Before Super Bowl, NFL Championship games always played in cold

Vernon Biever/Vernon Biever/WireImage.com

The Packers thrash the Giants in 1961, playing in 21-degree weather with 10 mph winds at City Stadium in Green Bay.

Super Bowl XLVIII is guaranteed to be the coldest ever played, because when the idea for the ultimate contest was hatched, then-commissioner Pete Rozelle, Los Angeleno that he was, decided it should be played in optimum conditions.

But, for more than 30 years prior and with a few exceptions, the champion of professional football had almost always been crowned in the unkind elements of the East Coast and Midwest teams who made up the leagues. To win it all back then, you had to endure it all, with none of the modern conveniences the Broncos and Seahawks will use to battle the chill of February in New Jersey.

Here's a look back at four of the more memorable pre-Super Bowl games:

1934: GIANTS 30, BEARS 13 NFL Championship Game at Polo Grounds: 'To the heroes of antiquity, to the Greek who raced across the Marathon plain, and to Paul Revere, add now the name of Abe Cohen.'

Those words of sportswriter Lewis Burton appeared in the New York American, immortalizing what would be forever known as the 'Sneakers Game.' Cohen neither bulled across the goal line nor threw a rare forward pass nor booted a field goal for the Giants that frigid Sunday afternoon. A slighty-built (5-0, 140) tailor with a pencil-thin mustache, he stitched together the Manhattan College uniforms on Saturday and helped out in the Giants' clubhouse on Sundays. Most importantly, he had a key to the Jaspers' locker room and the stash of sneakers it held.

Many think Cohen was sent on his mission at halftime, after the burly Bears, 13-0 during the regular season, had skated their way to a 10-3 lead. It had actually taken him the entire time to hail a taxi to and from the Riverdale section after Giants owner Jack Mara had checked things out in the morning to find the field a sheet of ice with the tarp sticking to it. That's when Giants captain Ray Flaherty suggested to coach Steve Owen they wear sneakers, remembering how his Gonzaga team wore them to beat Montana on a frozen field in 1925.

Having knocked the locks off several lockers, Cohen appeared in the Giants' dressing room with nine pair of rubber-soled footwear that might as well have been Mercury's winged sandals. Told the Giants were changing into them, Bears coach George Halas growled, 'Good. Step on their toes.'

But you can't stomp what you can't catch. Ken Strong zipped past sliding defenders for two TDs, one of 42 yards. Ed Danowski added another and the Giants, an 8-5 team in the regular season and a 23-21 loser at muddy Wrigley Field in the league's first-ever title game a year earlier, had pulled off a shocker for the ages.

1948: EAGLES 7, CARDINALS 0 NFL Championship Game at Shibe Park, Philadelphia: A year earlier, the Cardinals had won the NFL title by defeating the Eagles, 28-21, on a frozen field at Comiskey Park.

How cold was it?

'It was Chicago. It's always cold,' says 92-year-old Charley Trippi, the fleet running back who, in tennis shoes, had TD runs of 4 and 75 yards against an eight-man line designed to stop him.

But if the footing was fragile that year, it was almost impossible the next when a storm dumped a foot of snow on Philly. The players had to help the grounds crew remove the snow-laden tarp off the field - 'We didn't get paid for it. We should have gotten minimum wage,' Trippi notes - but the white stuff soon piled up on the playing surface. No one could see the yard markers while a three-foot wall of snow marked the boundaries.

'It just wasn't a contest. It should have been postponed because the fans got cheated. They saw a terrible football game,' Trippi said. 'We got cheated, too. I don't even like thinking back to it.'

Trippi and backfield mate Elmer Angsman were handicapped as deceptive-type runners. Steve Van Buren was a power back who plowed his way to 98 yards and the game's only TD after the Eagles recovered a third-quarter fumble at the 17. He thought the footing was perfect compared to the previous year when he slipped and fell twice coming out of the huddle.

Van Buren almost didn't make the game because he thought it would be called off. Coach Greasy Neale phoned to make sure he was coming. Van Buren took a bus, two subways and walked the last seven blocks to the stadium. He'd leave the snowy field with some of the 28,864 fans carrying him off on their shoulders. Supposedly, they had received discounted tickets if they brought a snow shovel.

1961: PACKERS 37, GIANTS 0 NFL Championship Game at City Stadium, Green Bay: It was 21 degrees with 10 mph winds when the Giants ran into their old coach, Vince Lombardi. The Giants tried wearing sneakers in the pregame, then switched back to cleats. It didn't matter.

'The Giants were more concerned about the weather than anything else,' said Packer captain Bill Forester at the time. 'They came with tennis shoes, gloves and scarfs. We just came to play.'

It was a rout, with Y.A. Tittle having his worst day as a Giant: 6-of-20 for 65 yards with four interceptions.

Paul Hornung, who was sprung from Army duty at Fort Riley, Kan., after Lombardi phoned President Kennedy, tells a story told to him by Charlie Conerly, Tittle's backup that day.

'He's sitting over on the bench and he's freezing his ass off. In the third quarter when they're trailing 37-0, Tittle went over to Charlie and said, 'You want to take a couple of series?' And he said, 'No, YAT, you've taken us this far, you take us the rest of the way.''

1962: PACKERS 16, GIANTS 7 NFL Championship Game at Yankee Stadium: Heated benches? Ha. Not in the last championship game to be played in the New York area before Supe XLVIII. At 13 degrees and with winds blowing up to 40 mph, strong enough to rip apart the American flag, players were warming their hands over fires burning in metal trash cans. The hitting was just as primitive, particularly when Giants linebacker Sam Huff met Packer fullback Jim Taylor, who paid the price for the Packers' title with each of his then-playoff record 31 carries.

'I was the designated hitter,' Huff said a few years back. 'I hit him so hard, I dented my helmet and it's in the Hall of Fame. Knocked him out, knocked me out too. I got up and I was dizzy and I asked, 'Where's Taylor?' And they said, 'We think he swallowed his tongue.''

Taylor did bite his tongue - he also needed six stitches at halftime to fix a cut on his arm. Legend has it he snarled at the Giants to keep hitting him harder.

'That's a myth,' Taylor said. 'I just wanted to line up and bring it to them, that's all. Bring it on and get it on. That's how you earn your pay.'

'The winds were God-awful. It was a brutal game,' says Packer great Jerry Kramer, who was aiming 10 yards to the side on his three field goals. 'Huff beat the crap out of Jimmy. We were coming home on the plane. There'd be a lounge at the back of the plane and about eight or 10 of us would get back there and drink beer, play poker. Jimmy was one of us. We get on the plane. It takes a while to warm things up, but everyone else has got their jackets off, shirt sleeves. Jimmy . . . he's got his top coat on and he's still shaking. He'd reach for a card and his hand was shaking.'

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