The Weather Notebook: Football Weather

Football Weather
Listen in RealAudio
Email your weather question

Well, the Super Bowl is coming up again this Sunday. Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow this is The Weather Notebook.

Any fanatic of the gridiron knows that weather has been an important part of the game. I mean, who can forget the Ice Bowl, when Bart Starr of the Green Bay Packers beat the Dallas Cowboys on a last second touchdown in 13 below temperatures back in 1969.

But in 1932, the weather made perhaps its biggest impact on the game of football. From the start of the National Football league in 1920, the team with the best record was the champion. In 1932 though, two teams finished tied for first. So, the first ever NFL championship game pit the Portsmouth Ohio Spartans against Chicago Bears.

But there was a problem. The weather. A blizzard hit Chicago making it impossible to play the game at Wrigley Field. So the game was moved indoors to Chicago Stadium, marking another first, the first indoor professional football game.

Now, Chicago stadium wasn't made for football. The field was only 60 yards long, and the sidelines butted up against the stands. But, because of the cramped field, several rules were changed, and those changes held and helped form the game we know today. For example, the ball had to be spotted on the hashmarks after every play and the forward pass became legal from only behind the line of scrimmage. From then on, the NFL was divided into two divisions and the winners of each division played a championship game, the winner of which, starting in 1967, would play the AFC. All thanks to a snowstorm.

Oh, the winner of the game, da Bears defeated the Spartans, 9-0.

Be sure to visit our website at mountwashington.org, after the game of course. Funding for The Weather Notebook comes from Subaru and the National Science Foundation.