The 1962 NFL Championship Game was the 30th NFL title game, played on December 30 at Yankee Stadium in New York City. It matched the New York Giants (12–2) of the Eastern Conference and Green Bay Packers (13–1) of the Western Conference, the defending league champions.
The Packers were led by hall of fame head coach Vince Lombardi, in his fourth year, and the Giants by Allie Sherman, in his second season. Green Bay was favored by 6½ points. The attendance for the game was 64,892, and the weather during the game was so cold that television crews used bonfires to thaw out their cameras, and one cameraman suffered frostbite. The conditions also made throwing the ball difficult.
Green Bay won 16–7, behind the performances of game Most Valuable Player linebacker Ray Nitschke, and fullback Jim Taylor. Right guard Jerry Kramer, filling in as placekicker for the injured Paul Hornung, scored ten points with three field goals and an extra point. The Giants fumbled twice, with Nitschke recovering both for the Packers, while the Packers recovered all five of their own fumbles and intercepted a Giants pass.
This was the third and final NFL title game played at Yankee Stadium; the others were in 1956 and 1958, with the Giants winning the first. There was not another NFL title game in greater New York City for 51 seasons until Super Bowl XLVIII in February 2014 at MetLife Stadium, and resulted in the Seattle Seahawks defeating the Denver Broncos 43–8. (The 1968 AFL Championship Game was played at Shea Stadium in Queens, with the Jets defeating the Oakland Raiders 27–23; the Jets then upset the Baltimore Colts 16–7 in Super Bowl III in Miami.)
Previous championship games hosted by the Giants in New York were played across the Harlem River at the Polo Grounds in 1934, 1938, 1944, and 1946; the Giants won the first two. An additional title game was played at the Polo Grounds in 1936, hosted by the Boston Redskins and won by the Packers.
Background
The 1962 game was a rematch of the 1961 game, won by Green Bay at home, 37–0. It was the Packers' third straight appearance in the championship game, and the Giants' fourth in five seasons, and fifth in the last seven.
Green Bay began the season 10–0, including a 49–0 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles, where they gained 628 yards to Philadelphia's 54. Before the game, 10,000 fans at a New York Knicks game in Madison Square Garden spontaneously began chanting "Beat Green Bay! Beat Green Bay!", and when the 18,000 tickets available to non-season ticket holders went on sale, they sold within three hours.
Due to the NFL's blackout policy which aimed to protect gate receipts, until , fans in a team's home market could not watch their team's regular season and playoff games on television, even if they were title games. New York fans made reservations for motels in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Connecticut so they could watch the game out of the blackout zone, and even though the game was played in temperatures with winds, only 299 of the 65,000+ Giant fans who bought tickets to the sold out game stayed home.
Although the weather was temperate the previous day, during the contest it became so cold due to wind chill that a cameraman filming the game suffered frostbite, and television crews used dugout bonfires to thaw out their cameras. Broadcaster Art Rust, Jr. later described the weather as "barbaric". The cold conditions favored the Packers who used a run-oriented offense led by Taylor, while the Giants featured a more pass-heavy offense led by quarterback Y. A. Tittle who had passed for 3,224 yards and 33 touchdowns in the regular season.
Ticket prices for the game at Yankee Stadium ranged from eight to twelve dollars ($68.11 to $100.13 in 2018 valuation).