NFL football is a sport for tough men, a violent clash of modern gladiators who risk serious injury to be highly paid cogs in a punishing spectacle. But this is another level.
The Green Bay Packers and San Francisco 49ers will play a frigid NFL playoff game Sunday at Green Bay's iconic Lambeau Field (above) amid an epic "polar vortex" cold front that's expected to bring "life-threatening" temperatures to the Midwest. It could even end up being the coldest game in NFL history.
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The NFC wild-card matchup kicks off at 4:40 p.m. EST, just about an hour before sunset time in Wisconsin. The National Weather Service forecasts steady temperatures around 4 degrees Fahrenheit for most of the day, but says a wind chill could plummet the effective temperature to a bone-numbing -15 degrees. Sunday night, meanwhile, is expected to bring lows of -15 degrees Fahrenheit and wind chills of as low as -45 degrees. The Packers-49ers game will end well after dark.
A 1967 playoff game — also at Lambeau and immortalized in football lore as the "Ice Bowl" — currently holds the NFL record for coldest game ever. Temperatures during that game dropped as low as -13 degrees Fahrenheit, with a wind chill of -48 degrees, according to the league. A 1982 playoff game in Cincinnati dubbed the "Freezer Bowl" featured a temperature of -9 degrees Fahrenheit, as well as a stunning wind chill of -59 degrees.
Here, via historian Michael Beschloss, is a photo of fans braving the Ice Bowl of 1967:
Here crowd at Lambeau Field @packers v @dallascowboys December 1967 Ice Bowl, in minus 13 degrees cold: #AP pic.twitter.com/Fr2q0yIZfx
— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) January 5, 2014
NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy told Mashable that there is no set temperature threshold below which the NFL would postpone or reschedule a game. So, no matter how cold it gets, they'll play NFL football on Sunday in Green Bay.
"We monitor every game but we have never had to delay or postpone a game because it was too hot or too cold," he said in an email. "Looks like today’s game in Green Bay will be among the coldest games, but certainly not the coldest. There was no discussion of altering the day or start of the game."
You can blame the cold front on a rare "polar vortex" weather system that lets Arctic air sit undisturbed in northern Canada, where it becomes progressively more and more chilly before flowing south through the rest of Canada and into the United States. The NWS has issued a warning for "life-threatening" temperatures in the northern Midwest, saying frost bite can occur in as little as 10 minutes under such conditions.
So how might the extreme weather affect play on the field Sunday? It's impossible to predict. Logic dictates the tough circumstances would make it harder for the Packers and 49ers to move the ball through the air or via tricky finesse plays, reducing the game to a low-scoring, grind-it-out affair. But the NFL's two coldest games on record weren't particularly low-scoring: The Packers won the '67 Ice Bowl by a score of 21-17, while the Bengals won the '82 Freezer Bowl by a score of 27-7.
Either way, one thing is certain: Sunday's sub-zero matchup reflects the vagaries of NFL playoff positioning. The Packers won home field advantage for the game by winning the NFC North division with an overall record of eight wins, seven losses and one tie. The 49ers finished second in the NFC West, but had a better overall record of 12 wins and four losses. If playoff seeding were determined by which team had the better record rather than awarded to a team that won a weaker division, the game would be taking place in San Francisco, not Green Bay.
And Sunday's forecast in San Francisco? A sunny 68 degrees Fahrenheit.
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Image: Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images