For Him, It Was a Game of Extremes

Until someone proves otherwise, Ralph Neely says he is the answer to this trivia question: “Who played in both the hottest and coldest football games in history?”

Neely, an All-American tackle, played on the Oklahoma team that faced USC in 118-degree heat at the Coliseum in 1963. The Sooners, featuring Joe Don Looney, won the game, 17-12. Neely also played for the Dallas Cowboys in the famed Ice Bowl game at Green Bay in 1967. In 13-below weather, the Packers won the NFL title, 21-17.

Given a choice, Neely said he preferred sweating to freezing.

Recalling the Ice Bowl, he told Frank Luksa of the Dallas Times Herald that the Cowboys had heat blowers on the sideline, but he wasn’t sure they did any good.

“I’d stick my feet in the heaters, but I wouldn’t feel anything,” he said. “When I smelled leather burning, I figured my foot was warm.”

He recalled that Dan Reeves, now the Denver Broncos’ coach, took a vicious hit that shattered his facemask.

“One of his teeth punctured his lip but the wound froze,” Neely said. “It didn’t bleed until he reached the locker room.

“That reminds me of what Don Perkins said at a banquet the year after he retired. When somebody asked him to name his career highlight, he said, ‘When I got to the locker room in Green Bay and got warm.’ ”

Trivia time: What was the only Super Bowl team to gain fewer yards than its opponent yet win the game? Answer below.

Johnny Blood, the charter member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame who died Nov. 28, led a life after football that was more appropriate to his given name, John McNally.

Blood graduated from St. John’s College of Minnesota 26 years after his class had graduated. He later taught economics and history there and wrote a book on Malthusian economics.

Blood also tried politics and ran for sheriff of St. Croix County, Wis., on a campaign that promised honest wrestling.

He lost.

Washington Redskin quarterback Jay Schroeder, telling his reaction when the Toronto Blue Jays asked him to try pitching:

“Pitching is not a position. Pitchers are flakes. Every pitcher I’ve ever met in my life is short upstairs. I think it’s a requirement.”

Clarence Weathers of the Cleveland Browns still wears his New England Patriot jacket around the team’s training facility in suburban Cleveland.

Said Weathers: “I paid good money for this. I’m not about to put it away.”

Trivia answer: The San Francisco 49ers were outgained, 356 yards to 275, by the Cincinnati Bengals in the 1982 Super Bowl, but won, 26-21.

Quotebook

Hayden Fry, coach of the Rose Bowl-bound Iowa Hawkeyes, comparing distractions there with those of Southern California: “In Iowa, you have to drive a 100 miles to see a stop sign.”