The Ice Bowl: The Cold Truth About Football's Most Unforgettable Game [Hardcover]

Ed Gruver (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 25, 1997

In 13-degree-below-zero weather, on New Year's Eve 1967, a classic NFL championship game was played between the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers. This book details the story of this game and the history of two famous coaches--Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry--and the coaching philosophies that made them and their teams legends.

Editorial Reviews

Review

An insightful, bone-chilling replay of pro-football's greatest game. The Ice Bowl captures all the chilling drama and finally gives Ken Bowman his share of pro football's most famous block. (Gordon Forbes, Pro Football Editor, USA Today -- Gordon Forbes, Pro Football Editor, USA Today

From the Publisher

Movie Premieres on ESPN December 13th, 2003 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: McBooks Press (September 25, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0935526382
• ISBN-13: 978-0935526387
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #657,686 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must for fans of football played outdoors in winter., November 28, 1997

By 

Erik Arneson (Harrisburg, PA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Ice Bowl: The Cold Truth About Football's Most Unforgettable Game (Hardcover)

This book is a tremendous recap of The Ice Bowl and the game's participants. Tons of interviews, plenty of graphics and photos, and a great sportwriter to pull it all together. It's obvious Gruver loves the subject matter. As a lifelong Packers fan, I found this to be a fantastic book -- and so did my Dad, another lifelong Packers fan. Highly recommended!

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Essence of Football, January 16, 2000

By 

Chuck Turley (Lewiston, Idaho) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ice Bowl: The Cold Truth About Football's Most Unforgettable Game (Hardcover)

A wonderful book. Ed Gruver recaps this game with thirty years of perspective, and he does it right. It's well written, with comprehensive background information and game detail. The appendix has all the pertinent statistics you could want, including a play-by-play compilation.

Gruver is not biased toward the Packers. He pays richly deserved respect to the Cowboy players and coaches. The Cowboys were a "warm weather" team that might have been expected to fold their tent when faced with the severe cold, but, like the Packers, they gave everything they had on that day.

I don't see much to criticize in this book. Maybe Phil Bengtson's family would like to have seen his name spelled correctly. I'd prefer to see more discussion of the historical significance of the game, but Gruver probably thinks of himself as a reporter and not as a historian.

Not being bound by such modesty, I'll do it for him.

The greatest games in modern NFL history are:

(5) 1998 Bronco-Packer Super Bowl. (4) 1982 49er-Cowboy NFC Title Game. (3) 1969 Jet-Colt Super Bowl. (2) 1958 Giant-Colt NFL Title Game. (1) The Ice Bowl.

An epic game should have three qualities: it should effectively decide a championship, it should be historically significant (usually by signifying a changing of the guard or a change in the way the game is played), and the game action should be unforgettable. The Ice Bowl combines these qualities better than any other game.

It marked an end to the dominance of the "old" NFL and provided a glimpse of the complex offensive and defensive schemes to come. It matched two of the five greatest coaches in NFL history. No game was more dramatic; the cold weather and frozen field gave it a sense of primeval struggle. I feel that the title "Greatest Game Ever" as applied to the '58 Championship Game has been inflated by the well-known power of eastern media. The Ice Bowl deserves that title.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Real Deal, February 6, 2002

By 

Daniel (Dallas, TX, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ice Bowl: The Cold Truth About Football's Most Unforgettable Game (Hardcover)

The year 1997 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the 1967 NFL Championship game between the Packers and the Cowboys. Two book were published around that time. One was by Mike Shropshire and the other was by Ed Gruver. Of the two books, Gruver's is superior. It looks briefly at the coaches, the organizations, the seasons, and then devotes the lion's share of the book to the actual game. Especially helpful were the diagrams of key plays that occurred during the game. The book devotes a chapter to each quarter. In addition to the players and coaches, the author looks at the game from sportscasters and referees. The author also covers issues that Shropshire ignored. For example: was Jerry Kramer offsides on the winning TD and did Donny Anderson score on the previous play. The author also does a good job on covering the discussion of possible plays that could be called on the final play. The Shropshire book was not bad, but this one wins hands down.