King Kaufman's Sports Daily

The new ice bowls cometh: Sunday's NFL playoff games, especially in Green Bay, will be cold, nasty, miserable and ugly. Yeah!

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Jan. 15, 2008 | Get ready for Ice Bowl II. Weather forecasts for Sunday's NFC Championship Game between the New York Giants and Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field all say the same thing: Cold!

Weather.com has a game-specific forecast that calls for a high temperature of 12 degrees Fahrenheit and a low of 5, with 12 mph winds. That translates to a wind-chill factor of about minus-2 degrees.

The Web site has something called a "Spectator Index," which expresses "how comfortable conditions will be" in a single number on a scale of 1-10. Ten is excellent, 9 and 8 very good and so on, down to 1, which is "Very Poor." The Spectator Index forecast for Sunday: 1.

But not if you're watching it on TV.

The funniest thing about the argument that the NFL has to keep the Super Bowl in balmy climates or domes because championships shouldn't be decided by the elements is that it's often made by the very same people who experience paroxysms of nostalgic nirvana at the mention of the Ice Bowl, the legendary NFL Championship Game played at Lambeau Field on Dec. 31, 1967, when men were men, football was football and it is wasn't yet what it is.

When the Packers beat the Dallas Cowboys 21-17 to earn a trip to the second Super Bowl -- at the time a lesser event than the NFL Championship Game -- the game-time temperature was well below zero and the wind-chill was more like minus-50 degrees. And that game is considered one of the greatest ever played. There are probably 2 million people who have, at one time or another, claimed to have been in the stands that day. I'll bet half of them believe it.

Accuweather forecasts a low of 3 degrees Fahrenheit Sunday night, with a "RealFeel" -- the site's version of wind-chill factor -- of minus 13. For the verbal among you: "Mostly cloudy and bitterly cold" for Sunday, a resigned, sighing "Cloudy and cold" for the evening, when the 5:30 p.m. CST game will be played.

Next page: "You hit somebody with your helmet, and it rings." Plus: Yankees-Santana watch