“I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle, victorious.”
Vince Lombardi

New Year’s Eve, 1967. Willie Wood, a safety for the Green Bay Packers, left the warmth of his Wisconsin home and stepped into a cold Sunday morning. With the air temperature at -15ºF and the wind chill closer to -50ºF, he wasn’t surprised to learn that his car wouldn’t start. “It’s too cold,” he told a service station attendant.

“They’re going to call this game off.”

Hours later, facing the Dallas Cowboys, Wood and the rest of the Packers made history by winning the 1967 NFL Championship, also known as the “Ice Bowl.” The coldest game in NFL history, it was also one of the best, overshadowing Green Bay’s subsequent Super Bowl II victory with down-to-the-wire action in one of the most storied venues anywhere. With whistles freezing to referees’ lips, several players suffering from post-game frostbite (linebacker Ray Nitschke’s toenails all fell off), and an elderly spectator in the stands actually dying of exposure during play, there’s only one stadium in the country where this game could have happened: Lambeau Field.

“Best place on Earth.”
“A must-see for all football fans.”
“Bucket-list material.”
“If the NFL has a Mecca, this is it.”

And those are the reviews from non-Green Bay fans, posting tributes online. For the home crowd, “Mecca” may not be enough to describe Lambeau, which is more like heaven itself with everyone wanting to get in. The field—famously called “the frozen tundra” in a legendary Ice Bowl documentary—has been sold out every season since 1960, and the wait for season tickets is one of the longest in professional sports. There are nearly 80,000 names on the list, which could amount to hundreds of years of waiting. As only 90 or so season tickets become available each year it’s not uncommon for places in line to appear in last wills, offering the newly departed the consolation that at least someone in the family, in some future generation, will get season tickets. Part of the enthusiasm no doubt comes from the fact that the fans own the team, making the Packers the only technically non-profit, community-owned franchise in U.S. professional sport. With a population of just over 300,000—and considering that Lambeau seats roughly 74,000—it’s safe to say that Green Bay is a football town.

Dedicated Following

Lambeau Field opened in 1957 and was originally called “New City Stadium,” after the facility the Packers had been using. The name change came in 1965 following the death of Earl “Curly” Lambeau, who founded the team in 1919 with $500 from the Indian Packing Company (hence the team name). Lambeau is the first stadium built specifically for an NFL franchise—in the early days, NFL teams often shared fields with baseball teams—and it’s the longest tenured by a single NFL team. Only the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field and the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park have longer residencies. Over the years, seating has been increased from near 32,000 to more than double that. A 2003 renovation also saw expansion of interior facilities, including the addition of five eateries (“Curly’s Pub” is one of the most popular), plus retail outlets and entertainment. Additionally that year, synthetic turf was woven into the real grass on the field to bolster its strength, and a new field heating system was installed. Box seating has been expanded, and there are plans for more this year, along with an improved audio-visual system and heated bleacher areas among the highest seats, which should prove popular—but not necessarily for the reason one might think.

Snow that accumulates in the upper decks is cleared by community volunteers, who shovel it out of the rows and into long chutes placed in the aisles. The snow runs down to the field and is carted away. The hope is that heated bleachers on the upper decks will simply melt the snow, saving hours of cold labor. As for Green Bay’s notorious winters affecting the fans, there’s beer and camaraderie to help weather the cold at Lambeau—all of which is in good supply, as a fan named Jen.S from San Diego found during a stay with the Cheeseheads (as Packers fans are often called).

“Being originally from California, I didn’t know how to dress for a winter game,” she posted on yelp.com, a popular website. “I wore my ski pants, a jacket, and tennis shoes. BIG MISTAKE. The fans seated around me laughed and called me ‘California’ (in a friendly, joking way) because I was way too under-dressed. Soon enough I was FREEZING. One nice man gave me sheets of cardboard to put on the cement under my feet to prevent the ice from freezing my feet through my shoes. Another fan gave me some little bags that you shake and they create instant heat for the hands. Someone also let me use their scarf. I was amazed to see how friendly everyone was in pulling together to help a stranger. When I told them it was my first Packers game they each bought me a beer, and one group invited me to party with them afterwards in the parking lot.”

A Defining Arena

The third-oldest franchise in the NFL (after the Cardinals and the Bears, though neither is in its original city), the Green Bay Packers hold the record for the most league championships with 13, nine before the Super Bowl era. Accordingly, many Packers players and coaches have become stars of the game, not just the team. Founder and first coach Curly Lambeau; Ice Bowl quarterback Bart Starr; modern hero-turned-enigma Brett Favre; and perhaps—following last year’s Super Bowl XLV win—even current quarterback Aaron Rodgers are all bigger than Green Bay. But there’s one Packer who not only eclipsed the town and the team in terms of notoriety, but even the game and perhaps sports itself. We’re talking, of course, about Vince Lombardi.

Hired as Packers head coach in 1959, Lombardi took the team to five world championships in seven years, including victories in the first two Super Bowls. His tough-as-nails leadership, combined with his incredible ability to motivate players, defined the Packers as the team of the 1960s and Lambeau as the toughest arena in the NFL. In addition to winning the Ice Bowl on home turf, Lombardi edited the script for the Packers’ version of the documentary film covering the game, originally written by Steve Sabol. The coach hated the redundancy of a “frozen tundra” reference Sabol had written to describe the playing surface, which had turned to ice following the failure of a newly installed field heating system. In fact, the expensive system had frozen and it’s likely Lombardi didn’t want the malfunction underlined to investors who would later watch the film. In any case, the Cowboys kept the “frozen tundra” reference in their version of the film, and the term is still a popular way to describe Lambeau.

Maxims like “If you can accept losing, you can’t win,” and “If it doesn’t matter who wins or loses, then why do they keep score?” today drive business meetings as well as sports teams, and explain why a life-size statue of Coach Lombardi now stands in front of Lambeau Field, not far from the Packers Hall of Fame (the first built for a specific team).

The Real Deal

Lambeau was built as the first NFL-specific stadium in the country, and it has defined the best parts of the game, perhaps most notably in the 1967 Championship. In that contest, Lambeau set limits that have yet to be approached, showing us all what’s possible at the edges of human performance. Perhaps singularly, no matter how much the world has changed, Green Bay has stayed true to those lessons and to the straightforward nature of football itself. Also veterans of the Ice Bowl, the Dallas Cowboys now play in the most expensive NFL stadium ever built: owner Jerry Jones’ $1.2 billion homage to sports commercialism, which includes, among other things, the world’s largest retractable roof—937 miles south of Green Bay, where it neither snows nor rains that often. The Cheeseheads are fine with that. They’ll keep their open-air Lambeau Field with its hard bleachers, some of the worst winters in the NFL, and the current world champion Green Bay Packers. A game at Lambeau is indeed “bucket-list material,” as a fan of the stadium wrote. Just don’t forget the cardboard for under your feet.