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This Day In Sports…January 14, 1968:

The Green Bay Packers win the Super Bowl for the second consecutive year, dropping the Oakland Raiders 33-14 in Super Bowl II. The game drew the first $3 million gate in football history (man, does that sound like peanuts now, or what?). Packers quarterback Bart Starr was the game’s MVP, completing 13-of-24 passes for 202 yards and a touchdown. It would be coach Vince Lombardi’s final game with Green Bay and would mark the end of the Packers dynasty. And it produced another famous picture of former Idaho Vandal great Jerry Kramer—helping carry the victorious Lombardi off the field at Miami’s Orange Bowl. 

The Raiders had the Daryle Lamonica-to-Fred Biletnikoff passing combo but were still considered AFL upstarts, and indeed, they were seriously outmanned by the Packers. Two Lamonica TD passes accounted for Oakland’s only TDs, but he was also victimized by a 60-yard pick-six from Green Bay defensive back Herb Adderly. The Packers offense produced only three touchdowns, but four Don Chandler field goals kept the Raiders at arm’s length.

The real pro football title game that year had been what was then the NFL Championship, played on New Year’s Eve between the Packers and Dallas Cowboys. With temperatures of -13 at Green Bay’s Lambeau Field, the tundra was frozen, and the contest would be forever known as the “Ice Bowl.” That’s when Kramer laid the famous block to get quarterback Bart Starr into the end zone with the winning touchdown. One of Lombardi’s most successful plays during those years was the “Packers sweep,” which would pull Kramer and fellow guard Fuzzy Thurston as lead blockers for Jim Taylor. Lombardi would run it until an opponent could stop it.

Lombardi coached the Packers from 1959-67—then spent a year as Green Bay’s general manager before taking over as head coach at Washington in 1969. He led the Redskins to their first winning season in 14 years, but he passed away before the 1970 season. Lombardi never had a losing campaign in the NFL, going 96-34-6 in the regular season and 9-1 in the postseason. He’s still considered one of the great coaches and motivators in NFL history. There’s a reason the Super Bowl hardware is called the Lombardi Trophy.

(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)

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