Giants, Pats endure cold, advance to Super Bowl

The frigid temperature at Lambeau Field was the story during Sunday's NFC championship. AP

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THE TUNDRA, Wisc. -- I had a clear view of Lambeau Field as night fell on Green Bay Saturday, maybe 500 yards from my fourth floor room at the Cambria Suites hotel. And the sight reminded me of a story from the Ice Bowl -- maybe urban legend, I don't know -- of a Dallas player on Sunday morning, Dec. 31, 1967, before the NFL Championship Game, placing a cup of coffee on the window sill of his hotel room, and going to drink it a few minutes later. Frozen.

I decide to do my own test. I place an unopened can of LaCroix sparkling water on the window sill of my room. The Weather Channel had predicted minus-34 wind-chill temperatures for daybreak Sunday. I figure: Modern, new hotel. Thick glass. New insulation. And the room's heating unit is directly below the sill. There's no way the LaCroix is going to freeze overnight.

Way.

Sunday, at 7:25 a.m. Central Time, I pop the top of the LaCroix, take a swig, and semi-coagulated chunks of ice come through the hole. Then nothing. Frozen.

A little later, I see Ed Werder on ESPN doing the first report of the day. I've known Ed for a long time, and he's about as smooth and unruffled a guy -- on TV and in life -- as you'll ever find. And he looked like his face was frozen.

Ed has to do this for a living (a good living, to be sure). But there were scores of people -- I met four of them -- who had no intention of going to the game. They were simply dressed in hunting outfits, layer upon layer of them, and planned to spend the day in the parking lot grilling and drinking and, in some cases, throwing the football around. Happily. Amazing.

I visited with Green Bay coach Mike McCarthy on Saturday, and he told me the story of how he put the team's practice footballs in a freezer. They practiced with the frozen balls last week. And one of the physical plant guys at the stadium asked him if he wanted to put up a net in the stadium's walk-in freezer, the one where all the frozen food sold for game day is stored. The fellow said the freezer is set to minus-10 degrees, and the kickers could feel what it was going to be like Sunday. McCarthy said no, he didn't think it was necessary.

It got me to thinking: It was colder than the inside of a walk-in freezer Sunday. Forty-five minutes after the game, I stood at Osi Umenyiora's locker, and as he answered my questions, his teeth were chattering slightly. What we may have seen was a survival-of-the-fittest game, but it was also a tremendous football game, with lots of skilled plays by lots of skilled players.

"I'm amazed,'' I said to Ahmad Bradshaw, the Giants' terrific rookie running back, "that you guys performed well, and with poise, on a day that part of you must have dreaded being out there.''

"Cold weather lasts for three hours,'' said the kid who sounded wise beyond his years. "This championship lasts a lifetime.''

That sounds so much like a Patriot speaking, doesn't it? That's the interesting part of this Super Bowl matchup. Here's Ahmad Bradshaw, a 21-year-old kid, and he speaks as if Tom Coughlin (or Bill Belichick, for that matter) wrote his quotes. You're not going to see two more disciplined teams at this time of year than the Patriots and the Giants, and it's a direct reflection of their coaches.

Even after the Patriots won the AFC Championship Sunday, and Belichick was asked to reflect on what an accomplishment it was in this day and age to go unbeaten for that long, he wouldn't take the bait. "There will be a time and a place to reflect on it,'' he said. But not now.

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