When the Dallas Cowboys face the Green Bay Packers in an NFC Divisional Playoff Game this Sunday at Lambeau
Field, one very keen observer will be in attendance.
That observer will be Jerry Kramer, a former Packers great. Talk about a fitting occasion.
Kramer has experience playing the Cowboys in the postseason, having faced them in two NFL Championship Games:
1966 in Dallas at the Cotton Bowl and 1967 at Lambeau Field. The Packers won both of those games.
The second game was the famed “Ice Bowl,” held on December 31, 1967. It was also the Cowboys’ and Packers’ final
playoff game at Lambeau Field.
Kramer, the Packers’ right guard, played an important role in their Ice Bowl triumph over the Cowboys. The game
was called the “Ice Bowl” because the temperature in Green Bay was 13 degrees below zero at the time of the game.
If you add the wind, it was bone-chillingly cold, with a minus-48-degree windchill for the game.
I had another opportunity to speak with Kramer lately, who shared some of his memories from that freezing contest.
Kramer had the advantage of having experience playing in chilly weather.
“I grew up in that kind of weather,” Kramer recalled, recalling his upbringing in northern Idaho. “I remember hunting for ducks once when it was 25 degrees below zero. But in that part of the country, if you didn’t get out and do
things in the winter, you’d go crazy. We learnt to cope with the harsh cold.
