Frigid Cold A Reminder of 1982 “Freezer Bowl”

CINCINNATI, Ohio – In January of 1982 the winter was cold.

• Game time temperature was minus 59 degrees Fahrenheit
• Riverfront Stadium hosted 46,302 for the Freezer Bowl
• Game is still the coldest in NFL history for wind chill

The Cincinnati Bengals were on the cusp of getting to their first Super Bowl. They just needed to beat the San Diego Chargers in the AFC Championship game in Cincinnati.

They also had to beat the temperature.

“It just cut right through you,” said former Bengals offensive lineman Dave Lapham. “Minus nine is cold, but with the windchill being almost 60 below, high 50s below, that's absurd. That's unheard of.”

Lapham played for the Bengals from 1974-1983. He's never been as cold since.

“I don't handle the cold weather as well as I did before that football game.”

Lapham took to the field without sleeves. He was concerned about the grabby hands of his defensive nemesis, Pro-Bowler Gary Johnson.

Tom Dinkel, linebacker for the Bengals between 1978-1983 and 1985, remembered it being difficult just getting to Riverfront Stadium.

“Most people's cars weren't even starting,” Dinkel said. “When we left our team hotel out in Sharonville I think five or six people's cars started. The rest had to hitch a ride on buses and stuff that were leaving the hotel with fans coming to the game.”

Former kicker Jim Breech remembered a woman taking him and several teammates to the stadium.

Breech, who played for Cincinnati between 1980 and 1992 didn't seem bothered by the weather. He was 3-for-3 on field goals and made both his extra points.

“The top of my foot was black and blue the next day,” Breech told Spectrum News 1. “The ball was like a rock.”

The Bengals won the game, even with an official windchill of minus 59 degrees Fahrenheit. The standards for measuring wind chill has changed and it now stands at minus 37 degrees Fahrenheit.

“When you hit was one thing, in that cold – feel like you'd break some bones,” Lapham recalled. “But then when you go to the ground it was like concrete. It was astroturf and that frozen astroturf was literally was like bouncing off concrete.”

Two weeks after winning the AFC Championship, the Bengals played in Pontiac, Michigan in Super Bowl XVI. Despite the game being indoors at the Pontiac Silverdome the outside temperature was 16 degrees. It remains the coldest temperature for a Super Bowl host city in NFL history.

Fans packed the stadium during the Freezer Bowl. Dinkel said he bet six Cincinnati police officers ten dollars each that only 20,000 fans would show up. The officers took the bet and Dinkel paid up. He thought the Bengals' fans were too smart to come out the cold weather.

He was wrong. The official attendance was listed at 46,302.

“I just remember the moments where you would take off that jacket, you're getting off the heated bench,” Dinkel said. “Because the sidelines were clear, nobody was standing. You wanted to get back to that bench and sit down and stay huddled up.”

Lapham used vaseline on his arms but said the cold weather still caused it to coagulate.

The Bengals defeated the visiting Chargers. They'd go on to lose Super Bowl XVI to the San Francisco 49ers.