A Raccoon Coat, A Flask And Thou Beside Me

Football is the one game that defies nature. No matter what the weather—be it heat wave, hurricane or blizzard—the show always goes on. The football fan, too, is unique in the face of the elements. He has his shirtsleeves for the sun, an umbrella or a Burberry for the rain and as for the snow...well, through the years he has discovered that a raccoon coat and a well-filled flask are more than ample protection against the most biting blizzard. Football in the snow is such an absorbing spectacle that the attendant discomforts actually offer a somewhat masochistic pleasure.

Perhaps the most memorable snow game in recent years, was staged between Ohio State and Michigan at Columbus in 1950, the winner to go to the Rose Bowl. The snow was so deep by the second half that the players came out wearing sneakers and gloves with holes cut for their fingers. Stadium attendants shoveled snow from the field during time-outs, and several times the ball was actually lost in swirling drifts at the sidelines.

A snowstorm softens the usually vibrant sounds that rise from a stadium on an autumn afternoon and lends a dreamlike quality to the action on the field. Clouds of snowflakes blanketing the players seem to lessen the impact of the tackle, tug at the pace of action until it seems to occur in slow motion. Photographer Marvin Newman captured this feeling in color when Dartmouth met Princeton at Palmer Stadium for the Ivy League championship in the final game of the 1957 season. Though Dartmouth was favored, no one had counted on snow, in which strategy and skill so often disappear in the snowflakes. The result in this contest was that Dartmouth suffered its only loss of the season, 34-14; and Princeton, though twice beaten, won the Ivy crown.

Princeton Tailback Dan Sachs floats uncertainly through the Dartmouth line, seemingly unaware of the danger near by.

Ghostly snowflakes soften the raw, brute power of a line ready to spring, and blur the fleeting moment of freedom of a charging back

The try for the extra point seems unreal, somehow, as the spanking sound of leather against leather is absorbed in a fairyland of white