I remember reading about these games in David Mariness excellent book on Vince Lombardi “When Pride Mattered”. Lombardi was very upset about losing to the Eagles in the ‘60 NFL Championship that he used that game to motivate the Packers to win the championship the next year and the Packers under Lombardi won the rest of their championship matches.
Great article for cheeseheads to reflect on...even part timers.
The 37-0 game was a shocker because the Packers beat the Giants in a late regular season squeaker 20-17. The championship game was expected to be close as well.
I was in high school living on LI at the time. My father drove with me and and a friend of mine down the Jersey Turnpike to someplace near Camden where we took a motel room for the afternoon to watch the game. There was deli across the street which supplied the food. I still remember traffic being quite heavy that afternoon. Most of the cars around us had between two and four guys in them who were almost certainly making the trip for the same reason. But every once in a while I remember seeing a car with an older couple in it, who were probably Sunday Turnpike regulars going to visit their grandkids. My guess is that the traffic on Turnpike was probably pretty light on most Sunday afternoons, and I just imagined such couples wondering why traffic was so heavy.
The article is incorrect about the game being available from Hartford. The Championship game was on NBC then and Hartford did not have an NBC affiliate. Regular season games were also blacked out, but they were on CBS and those games were available from Hartford. We would frequently drive out to an eastern LI bar to watch those games. (If my father didn't want to go, I would go to the house of a friend which was equipped with a super-antenna and we could see the game, albeit with somewhat snowy reception.) The closest NBC station in New England was in Providence.
ML/NJ
I remember watching the ‘62 game on television and being disappointed because I was a big Y.A. Tittle fan. Also I was in Nashville and the Giant’s running back was Phil King who had played his college ball at Vanderbilt.