The day before Georgia Tech faced the Air Force Academy Falcons at Falcon Field in November, 1978, was sunny and clear, in the 50s. Tech radio engineer and producer John Kramer toured the campus on that gorgeous day, the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains in sight, most spectacularly Pikes Peak. “We toured the fieldhouse,” he said “which blew me away, then the huge cathedral.” Designed with spaces for several religious traditions, the cathedral, a popular Colorado tourist attraction, features seventeen 150-foot-tall, glass and aluminum spires that jut dramatically to the sky. Sunlight filters through colorful stained glass. Granite front steps lead to glistening aluminum doors with a golden finish. Kramer, a former Air Force cadet, said, “It was stunning and beautiful. I was so damn proud.” He strolled the campus with no thought of the weather.
Tech head coach Pepper Rodgers, an Air Force quarterbacks coach early in his career, warned players not to look past the 3-6 Falcons to season-ending contests against formidable foes Notre Dame and Georgia. Military academy teams play hard and intelligent football, are disciplined, and won’t give up. He said they will have plenty of oxygen on the sideline to cope with the thin-air altitude of 6,035 feet (compared to Atlanta’s oxygen-rich 738). Constitution reporter David Davidson said when he walked from the press box down to the field, he had to pause to breathe deeply. Eddie Lee Ivery felt it, too. “I couldn’t get my breath,” he said. (According to Air Force assistant coach Dick Ellis, that’s what the home team wanted. When the visiting team left their locker room to enter the field, an ominous sign declared, “Welcome to Air Force, Altitude 6,035 Feet.”) Tech were well prepared for the conditions, Rodgers assured them.
Tech radio color commentator Kim King settled into his hotel room then went for a jog, admiring the Rockies, and thought, “Tomorrow is going to be a beautiful football day.” Trainer Ken Smith recalled flying to Denver and switching to a small plane. The pilot said not to worry about the Colorado Springs weather. A pilot would know, right? When Tech conducted Friday’s walk-through on the field, Rodgers chatted with Ellis and commented on the sparkling weather. Ellis warned him the weather sometimes changes drastically day to day. Rodgers joked, “Don’t you let any bad weather come in tomorrow.”
However prepared Tech players thought they were, their reaction Saturday morning was bewilderment that they were even going to play. Many—nearly all from the South—thought: They’re going to cancel this game. Lawrence Lowe said assistance coach Norm Van Brocklin said, “They won’t play in this weather.” Ivery said, “I didn’t think we would play either. We looked down on the field from the hotel and saw sweepers scraping a foot of snow off the field and I thought, ‘There ain’t no way we’re going to play this game.’” The machines were deployed twice before the game and again at the half, according to a media report.
Upon awakening, King was shocked see snow driven horizontally by a strong, howling wind, and, he recalled, a foot of snow on the ground. He called Tech play-by-play announcer Al Ciraldo and asked if he had brought sufficiently warm clothes. Neither had, so they drove to Kmart and bought gloves, hats, coats, sweatshirts, and thermal underwear. A Tech equipment manager scrambled to find heaters for the Tech sideline and thermal underwear for the players.
Kent Hill recalled the coaches saying, “The cold is all in your mind,” but Hill noticed the coaches wore extra clothing to keep warm. It apparently wasn’t all in their minds.
“It was so damn cold,” Donnie Sewell remembered, still finding it hard to believe. “I’m from Florida, and I was out there on that frozen field.” Gary Lanier said rags hanging from their belts froze when they got wet. Mike Kelley said with his fingers frozen and the ball rock-hard, “It was painful to take the snap.” Rodney Lee said, “Your hands were like stones and the ball was like a brick. My feet were completely numb. I had no feeling in my toes.” Rodgers’ fifteen-year-old son Kelly traveled to the game and said, “That was the coldest I’ve ever been. The cold is all you thought about. That field was like cement. I kept thinking when they get hit and fall to the ground, that’s gonna hurt.”
When Air Force assistant coach Tom Backhus saw the weather, he assumed the cadets could handle the cold but there was “no way these southern Georgia peaches are going to play well. No way. We thought we had an advantage and Ivery wouldn’t run well. But he killed us.”
Kelley’s family traveled from California. They may have wished they had stayed home. “They stayed the whole game,” he said. “They froze their patooties off. My grandpa was out there. They were covered in blankets. It was brutal.” Also shivering in the stands were representatives of the Tangerine Bowl, held in Orlando, Florida. Average afternoon temperature in November: 78°.
Tech defensive end Lance Skelton said he couldn’t feel his fingers and toes. When he exited the field to the sidelines, someone draped a big coat over him, but, he said, “The coats were frozen. It was like covering yourself in ice. We were miserable.” Marvin Dyett said one player was bleeding but didn’t know because his fingers were numb. According to Lowe, Van Brocklin told them to keep their feet warm by putting on a sock, wrapping it in plastic, then putting on another sock. But the feet of some players began to sweat, which froze.
Air Force defensive back Charles Shugg said, “It was the coldest game I’ve ever played. It was a penetrating cold. We were used to being in cold weather, but it was so cold there weren’t many fans in the stadium. We were wrapping our feet in Saran Wrap inside our shoes, but the defensive backs coach was old school. He wouldn’t let us use heaters or gloves. We wore extra T-shirts, but that’s about it. It was brutal.”
Non-football-player cadets were required to attend games and to wear jackets and ties, regardless of the weather. They could wear an overcoat but not heavy-duty cold weather gear that a day like that called for, and, up in the stands, they were more exposed to the wind than players below. To ease their misery, they rotated in and out of the heated bathrooms.
Air Force linebacker Bill Becker was injured and watched the game from the sidelines, almost wishing he were playing to generate some heat. He said. “It was cold to just sit.” On the other hand: “For the guys on field, it hurt even more to be hit or to hit somebody. The turf was unforgiving. It was like falling on concrete. We kept thinking, ‘Can we have this over with now?’” Air Force fullback Steve Drewnowski said, “It was the coldest game I ever played. You’d put your hands down to the ground and your fingers almost get frost bite.” The only time he recalled being colder: when he flew scientists to Antarctica. Offensive coordinator Ken Hatfield said he gave gloves to backs and receivers, who removed them because they couldn’t feel anything anyway.
Jim Bowman, Director of Recruiting for Air Force, who had experienced twenty winters in Colorado Springs, watched the game from the press box. “It was terrible,” he said, “the worst weather I remember, and we had some bad weather. I was thinking, ‘Are you kidding? Are we playing in this?’”
King performed his usual pre-broadcast ritual: walk on the field to see the view from the ground and take in the atmosphere, to help him convey the scene to the radio audience. The ground was frozen. The fierce wind stung his eyes. He slid his feet gingerly to keep from slipping. He walked about 15 yards and thought, “This is ridiculous.” He reported to Ciraldo back in the press box, “It’s going to be hard to run or pass. I bet it’s a 3 to nothing game. The first team to kick a field goal wins.” He was unimaginably wrong, and footing actually turned out to be no problem. Ivery said the ground was slippery before the game, but after the snow was cleared, cleats were able to grip the turf fine.
Reports on the amount of snowfall were inconsistent. Some media said there was a light snow, but at least one newspaper reported the snow removal equipment could barely keep up with the snowfall. Herrington recalled snowplows removing snow before the game and snow blowers clearing off the line markers at halftime. Some players described lots of snow. (Not Drewnowski, who said, “I don’t think it snowed that day. I’m from New England. That’s not really snow.) Rodgers’ son Kelly said there was only “a remnant of snow.” Matt Rank recalled only snow flurries. Media pictures and one brief video clip from the game show little snow on the field. Perhaps there was snow piled up off-field and out of camera view? The National Weather Service archive shows no snow all week and only .6” on gameday. Perhaps memory of a dreadfully cold day exaggerates the amount of snow. Whether because the snow had been removed or little actually fell, what made the players miserable and sapped their motivation was the freezing temperature, rock-hard turf, and strong, vicious wind. When the game started, it was 20°, and the whipping wind made the wind chill factor zero. Or thereabouts. One Denver reporter wrote that the wind chill factor was 20 below. Not true, but nobody there would fault him for exaggerating.
But Air Force had a bigger problem than weather: Eddie Lee Ivery. Sewell said, “We kept running the same damn play, and they couldn’t stop him.” Air Force quarterback Dave Ziebart, who said it was “the worst weather in my four years at Air Force,” said of Ivery “I knew a lot of tough guys there, but he played just as well in the fourth quarter as early in the game.”
And Ziebart didn’t know about the throwing up.
APRICITY 