Vince Lombardi Triumphs In His Hometown: The 1962 NFL Title Game

Even most casual sports fans are aware of the 1967 NFL title game, commonly referred to as the Ice Bowl. Played in subzero temperatures at Lambeau Field on New Year’s Eve of 1967, and won by the Green Bay Packers, this game cemented the legacy of Vince Lombardi and gave the Packers their third consecutive NFL championship. Lesser known, but equally important, is the NFL title game of 1962, played in similar conditions at Yankee Stadium and just as important to the Lombardi legacy.

Professional football’s New York Giants had moved from the Polo Grounds to Yankee Stadium in 1956, and immediately began dominating the NFL’s Eastern Conference. The team won the NFL title over the Chicago Bears in 1956 before losing to the Baltimore Colts in the 1958 and 1959 games. Winning brought increased esteem for both the team and its players, with Giants stars like Frank Gifford, Sam Huff, and Charlie Conerly rivaling the Yankees’ Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, and Yogi Berra in popularity. After a third-place finish in 1960, the Giants returned to the title game in 1961, where they were blown out by the Green Bay Packers at New City Stadium (later renamed Lambeau Field), 37-0.

Much of the media attention prior to the game focused on Lombardi. The week of the game, he had graced the cover of Time magazine, under a cover line reading, “The Sport of the 60’s.”1 Lombardi’s New York roots, and five years as a Giants assistant coach, added another wrinkle to the storyline. In fact, Lombardi had seriously considered returning to as head coach before the 1961 season, before opting to remain in Green Bay.2 Nonetheless, the specter of Yankee Stadium and New York hung over the Packers and the title game. Before leaving Green Bay that week, Lombardi had installed a sign above the Packers locker room: “HOME OF THE GREEN BAY PACKERS. THE YANKEES OF FOOTBALL.”3 Pro Football Hall of Famer Jerry Kramer, who played guard and kicked field goals for the Packers in the game, said years later that “Yankee Stadium was hallowed ground, and it was an awesome experience to walk into the stands.”4

Despite the blowout of a year before, the two teams entered the game as virtual equals, and with the two best regular-season records in the NFL. The Packers were playing in their third straight NFL title game, having lost to the Eagles in 1960. The Giants, meanwhile, were making their fifth appearance in seven years. Giants quarterback Y.A. Tittle had split MVP honors for 1962 with Packers fullback Jim Taylor.5 The Giants were eager to avenge their loss from a year before. “It won’t be enough just to win this game,” said defensive end Andy Robustelli. “We have to destroy the Packers and Lombardi. It’s the only way we can atone for what happened to us last year.”6 The Giants were cheered on by 64,892 fans at Yankee Stadium, although a citywide newspaper strike prevented fans from reading about the game, and NFL TV blackout rules kept most local residents from watching it.7

The game-time temperature on December 30, 1962, was 20 degrees. It dipped to single digits in the second half.8 Winds gusted over 40 MPH and created what Jerry Kramer later called “real Green Bay weather.”9 These conditions represented a clear advantage to the Packers, as Tittle and the Giants’ pass-oriented offense were rendered largely ineffective by the heavy winds. “The ball was like a diving duck,” Tittle said after the game. “I threw one pass, and it almost came back to me. The short ones worked, but the long ball broke up. We needed the long one.”10 Tittle ended up with 18 completions in 41 pass attempts, with one interception and no touchdown passes, mediocre numbers even for 1962. In fact, the Giants’ only scoring of the day came on a blocked punt by defensive back Erich Barnes.

The Packers were led on this day by a trio of future Hall of Famers. Fullback Jim Taylor led the team in rushing with 85 yards on 31 carries and scored the team’s only touchdown on a 7-yard run in the second quarter. Taylor battled throughout the day with another Hall of Famer, Giants middle linebacker Sam Huff. Both men enjoyed reputations as hardened, smashmouth players. In 1960 Huff had been the subject of a CBS News special, The Violent World of Sam Huff (hosted by Walter Cronkite). Taylor, for his part, was perhaps the most hated of Packer players and had been booed the loudest by Yankee Stadium fans during pregame introductions.11 Early in the game, after a particularly rough tackle by Huff on the icy surface, Taylor returned to the huddle coughing blood.12 According to one postgame account, “Taylor looked gaunt. He had lost ten pounds. It would not be known until weeks later that he had hepatitis. He bit his tongue and was spitting blood throughout the game, and his gashed elbow had to be stitched up at halftime.”13 Huff expressed admiration for his rival after the game: “Taylor isn’t human. No human being could have taken the punishment he got today … but he kept bouncing up, snarling at us, and asking for more.”14

Equally tough, and equally important to the Green Bay victory, was Jerry Kramer, Taylor’s longtime roommate on the Packers. An All-Pro guard in 1962, Kramer with his blocking helped power the Green Bay rushing attack throughout the game. More importantly, he kicked three field goals and an extra point in the game, having taken over placekicking duties from an injured Paul Hornung. The victory was particularly sweet for Kramer, who had missed the 1961 title game with a broken leg.

Kramer was voted the game ball by his teammates for his performance in the game but missed out on the brand-new Corvette awarded by Sport magazine to the most outstanding player in the championship game.15 That honor belonged to linebacker Ray Nitschke, the anchor of the Packers defense. Nitschke recovered two fumbles in the game and in the first quarter deflected a Tittle pass that was intercepted by Green Bay linebacker Dan Currie. This thwarted the most serious Giants scoring threat of the afternoon. Later that evening, Nitschke celebrated the victory with an appearance on the popular game show What’s My Line?16 Several legendary baseball players had appeared on the show throughout the 1950s, beginning with Phil Rizzuto on the very first episode,17 but Nitschke was the first NFL player. This could only bolster the claim made by Time (in the Lombardi cover issue) that the NFL was the “Sport of the 60’s.”

The Packers’ 16-7 victory represented a turning point for the Giants, the Packers, and the future of the NFL. The game was the first filmed by Blair Motion Pictures, a Philadelphia-area company. Owned and operated by Ed Sabol and his son Steve, Blair soon rebranded itself as NFL Films, a company that “would be responsible for creating the films and television shows that shaped the new mythology of professional football for the rest of the century,” according to Lombardi biographer David Maraniss.18

With several of their key players over the age of 30, the Giants were nearing the end of their golden age. They returned to the title game a year later, losing to the Chicago Bears at Wrigley Field. The subsequent two decades brought ownership turmoil, coach firings, and a seemingly endless string of losing seasons. They did not return to the postseason until 1981. By that time, the Giants had left New York City almost a decade earlier and now resided in the New Jersey Meadowlands. Yankee Stadium never again hosted an NFL title game.

For the Packers, 1963 was a particularly trying season for Lombardi and the team, punctuated by the suspension for gambling of his favorite player, Paul Hornung. The coach was also deeply impacted by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, with whom Lombardi had developed a friendship. The team did not return to the NFL title game until 1965, embarking on a three-year run that culminated with victories in the first two Super Bowls.

In his best-selling biography of Lombardi, Maraniss writes of the aftermath of the 1962 title game: “They were headed home to Green Bay, Lombardi and his family and his Packers, champions once more, best ever, and none of them knew at that moment how much could be lost so soon, a President and a Golden Boy (Hornung) and even a way of life.”19 Lombardi himself was less poetic, referring to the game simply as “football as it should be played.”20 Either way, the 1962 NFL title game remains a singular moment in the history of both Yankee Stadium and the NFL.

A lifelong Yankees fan, DAN NEUMANN lives in Crofton, Maryland, with his wife, son, and dog. With his brother Andrew, he co-hosts the Hello Old Sports podcast on the Sports History Network, covering any and all topics related to sports history from the 1869 Red Stockings to the 1990s NBA. He is a member of SABR and the Professional Football Researchers Association. During the day, he works for the Federal Aviation Administration and teaches part-time for the Boston University Washington Internship Program.

 

NOTES

1 Jack Cavanaugh, Giants Among Men: How Robustelli, Huff, Gifford, and the Giants Made New York a Football Town and Changed the NFL (New York: Random House, 2008), 250.

2 David Maraniss, When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 266-268.

3 Maraniss, 328.

4 Bob Berghaus, The First America’s Team: The 1962 Green Bay Packers (Cincinnati: Clerisy Press, 2011), 12.

5 Taylor had been elected MVP by the Associated Press and Newspaper Enterprise Association, while Tittle had been chosen by the United Press International and The Sporting News.

6 Edward Gruver, Nitschke (Lanham Maryland: Taylor, 2002), 88.

7 Gerald Eskenazi, There Were Giants in Those Days (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1976), 197.

8 Keith Dunnavant, Bart Starr: America’s Quarterback and the Rise of the National Football League (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2011), 140.

9 Jerry Kramer, Farewell to Football (New York: World Publishing Company, 1969), 160.

10 Berghaus, 16.

11 Bud Lea, Magnificent Seven: The Championship Games That Build the Lombardi Dynasty (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2002), 33.

12 Lea, 41.

13 Lea, 41.

14 Lea, 45.

15 Kramer, 162.

16 Gruver, 140.

17 Rob Edelman, “What’s My Line and Baseball?,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 43. No. 2. Fall 2014: 36-41.

18 Maraniss, 330.

19 Maraniss, 334.

20 Berghaus, 20.