U.S. vs. Canada: Which football championship is the coldest on record?
The coldest outdoor championship games on record may not have taken place where you’d expect.
Football fans are known to brave some rough weather to root for their favourite team, but they’ll weather anything to watch their team battle it out for a championship title.
But between the National Football League (NFL) and the Canadian Football League (CFL), whose fans had to brave the coldest conditions during a big game showdown?
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Fifteen cities in all have played host to the NFL final since the championship started back in January 1967.
The coldest outdoor game unfolded in New Orleans in January 1972, when the temperature at kickoff for the championship was a mere 3°C in this normally temperate city on the northern Gulf Coast.
Championship games started to move north into colder territory as teams began building indoor stadiums, protecting players and fans alike from extreme weather.
The investment in indoor stadiums paid off in 2018, when the temperature dipped to -17°C in time for kickoff in Minneapolis, Minn. The cold didn’t much faze the fans or players, though—the indoor temperature at the time was a comfortable 21°C.
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While most NFL teams duke it out in warmer climates, CFL teams don’t have the luxury of escaping to warmer latitudes when teams battle for the championship in late November.
Since 1967, the coldest finale unfolded in Winnipeg in November 1991. The Toronto Argonauts and Calgary Stampeders took the field when the temperature was -16°C with a wind chill of -35.
While the 79th CFL championship game doesn’t beat the 2018 NFL final in terms of the raw temperature at kickoff, it certainly takes the cake for the coldest concluding matchup over the years.
The old Winnipeg Stadium was almost fully exposed on either end of the field, subjecting everyone in attendance to the full force of the brutal cold and downright frigid winds that day.
