Sunday Football Madness

From the December 3, 1963 issue of LOOK magazine in a story titled, “Sunday Football Madness.” Caption: “Sam Huff attempts to unscrew the head of Green Bay’s Jim Taylor, as hooded opponents admire his resolve.” This was during the 1962 NFL Championship game between the Packers and the Giants at Yankee Stadium, a game played on December 30, 1962. 

Also from the same story and issue, a photo that I don’t believe we’ve seen before — the scene on the frozen field after the game ended with Green Bay’s second title under Head Coach Vince Lombardi.

The '62 NFL title game figured to be a much tougher test against the Giants, who wanted to show their fans in New York that the game the year before was an aberration (the Packers had clobbered the Giants 37-0 in Green Bay). Yankee Stadium was also a homecoming for Lombardi, as he was a New York City native and was an assistant coach for the Giants from 1954-1958.

One thing that many people don’t know is how cold it was in New York that day. During the contest it became so cold due to wind chill that a cameraman filming the game suffered frostbite, and television crews used dugout bonfires to thaw out their cameras. One broadcaster later described the weather as “barbaric.” 

Were the conditions at the '62 NFL title game comparable to the fabled “Ice Bowl?” “You know, they were very similar,” guard and placekicker Jerry Kramer said. “Vince Lombardi Jr. and I were talking about it years later, and Vince Jr. thought the Giants game was colder than the 1967 championship, played in Green Bay on December 31 of that year. Vince Jr. was at both games, too. It was just a bitter cold day. The wind was sharp and biting.”

The cold conditions favored the Packers who used a run-oriented offense led by Taylor, while the Giants featured a more pass-heavy offense led by quarterback Y. A. Tittle who had passed for 3,224 yards and 33 touchdowns in the regular season.

GAME QUOTES:

“I don't remember ever being hit so hard. I bled all game. They really came to play.”

— Packers fullback Jim Taylor, who rushed for 85 yards on 31 carries in the game.

“That was the hardest football game I ever played in.”

— Packers halfback Paul Hornung

“It was the coach's backyard and his first time back in the big city in a playoff game. We knew how much it meant to him. There was considerable pressure and we understood it was going to be a substantial battle.”

— Guard and placekicker Jerry Kramer

“We're still the better team.”

— Giants halfback Frank Gifford

The photos above appeared in the magazine pictured here. It also featured a cover story about President Kennedy and his son John-John. Kennedy had recently been assassinated on November 22, 1963.

1962 Championship Game and the New York Newspapers Strike

When the Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants played the 1962 NFL Championship game in a frigid Yankee Stadium on December 30, 1962, there was no newspaper coverage in New York City itself. Why? Well, this story should explain it. As a quick background for our younger readers, sixty years ago newspapers ruled the roost of news coverage. Radio was perhaps second, and the newer medium of television... you can read about that below. (Note: pictured above is the western edition of The New York Times’ coverage of the Packers’ second NFL title in a row — click on the image to read in much a larger size).

A little more than two hours after midnight on December 8, 1962, hundreds of printers walked away from their clattering Linotype machines and their rumbling presses and departed en masse from The New York Times’s block-long composing room, on West 43rd Street. Everything they deemed essential — typewriters, adding machines, a public-address system, manila folders stuffed with union documents — was packed into cardboard boxes and carted away to strike headquarters, in Greenwich Village. The printers, most of them second-generation Irish, Italian, and Jewish men in their 40s, belonged to Local No. 6 of the International Typographical Union (I.T.U.), a confederation better known by its historic nickname, “Big Six.” The Times was shut down, and within hours so was every other major newspaper in New York City.

One of the most dramatic and vexing strikes in American history was under way. The showdown of 1962-63 pitted around 17,000 newspaper employees — pressmen, photoengravers, paper handlers, reporters, elevator operators, office boys — against the owners and publishers of seven New York City newspapers, who were determined to curtail the influence of Big Six and nine other clamorous unions. Over the next 114 days, 600 million newspapers would go unprinted; newspaper-obsessed New Yorkers would be forced to navigate their metropolis without them.

At its core, the New York newspaper strike was a battle over technology. The 1950s and 1960s saw the emergence of computerized typesetting systems that would revolutionize the newspaper composing room. Newspapers that prohibited unions, such as the Los Angeles Times, rushed to install cutting-edge computers such as the RCA 301. Newspapers with union contracts, including those in New York City, faced tempestuous resistance from labor leaders, who could easily see that automation would cost jobs.

Today, new technology is shaken American newspapers as the internet drains away more and more advertising revenue. Cities with dailies may soon face a newspaper blackout much darker than what New York experienced a half-century ago. For a brief period, New York was a laboratory that demonstrated what can happen when newspapers vanish.

In March 8, 1963, at the Commodore Hotel, the stalemate was finally broken, thanks in large part to the indefatigable exertions of the mayor’s chief labor negotiator. A joint expiration date for the union contracts, a weekly wage increase of $12.63; a shorter workweek; and an open-ended pledge from the publishers that the unions would share in the financial savings from Teletypesetter machines — which the publishers got the right to install, a crucial early step in the modernization of composing rooms. The 1963 contract saddled the New York publishers with millions of dollars in new costs, and the Times and the Herald Tribune were immediately forced to raise their price from a nickel to a dime. The New York market never really recovered from the great strike. A couple of months after its conclusion, New York daily circulation was down 10 percent from pre-strike levels. Later in the year, Hearst’s New York Mirror expired, and eventually the New York Herald Tribune, the New York World Telegram & Sun, and the New York Journal-American joined the Mirror on the heap.

Print’s loss was television’s gain. During the 1962-63 strike, many newspaper readers shifted their loyalty to the television, permanently. Local TV news stations sensed an opportunity and grabbed it.