have to understand about the AFL-NFL World Championship Game is that nobody gave a shit. The AFL was basically seen as the junior league, like the minor leagues of football at this point. The NFL was where the real football players went to play and the AFL took what was left over. So a lot of people looked at it as if you had the varsity champion play

the junior varsity champion at the end of the season. And through the first couple of Super Bowls, that's what it looked like too. It wasn't until Super Bowl III when Joe Namath led the AFL's Jets to a shocking win over the Baltimore Colts, who were favored by 19 and a half points in that game, that people started taking AFL teams seriously. Okay, actually, no, it was actually the Broncos beat the Packers in 1998 that we really started taking the AFL team seriously. But after the Jets won the Super Bowl in Super Bowl III, the Super Bowl became the big game every year. Before that, the real championship was considered to be what we now call the NFC Championship game. That is the game that determined which team would represent the NFL in the AFL-NFL Championship. And that is what the Ice Bowl was.

It was the game to decide who would represent the NFL in the last Super Bowl that nobody gave a shit about. Super Bowl II. Yeah, and the guy at ABC who really wanted to call it the Super Bowlier has never heard the end of that. It's just every time he has an idea. Yeah, yeah. So I'm not going to get into players and regular season records and all that kind of shit. You're welcome non-sports people, but I have to say at least a little something

about the coaches here. It's all about the coaching. Very good, Tom. Well, sports. Nailed it. Yes. Well done. Every time. So the Ice Bowl would see the Dallas Cowboys, an expansion team younger than the AFL, take on the Green Bay Packers.

And critically, they'd be playing in Green Bay. Now the Cowboys are being coached by an absolute legend named Tom Landry. The Packers are being coached by the guy we literally named the fucking Super Bowl trophy after Vince Lombardi. So I guess that's some of a spoiler as to who's gonna win this one. Yeah regardless though when the Packers play the Cowboys we all lose Noah. Yes thank you. Okay the amount of genuine hate that I have in my heart for certain cities are truly based on sports is insane. My too. Yeah. Fuck Green Bay.

My brother lives in Dallas and like whenever I go to visit him, his home is near the stadium and everything. So it's always Dallas, and the whole time I'm there, I'm like, I have so many better reasons to hate Dallas, Texas as a city than this fucking sports franchise, right? But that's it. That's what does it. But that's why. Yeah.

That's the reason though. That's it. It's like bigotry. It's like really bad. It is. All right. So now pretty much everybody telling this story dwells a bit on what polar opposites these two coaches are. To hear the NFL network tell this story, you'd expect that there was going to be a second game called the fireball that Tom Landry's team won. But in reality, these are two middle-aged white guys who coach football for a living. They're probably very similar guys. But Landry was considered the big defensive mind of the day and Lombardi was considered the big offensive mind of the day.

In fact, back in the mid-50s, they both worked on the coaching staff for the Giants, Landry as the defensive coordinator and Lombardi as the offensive coordinator. But then they fell for the same girl. I am back in No Illusions. And of course, the other big difference between the two coaches was their style. Landry was this famously animated guy that's always jumping up and down and yelling and overreacting to every play. And he was a famous disciplinarian that was feared by his players. Lombardi, on the other hand, is a far more stoic guy and he was more of like the avuncular type of coach that was loved by his players. Right? Think of Landry as JD Vance and Lombardi on the other hand is a far more stoic guy and he was more of like the avuncular type of coach that was loved by his players. Right? Think of Landry as

JD Vance and Lombardi as Tim Walz. I know that's wildly offensive to Cowboys fans but that's what they get for being fucking Cowboys fans okay? Yeah Dallas Cowboys fans will definitely be upset if you put them the same column as a Republican. Come on on and people from Wisconsin. They Won't be able to decide if they prefer being the bigoted couch fucker or the wholesome dad Yeah, I'm in Georgia and you're in Michigan Heath, I don't think we can talk shit about Wisconsin in that department So fuck them. So now these are our coaches and our teams are fucking stacked.

The Cowboys have five starters on their team that would later wind up in the Hall of Fame. The Packers have nine. Wow. It's also right. It's also a rematch of the last NFL championship where the Packers won in Texas. Both teams just absolutely demolished the teams in the earlier round of the playoffs and they're setting up for this epic rematch, which is happening by the way on New Year's Eve Day, December 31st, 1967. Oh, I fully acknowledge. I don't know anything about this game, but it sounds like

not all that close. The Packers have 80% more star players, right? This should be at least enough to win them the popular vote, even if they can't secure the Sunbelts. No, that's nothing. I'm sorry. I wasn't paying a lot of attention. Well, no, actually the Vegas odds makers were right there with you, man. So they should just cancel the elections completely. The Packers won, right? just cancel the elections completely. The Packers won. So, okay, so now the problem here is that it's gonna be really fucking cold

on December 31st of 1967 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The weather forecast, we're calling for kickoff temperatures of five degrees Fahrenheit, that's minus 15 Celsius. And so the NFL commissioner considered postponing the game until the following day. But the forecast, which let's remember, were way less accurate than the ones that we have today, said that it would probably be even colder on Monday. So they went ahead with it. And it turned out that five degree forecast was wildly optimistic.

Guys, what if we wait until Tuesday so nobody dies? Shut the fuck up. Right? Way too in the walk it off phase of human existence at this point. Okay, so the day of the game comes and it's insanely cold. It is historically cold for December in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Jesus Christ. Yeah, many of the players, they wake up,

they find that they can't start their car batteries. Their car batteries are frozen. So everybody's like desperately trying to improvise a way to the stadium. The idea of a pro sports player just commuting to work and showing up late with like excuse donuts is amazing. Mostly because I think I just realized that the players don't like live at the stadium. They're not gladiators gladiators held underneath the ring until they're ready to fight. Is that what you're wondering?

When you're a kid, you think the teachers live at the school? No, I don't. I don't know what you're talking about. You're the only person who thought those thoughts Don't make it ubiquitous Tom. It's not ubiquitous Now I want them to live at the Cecil's just mad cuz all his teachers had to go back to jail at the end of the night I had to live at the school

I wanted like a Bunk beds for them to live together. Stop melting my screen. Yeah. So in a story that I absolutely love, Packers linebacker Dave Robinson basically has to hitchhike to the fucking game. Amazing. Amazing. The refs, the team of refs gets to the stadium. They realize they're going to freeze literally to death without more clothes.

So they have to make a quick run to the nearest fucking Woolworths or whatever they had back then to buy ear- Sears Robots. Yeah, they had to go to a Sears catalog. They had to buy extra earmuffs, gloves for their gloves, and thermal underwear. So they get ready to start playing.

The ref goes to blow his whistle to start the game and it freezes to his lip. Fuck you, ref! Eat shit! He rips a chunk of his skin off as he pulls the whistle away. I would just leave it there. Just leave it there. You're good to use it later.

Just be blowing the whistle all day. It's fine. Every time you breathe out for a week he's communicating with his wife via whistle. So here's how fucking cold it is. Players are just pausing every half second. Yeah, right. Right. Oh, no, not that one.

I'll get that. Okay. So yeah, but it's so fucking cold that as he rip every rips his skin off, he doesn't let the blood doesn't clot. The blood breezes onto his face and Jesus fuck! And that acts as a sketch. So from that point on, I love this so goddamn much. The refs just don't use their whistles anymore. And instead, they just yell commands

as loud as they can to the players. You know one of them was like, whoo! You guys heard that, right? That's the same. All right, well, while I try to compose a sketch based entirely off the concept of a ref played by Cecil yelling FWEE dammit I said FWEE We'll take a quick break for some Apropos of Nothing. Oh, you haven't read Snow Crash? I figured it wouldn't hold up.

Oh no, it completely holds up. Oh, hey guys, what you talking about? I was just telling him he should read Snow Crash. Oh, what's, what's that? That's a sci-fi novel. Oh, sci-fi. Oh, what's what's that? That's a sci fi novel. Oh, sci fi. Oh, me turn page me read story that not even real. What? What an insane reaction to have to an activity, dude. I just Josh and you. I just never I just never read as a kid or in school or whatever.

I'm more of an outside guy, you know, fresh air, get my body moving. Yeah. I mean, Eli, you like people who like books. They can also like exercise. Yeah. It's like these authors are so overpaid, you know, it's like, I'm sorry, you got a million dollars for writing words in a book. Like, um, I'll write words in a book for a million dollars. You know, I'll do that. Put me in. Sure. It's just so common, right? So ordinary is like, Oh, go Charles Dickens. Like get, get a personality, you know, Eli, I know that not everyone is into reading, but you know, when people tell you a thing they like and then you react with revulsion and spite just kind of makes you seem like

the asshole. What? No, no, it makes me seem like outdoorsy and sports. No, it's just, just an asshole. Okay. Do you think I might like reading if I tried to understand it? If I maybe read a couple books? Well, pretty much everybody does.

It's pretty popular, yeah. Okay, but then who would I feel superior to? Oh, people who like books that you don't. Nice, alright! If you're in need of quality new tires and have been searching the internet for a good deal, look no further than your local Big O Tires. For a limited time, when you buy three tires, you'll get the fourth free on select set of tires. And because we know that tires can be an unexpected expense, take advantage of no credit-needed financing made easy.

They work with multiple lending partners, so the financing is tailored to you. Remember that when you buy three tires, you'll get the fourth free, only at your locally owned Big O Tires, the team you trust. And we're back. When we left off, Noah stole Tom's cold essay thing once again. Tom, are you going to take that lying down or are you about to write the best damn essay

on the Sega Dreamcast this podcast has ever seen. Yeah, just as soon as I Google what those words is, Eli, just as soon as I Google what those words is. In case Tim Wallace was a huge Dreamcast nerd, I will die for this man. It's true. It's true. Me too. Awesome. So now, okay, it's worth emphasizing here that Green Bay, Wisconsin is no stranger to

freezing cold weather. And yes, this would be the coldest game in NFL history, still is, but not by all that much, right? The point is that there were procedures in place for when it got this cold to keep the field in relatively good shape. Now for years, that procedure was just, you put a bunch of hay on the field the night before,

and then you take it off at game time. The hay is all frozen, but the field isn't. But Green Bay had recently installed an underground heating system. But for some reason, that heating system never kicked in. It froze up. It was its first day on the job. So now a lot of people, myself included, think that was intentional. Vince Lombardi was exactly the kind of guy who would do some shit like that. He knew his team was way more used to playing in cold, icy conditions than the Cowboys.

So bad field conditions favored the Packers. And yes, 100% he did. 100%. Right. So it's possible the system just conked out. A lot of stuff stops working when it's that cold, but it's also possible that Lombardi just shut the fucking thing down. He had access to it.

Nobody was going to tell him no. And it's doubtful he'd have realized just how bad the surface would get if he did that, given the actual kickoff temperature was a full 20 degrees below the forecasted one. I feel like if it's your home field you can pave over the grass, right? They don't let you do that anymore, Vince. You can't do that. You can't do that. No. Yeah. It's like if Bill Belichick had accidentally exploded the other QB's head with his microphone Okay, I feel like he totally checked for that loophole and somebody made him right They're like we don't have to have a rule about a giant magnifying glass at the top

Exploding the other guy's head it doesn't say anywhere. All right, so our friends like what scanners All right, it's the airbud Dwyer We have to stop there it's done All right So but one way or the other the beginning game starts, the field's frozen. The Wisconsin State University marching band was scheduled to perform as both the pregame and the halftime entertainment. It wasn't as big a deal back then, but that shit didn't happen. During their warmups, the woodwind instruments froze and the mouthpieces on the brass instruments

stuck the players' lips. Jesus Christ. Seven members. It's like a Christmas story. Right? Yeah. Seven members of the band. How does it happen to have many of them? Like you're just one guy. the players lips seven like a Christmas story many of them like just one guy after one guy I'll play at the same time I'm not gonna fucking they all play the same time Tom like that's amazing the thought of somebody trying to warn them into a tuba.

Right. All right. I'm playing. That doesn't help. That doesn't want anybody. That's just baby elephant walking. Dun dun dun dun dun. No, still not.

There you go. Still not helping. So OK, but so seven members of the band were transported to the local hospitals for hypothermia. Wow. This was of the band were transported to the local hospitals for hypothermia. This was from the warm up. They didn't play. They didn't let go out and perform. This was from warm up. Yeah. So needless to say, the band's performances were canceled and that actually makes the field worse by the time the game's over, especially in the second half, right? Because that meant that there was a long period of the game late in the day when nobody was stomping

around on the field, breaking up the ice. So that was plenty of time for more ice to accumulate. Think about the commitment you have to have to get hypothermia for a marching band. I don't even turn off my fan for the podcast. It's on right now. Yeah, okay. But Eli, you're not really considering all that sweet oboe money. That's the thing. Yeah. So the game is televised by CBS and the commentator situation is kind of weird for a modern viewer. So Frank Gifford did color commentary throughout

the game and famously quipped at one point that he was going to take a bite of his coffee real quick. But I love that. Right. But the play by play announcer, the actual video of the full game no longer exists, unfortunately. We do have some preserved highlights. We also have some pregame stuff, but there's no full copy of the game archive. There are, however, copies of three different radio broadcasts, so we still do know what happened play to play. And what happened is the exact same kind of shitty ass football that you would expect when players are tossing around a frozen ball with frostbitten fingers on a sheet of fucking ice accidental

perfect ice skating moves and falling in love in each other's arms okay whenever we got a snow day from school when I was a kid we'd all go out and play football in this like super slow motion football in like a quarter snow. It was so much fun. Because you could really fall in love was rare, but it did happen. So now this game was an absolute slip sliding punt heavy fumble fest, but the Packers slipped, slid and punted significantly better. So early in the game, they're up two touchdowns. And I need to emphasize just how badly the Cowboys were doing here. And I need to do it in a way that non football people will understand. So in the first half of the game, the Cowboys only managed to get two first downs.

And both of those came in the first quarter. That would be like if Tom had only managed like two jokes before apropos of nothing this week. Yeah, neither of them were a score. Okay, I'm sorry. That's mean. That's mean, I'm sorry. I love you, buddy. I love you, I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. What happened to us this episode? Cecil, guys, if you listen to the show

before Cecil edits it to make it good, I am much more prolific. Yeah. Give me my paycheck. So as you'll recall, Dallas' team was never about the offense to begin with. They were all about the defense. And if the offense couldn't get him any points, well, damn it, it would be up to the D.

Hey, if you're coming in with the D on a playing field, it's that cold. I'm not holding out a lot of hope. No, well, it turns out you're right again by accident. So in the second quarter, the Cowboys managed to sack the Packers quarterback. He fumbles the ball, they scoop it up, they run it in for a touchdown. Then as the half is winding down, a different Packers player fumbles a punt, the Cowboys recover it and they manage to kick a field goal,

cutting the Packers lead to four points. At halftime, it's Packers 14, Cowboys 10. So then halftime comes, and I want you to stop for just a second and imagine what a miserable 13 minutes that is for the crowd in the stands. A crowd that includes, by the way, a 12 year old Willem Defoe. Oh, sure. But think about poor little Willem. He's out there freezing to fucking death.

Look, it was 15 degrees below zero at the start of the game. Right. The wind show factor was 46 below when the game started. But it kept getting colder as the day moved on, because as the sun drops, the shadow of the stadium falls over more and more of the spectators, more and more of the field. So conditions were getting worse all day. And of course, the halftime show had been canceled on account of the fucking flutes freezing to the flautists and whatnot. So the crowd just has to sit there for 13 minutes staring at blowing snow.

And the flute is the one instrument you don't touch to your mouth. Right? It's insane. A spit icicle between the two. Yeah. So the teams come back out for the second half. Think about the Herculean effort it had to take to leave the fucking locker room. They'd been out there.

They knew how bad it was now. Oh, shit. Right? And keep in mind, many of these players are already suffering from like flu-like symptoms from being out there for the first half. And several of them were in the early stages of frostbite. That included Packers quarterback Bart Starr, who would wind up with frostbite on his fucking fingers. Very important body parts when you're a quarterback. Yeah. Second only to their white skin. a quarterback. Yeah. Second only to their white skin. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So the Cowboys had a star receiver named Bob Hayes, who apparently spent the whole game with his hands in his pants.

Yes. He said he begrudgingly caught three passes all day. Let's keep in mind they didn't have pockets, right? There aren't pockets in these fucking uniforms or anything. He was just taking his fucking hands down his pants the whole time. Good for him. So he was running routes with his hands. His hands are in his belt. So, OK, so in the second half, the Cowboys finally got their first sustained offensive drive of the game, marching the ball all the way down to the Green Bay 18 yard line.

And then they fumbled because it was that kind of game. They would get in field goal range about a little bit later, but then they would get sacked right the back out of field goal range. So now it's the fourth quarter, no scoring has happened in the third. Their luck changes enough to get a touchdown on a 50 yard pass from a fucking halfback, which for the non football people is twice as much back as you would normally expect when you're getting a 50-yard pass out of it. And with that and the point after, they take the lead. It is now 17 to 14. At this point, I feel like the halfback, fullback, and quarterback need to pull

all their fingers, just all their usable fingers. Between all of us, we got five. Tom, what are you thinking about during this podcast? All right, dude, you did an essay on the infighting of Elizabethan play. Yes, that's fair. That is fair. So, OK, so one of the measures of how iconic a moment is to sport is how banal the name is. OK, so if if something is referred to as just the and then the thing it is, it will be the most iconic version of that thing ever. For example, if I say the catch, every football fan knows I'm referring to the game winning

reception Dwight Clark made for the 49ers in the closing seconds of the 1981 NFC championship game. If I say I'm thinking of David Tyree, but yeah, that's the one you're wrong. So if I say you're just using an excuse to think about that again, I're wrong. Yeah. So if I say- You just wanted to think about that thing again. Yeah, right. You're just using an excuse to think about that again. I can't blame you. So if I say the tackle, every football fan knows I'm talking about the final play of Super Bowl 34 when Rams linebacker Mike Jones

stopped Titans wide receiver Kevin Dyson one yard shy of the goal line for what would have been the tying touchdown. And I point all that out because with Green Bay down three points with less than five minutes left to go in the game, the Packers would start a drive that is known as the drive that would end with a block that is known as the block. Yeah, to be fair, the only non-sports the I can think of is the pill and it is my favorite pill. I'm actually a fan of the ass, but the pill is also The tight end got it. I like the tube sock. Okay. All right. What cuz masturbating

It was Otherwise you won't masturbate correctly. It's to beats. It was the third more loop for the. All right. So now I'm. All right. So I'm not going to go into detail on the whole drive. All I'm going to say is that it gets the Packers all the way down to the one yard line. They are one yard shy of the end zone, one yard shy of the win.

They're still down three points. So a field goal could tie this. There are 16 seconds left on the clock and it's third down and goal. Now what that means is that they have two chances left to get this final yard. Two chances that is assuming they can get both of those plays off before the clock runs out, which can be tricky. They have no timeouts. Now in football, an incomplete pass stops the clock. A run that falls short does not. A run that falls short means the clock continues to run. There's no way in hell you would have time to get your kicker on the field for the game trying field goal or try again with another

pass. So everybody knows they're going to pass. It would be fucking crazy to run the ball in that situation. Why you'd need a block so goddamn good that it would later be called the block. Which is of course exactly what they got to the surprise of everybody in the stands and everybody on the cowboy side of the field. Bart Starr keeps the ball, he dives forward, he breaks the plane of the end zone, he gets the touchdown and he wins the game. That play was as cold as ice. Well done.

Ice water in his veins. I just. Now, so. water in his veins. I just. Now, so. At this point. Yeah. So. A block and tackle, right? It was a block and tackle.

It was. Yeah. Okay. There was one of those. Yeah. So there's a lack of tackle, unfortunately. But yeah. So just a quick note on the block.

It's one of the most well-known clips in football history. And it's a great example of exactly how offensive linemen break open a hole for their quarterback. Calientes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. But the only reason we have this legendary piece of footage is that one of CBS's cameras was frozen in place and just happened to be pointing at that exact spot where the block occurred. Because otherwise, look, there's no fucking way any of the cameramen would have bothered to point their camera at that spot because everybody knew it was gonna be a fucking pass play. Okay, you know that guy's been telling the story forever

of how he totally called it at any time. That's why you're shooting that one spot. All right, so the Packers fans rushed the field, which is awkward because there's still 16 seconds left in the fucking game. So they cleared the fans out. Which was which is awkward because there's still 16 seconds left in the fucking game So they cleared the fans out which was very easy since they're all just frozen up like the Tin Man You could pick up like people shaped fireworks The ground was ice you could just So so the Cowboys ran their two doomed plays and the game ends the clock runs out the fans rushed the field again

The players limp back to the locker room where apparently Green Bay Latin backer Ray Nitschke's toenails fell off. He's here. Yep. His in his toes turned purple with frostbite. The quarterback also got frostbite in his fingers, like I said, which is all the more fucked up when you consider that this is the same team that would go on to dominate Super Bowl two, like two weeks later.

Yeah. And you'd think him going, ouchie every time he threw the ball during that game would be a dead giveaway. Go for the fingers. Yeah. Yeah. Now, there have been a number of really cold games since then that have earned the moniker Ice Bowl 2.

But the fact that there are at least four contenders tell you that there's really just the one Ice Bowl. It is still the coldest game ever played in the NFL. And thanks to global warming, it probably always will. Jesus Christ. And if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, what would it be? I am ready for some football. Turducken indeed. Are you ready for the quiz? I'm ready for that too. All right, Noah, the Packers have had many amazing opponents in the past which was their toughest Hey the tiny amount of red tape guarding Mississippi's temporary assistant fund for the needy from former Packers quarterback Brett Favre

B big pharma protecting Anthony Fauci from Packers former quarterback anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist Aaron Rogers or see Heart Disease the silent killer stalking every cheese curd eating fan. You kind of wonder what fucked up shit Jordan Love is eventually going to do right at this point. So I think it's secret answer D. You know which team has the most players in the Hall of Fame all time? The Bears.

Not the fucking Packers. Right? The Packers who by the way don't even have their own iconic recurring Saturday Night Live sketch. Correct, absolutely. It's D, their biggest enemy is the Hall of Fame. Thank you No Illusions for saying it out loud. Alright, no, I got one for you too. The Packers have the most total regular season wins of any NFL team over the years, with 799. Who is the biggest loser in the history of American football?

Oh, hey, Donald Trump. We're trying to buy the Dallas Cowboys in 1984, because he thought $50 million was a bad deal. The team is now worth about $10 billion. Most valuable professional sports franchise in the world. Wow. Donald Trump for buying a team in the newly created USFL, but then cratering the entire fucking league

by getting them into a big antitrust lawsuit against the NFL. Trump and the USFL technically won that lawsuit, but they got an award of $3. It was actually $1, but it was tripled because of illegal technicality. The USFL folded six days later after that case. See Donald Trump for serving the national champion Clemson Tigers football team a stack of filet-o-fish sandwiches at White House. Oh my god, they actually had filet-o-fish. It wasn't even just the good McDonald's stuff, they actually brought filet-o-fishes. Correct. Or D, filet-o-fishes are the good stuff, they're so yummy.

Or D, Donald Trump, because the history of his business failures, especially in football, is genuinely a whole episode by itself. I'm working on it. All right. All right. I'm going to go with secret answer E, Donald Trump for trying to turn his base against football because of the kneeling thing, but it's his base. So they're like, yeah, man, whatever.

And they kept spending billions on NFL cosplay jerseys and shit. That is correct. All right, Noah, lots of folks out there will say you took a regular old sports story and made it interesting and fun, but Tom and I know you did this for spite against us. So what will my next essay be about as revenge?

Hey, some niche internet fight that nobody but me and a handful of mentally ill millennials still care about. B. A lazy listicle so that I only have to write 10 two-sentence paragraphs. Or C. Shit. Secret answer D. All of the above, which is what you were going to do anyways. Yeah. All right. From time to time, Noah, I run across a story I think you might like to tell and I shoot you a message.

What are my criteria for those referrals? A, it's sports, but accidentally interesting. B, I read a book, but then I didn't take any notes while I read it and I'm too lazy to go back and read it again C. The new Bill Bryson book came out. We can't stop holding hands and squeeing together Secret answer D. When I read this I thought oh god is there a new Bill Bryson book out and I was so fucking disappointed When I didn't and it wasn't. So I definitely lost this week. All right, Tom, that means you are the winner. All right, Cecil. Should I write an essay? Okay. About sports or no?

Should write a different essay, buddy. All right. Do the New Jersey Treskens. All right. Well, for Noah, Tom, Keith and Cecil, I'm Eli Bosnick. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week. And by then, Cecil will be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can listen to Tom and Cecil on cognitive dissonance, Noah, Heath and I on scathing atheists, the skeptic, the scathing atheist, God awful movies and D and D minus. You should listen to it twice. You can get all of the jokes. Did I leave one out? No, you know what it was? I was like there's five shows that I forgot were on one The one I'm missing like when Ross and friends did the same state twice I Tom and I dear dad seesette, Cecil and a guy named Craig.

Cecil and a guy named Craig who is very rudely not on this podcast over at Lawful Assembly. And if you'd like to keep this show going or stop before we start a new podcast, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod or leave us a five starstar review everywhere I can't do talking ship like that dude honestly I wrote talking ship into it We're on a bit of a break Oh ok alright They were on a break like friends I'm the friends reference guy of the podcast

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