Lawrence Tynes celebrates his game-winning field goal. (Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)

“I just wanted to get out of the cold. I think I was inside before it went through. I knew it was good.”

—NY Giant kicker Lawrence Tynes on his winning field goal in the NFC Championship game in overtime that beat the Green Bay Packers for a trip to the Super Bowl.

Often the NFC and AFC Championship games are some of the best NFL football games of the season. They’re often better games than subsequent Super Bowls. This year, the hype of the game, the quarterbacks, the Giant road wins, the almost unbelievable season the Packers had, all were eclipsed by the hype…of the weather. All week before the game, weather forecasters around the country were talking about the first major Artic Air plunge into the U.S. of the winter, bringing with it single digit highs and barbaric wind chills to the midwest, just in time for the weekend.

Great. Just another day at the office for sports photographers.

The Getty Images crew for the NFC Championship game in Green Bay, photographers Jed Jacobsohn of San Francisco, Jonathan Ferrey of Portland, Jamie Squire of Kansas City and myself of Cheeseland by way of Chicago, and Los Angeles-based editors Christian Peterson and Maxx “Packer Boy” Wolfson, got a taste of what we were in for on Saturday night. We walked two and a half blocks from the hotel in downtown Milwaukee to Mo’s restaurant for dinner. It was 4 degrees and the wind was howling. A less than ten minute walk seemed like ten hours.

All week before the game, I fielded phone calls and e-mails from friends, family and co-workers about the game and surviving the weather. My good friend Chris Covatta called from Austin, Texas to commiserate. Chris and I had shot many a cold game in the past including a Bears-Packers game in Green Bay in the early 90’s when the temperature at the noon kick-off was 12 degrees. “I’ll thinking of you, buddy. I’ll be watching the game in front of the fireplace, eating a bowl of chili and drinking a beer.” Hey, thanks for that, ya two-bit slop artist.

I also talked to my boss in Los Angeles, Brandon Lopez, and told him I’d be expensing almost $30 worth of hand, body and toe warmers for the photographers. “JD, it’s 70 here today…just beautiful.” As Daffy Duck once said, “Thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin.” (Not what I really said.)

On the drive up to Green Bay the photographers watched the outside temperature gage on the dashboard of my car. It was 5 degrees when we left Milwaukee. Went it got to 0, the boys started taking pictures. Jonathan Ferrey grabbed his camera phone and sent a picture to his wife. At some point during the two hour drive, we all got phone calls from friends and family from around the country, all wondering the same thing. What’s the temperature and how were we going to survive? We all talked at length about it but when we got to the exit at Lombardi Drive in Green Bay, Jed Jacobsohn became obsessed with trying to figure a way out of shooting the game. “Can’t we just turn around and go back?” he lamented. Fat chance.

The temperature gage hits zero on the way to Green Bay. (Photo by Jamie Squire)

We parked and walked about 100 yards to the media will-call window to pick-up our credentials. We hustled back, jumped back into my car and the real cussing began. It was cold. Damn cold. To quote singer Tom Waits, it was “colder than the ticket takers’ smile at the IBar Theatre on a Saturday night.” After sitting there for ten or 15 minutes, I turned to the crew. “Guys, we’ve got to go into the stadium at some point.” There was no putting off the reality of the day.

Jonathan Ferrey, Jonathan Daniel and Jed Jacobsohn prepare to enter the “Frozen Tundra” of Lambeau Field. (Photo by Jamie Squire)

The first order of business was to go out and shoot “fan features.” The fans are completely nuts in Green Bay before, during and after the games. Lambeau Field may have the best tailgating of any stadium in the country. They were out in force, but there were many more tents set up than I had ever seen in the parking lot. Maybe these fans weren’t as nuts as I thought after all. A quick walk proved that…they were.

A tailgater in the Lambeau Field parking lot wears shorts. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

It took us about a half and hour to get completely dressed for the game. I spent a lot of time thinking about Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to reach the summit of Mount Everest, who had just died a week or so before. How in the world did he survive 30 below tempetures at over 27,000 feet in 1953 without proper outwear, Gortex wind and rain breaker clothing and…HAND and TOE WARMERS!? Packer fans are normal. THAT guy was nuts. Believe me, we used up almost all of those warmers too. We put them every place that we could put them to help us stay warm: in our gloves, outer coat pockets, near our spare camera batteries, in our boots on our feet and toes.

Eli Manning of the Giants celebrates winning the NFC Championship. (Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)

Eli Manning does an impression of his brother Peyton as he calls a play against the Packers. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

Brett Favre of the Packers blows cold air as he watches the replay screen during the game. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

In one of the few moments they had to celebrate, Brett Favre jumps into the arms of teammate Scott Wells after throwing a pass to Donald Driver for a touchdown. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

Crazy Packers fans pose the question: Do these guys have wives? (Photo by Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images)

For the record: At kickoff, the temperature was -1 with a -23 wind chill. By the overtime, it was -3 with a -24 wind chill. Felt pretty much the same from beginning to end. Cold. It was the second coldest game ever played at Lambeau Field, the coldest being the 1967 “Ice Bowl” Championship game between the Packers and the Cowboys. (And NO, I WASN’T shooting that game. I was just a kid. Really.) The temperature for that game was -13 and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the wind chill was -46. As we all know, no one even knew what “wind chill” was in those days, much less talked about it. Frankly, I wish they wouldn’t talk about it now, either.

Members of the New York Giants take turns taking pictures of their teammates with the George S. Halas Championship trophy in the locker room. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

The game was exciting, especially for the estimated 53.9 million people watching from the comfort of their homes, in front of their fireplaces, eating chili and drinking beer. The Chicago Tribune reported that it was the most-watched title game since Dallas-San Francisco in 1995 and “attracted the most viewers for a non-Super Bowl game since the series final of ‘Seinfeld’ in 1998.” The Packers were doomed by 29 yards of rushing for the entire game, an off-day for Grandpa Brett Favre and a Giant team that didn’t back down from the weather or the Packers. The game was tied 20-20 the entire 4th quarter. Giant kicker Lawrence Tynes missed two field goals in that quarter, the last of which with no time on the clock that sent the game into overtime. Just what we wanted. Over-damn-time in that weather. I almost went from my position on the Packer side of the field to the Giant side of the field to whack that dude in the head with my monopod. He saved himself a beating by hitting the game-winner less than three mintues into the overtime. I was tasked with shooting the trophy ceremony which thankfully was held inside the Giant locker room. Unfortunately, my cameras were completely fogged up once I got inside the heat and party of the locker room. I scraped frost off of my lens and kept shooting and managed to get some nice moments.

We survived. And I really don’t think it was the worst game in terms of cold weather that I have ever worked. I can think of 3 or 4 games just within the last few years where I felt worse. My only regret is that Getty friends couldn’t have stayed over for a few days. I would have invited them over to my house, gave them a lesson on how to operate a two-stage, 7 speed snow blower, and had them take turns clearing the 7 inches of snow we got Monday off my driveway, sidewalks and patio…in 10 degree weather, with a wind chill of -14. I, of course, would have stayed by the fireplace, had a bowl of chili and drank a beer while they worked. A winter fantasy, to be sure.

“Oh ya hey dere, my beer froze, fer crimmie sakes!!!” (Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 3:56 am and is filed under Football, Green Bay Packers, NFC Championship, NFL, New York Giants, Uncategorized, photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.