GREEN BAY, Wis. — Is it the uniforms? Maybe it’s the uniforms. When the Cowboys and the Packers meet Sunday afternoon in the magnificent football basilica known as Lambeau Field, they will look exactly the way they are supposed to look, the way they will always look in our mind’s eye:
Green jerseys, yellow pants, yellow helmet with the big “G” on the side on one half of the field; white jerseys, silver pants, and that wonderful helmet with the star on the side on the other.
Who’s that? Is it the late Jethro Pugh digging the frozen turf for better footing, or Jerry Kramer wedging him for the extra inch Bart Starr required? Is it the late Reggie White bearing down on Troy Aikman? Is it Aaron Rodgers flinging the rock-hard football, or DeMarcus Murray toting it?
“The Packers versus the Cowboys,” Tony Romo said through a smile last week in Dallas, as he walked away from a triumphant home locker room. “That’s the way it ought to be, isn’t it?”
Is it the history? Maybe it’s the history. Baseball never seems more like baseball than when the Yankees and the Dodgers are playing on the same field, wearing the exact same vestments that they did in 1977, or 1963, or 1955 — well, except for the lettering on one of the caps.
Basketball never seems more like basketball than when the Lakers and the Celtics are sharing a court, one team in yellow and the other in green, and it doesn’t matter if it’s Game 7 of the NBA Finals or Game 53 of a lost regular season.
Packers versus Cowboys? For one more day, John Facenda will sit behind a microphone again, and the country will say the holy mantra — “fro-zen tun-dra” — along with him, like churchgoers reciting the Prayer of the Faithful.
For one more day, Pat Summerall will sit behind a microphone again, describing nothing yet describing everything — “Romo. Bryant. Touchdown.” — at the same time.
“It’s a great rivalry for the sport, and it’s a great rivalry for our fans,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said. “Although I liked it better in the ’90s, when we won our share, than the way the games ended in the ’60s.”
Is it the narratives? Maybe it’s the narratives. Whenever these two teams collide in the playoffs, it seems somebody is desperately trying to prove something. Those first two encounters, in the ’66 and ’67 NFL title games, Tom Landry was forever trying to show he could win the Big One.
The first time (in what may have been the better game), at the Cotton Bowl, the Cowboys were in it until Don Meredith, on fourth-and-goal from the 2, threw a desperate heave that Tom Brown intercepted in the end zone.
The second time (in what is certainly the more famous game), in the Ice Bowl, the Cowboys led until Starr, on fourth-and-goal from the 1, barged his way over Kramer and under Pugh into the end zone.
Thirty years later, when Mike Holmgren and Brett Favre were trying to re-establish Green Bay as a legitimate power, they ran into the dynasty Cowboys three years in a row — divisional round in ’93 and ’94, NFC championship in ’95 — and lost all three times, all three times at old Texas Stadium.
And it’s funny: Just as Landry’s Cowboys never did have to beat the Packers to reach the summit — Lombardi was gone, replaced by decades of disarray — the Holmgren Packers never had to figure out the Cowboys — Jerry and Jimmy had their divorce, followed by decades of disarray.
“To tell the truth, I was happy to have ’em out of the way,” Brett Favre said 10 years later, looking back, feeling neither deprived nor despondent that his road to the Super Bowl never included payback over the Pokes.
Is it all of these?
It’s probably all of these, and more: In an NFL season defined far more often by what’s taken place off the field than on, when the biggest storyline was centered in the commissioner’s office and not any of the 31 stadiums, we finally have a game that ought to satisfy everyone, a couple of old-school teams battling in the sport’s all-time tackling field, stars everywhere, quarterbacks who may be injured but are still the very essence of what we always want out football-hero quarterbacks to be.
“It’s hard not to like this matchup,” said Rodgers, whose torn calf ought to feel especially good in the frosty air.
“What a terrific test,” said Romo, whose back won’t feel much better.
What a terrific treat, a belated holiday gift to football fans. Those uniforms. Those histories. These storylines. Yes. This is what we’ve been waiting for.