Frozen football? Vikings old-school running back on playing in subzero temps

Sunday's outdoor playoff game between the Minnesota Vikings and Seattle Seahawks at TCF Bank Stadium is likely to rank as one of the coldest games in National Football League history. Temperatures are expected to stay well below zero.

Although the Vikings have played most of their home games for the last 35 years in climate-controlled indoor stadiums, the team did spend its first two decades playing outside at Bloomington's Metropolitan Stadium.

Former Vikings Coach Bud Grant was famous for his opposition to heaters on the field's sidelines and for requiring his players to practice outside during the winter so they'd become acclimated to the cold.

It was during those years that the team played two of top 10 coldest games on record. Dave Osborn was a Vikings running back under Grant and played in both of those games in 1972 and in other frigid conditions.

Vikings players at the time didn't wear gloves, have heaters or wear long underwear. Osborn spoke to MPR News host Cathy Wurzer about how Minnesota players of the past coped with the cold, tips that could serve as advice for current Vikings players accustomed to more reasonable climates.

Prepare yourself mentally

"You have to go out there and say you're going to play your game, you're not going to let the cold bother you. The guys who go out there worrying about being cold and froze, they're going to be cold and froze. You just have to go out there with the right frame of mind. I always looked at it that the opponent, the people I was playing, were probably colder than I was."

Use the weather to your advantage

"I always felt like it was a lot harder for the defensive guy to tackle me because he didn't know for sure where I was going. He was standing there flat-footed and I was on the move. I always felt like it gave me a little of an advantage."

Stay warm

"I'd take my hands, stick them on my stomach against my skin in between the plays when I was standing in the huddle. When you come up to the line of scrimmage, just before you got out of your stance, you just pull your hands out from against your skin and they were a little bit warm."

Two hands on the ball

"You had to have your hands a little bit warm when you took that ball, otherwise that ice cold ball and ice cold hands was like handing you a block of ice. It was slippery, you could easily fumble. You were extra conscious of hanging onto the ball too, it was two hands on the ball all the time, because that ball could pop out of there like an ice cube real easy."

Be thankful for heated fields

"They would cover the field prior to the game, during the week, with an insulation pad, pump a little heat under there, that would cause it to sweat and get wet. When we took the tarp off right before warm ups, it was usually soft but muddy, and then that would freeze up. By halftime we'd come out and the field was froze solid. We'd wear our normal football shoes first half and at halftime we'd switch shoes and maybe put tennis shoes on or kind of a turf shoe because by halftime it was frozen pretty solid."

Get creative

"The old Met Stadium had a sauna. The old sauna would be going, we'd go in at halftime, and take our shoes off, sit in the sauna, stand in the sauna a few minutes and try to warm up. And get our shoes real hot, put them back on, and it seemed like it would hold the heat for a little while when we went back out there.

"A couple of the guys like Walt Hilgenberg would take some rocks off the sauna. And he'd stick those rocks in the pocket of his warm up jacket. And those rocks would stay warm for another hour or so. When we came off the sideline between offense and defense, he could put his hands in his pocket and those rocks were still warm."