Sunday, January 20, 2008
Cold weather NFL football
I was reading about today’s NFC Championship game between the New York football Giants and the Green Bay Packers perhaps being the coldest game played in NFL history. They say the temperature in Green Bay will be a a balmy 3 degrees tonight at the 5:30 p.m. CST kickoff.
I’ve never been to Green Bay, but I did watch a football game in the brutal cold. On January 15, 1994 I went to Orchard Park, New York to watch my beloved Los Angeles Raiders lose to the Buffalo Bills 29-23. I was in the Air Force and stationed at Griffiss Air Force Base located in upstate New York. The four-letter network shows that it was the 3rd coldest game played in NFL history. They show that the temperature was 0 degrees with a wind chill of minus-32. I remember it being minus-40, but maybe it’s warmed up 8 degrees since then.
It wasn’t just cold, it was alien planet cold.
The worse part about watching a football game in the brutal cold is that you are sitting there in one spot for hours at a time. It’s not like you are moving around. You are just sitting there. No matter how much you bundle up, you are going to get cold. The number of layers of clothing you put on only helps to delay the inevitable. You will eventually get cold and once you do, it’s extremely difficult to get warm.
We had seats on the 2-yard line, 13 rows up from the field. I remember things sounding different in the cold. The Raiders moved the ball and scored a touchdown. They then attempted an extra point. When the kicker’s foot hit that ball, it made a really bizzare sound. It didn’t sound right. It didn’t sound like a foot making contact with a leather football. The ball failed to go through the uprights and instead bounced off the crossbar. It sounded like a cannon ball hitting the metal crossbar.
I remember a retarded Bills fan sitting in end zone seating taking off his clothing from the waist up leaving him exposed to the elements. Security grabbed him fairly quickly and took him off somewhere. I guess he wanted to get on TV.
I bundled up in multiple layers of clothing. I wore my Los Angeles Raiders coat under my Air Force extreme weather parka. I wore sweatpants and long underwear under my pants. I even brought my Air Force cold weather mummy sleeping bag to sit in while watching the game. I’m glad I did.
I remember it took me about 3 days to get fully warm.
The ironic thing about that game was how it contrasted from the last NFL game I had attended. I was at a Raiders game in the Los Angeles Colosseum where they lost to the visiting Browns. The temperature on the field was 100 degrees and I walked away with a nasty sunburn.
Even though the Raiders lost the game, I was glad that I went. It turned out to be Howie Long’s final game. He was always my favorite player.
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