CINCINNATI — Ken Carroll always dresses in layers.
"I’m not afraid of the cold," he said. "But it’s not a friend of mine."
It’s 23 degrees as Carroll puts on gloves and a jacket. Walking outside near his home in East Price Hill, the temperature feels like nothing compared to his most cherished football memory — a memory that’s now a magnet on his refrigerator.
"It felt like someone beat me with a baseball bat," he said.
Carroll is talking about the Freezer Bowl. It’s a game Bengals fans remember by just those two words. A game almost everyone seems to have a story about.
Minus 9 degrees — with a minus 59-degree wind chill. It was one of the coldest games in NFL history.
"Everybody’s kind of looking at everybody like they’re crazy for being there," Carroll said.
NFL officials weren’t sure if the game could be played at all. But it was. And Carroll took his shirt off multiple times to fire up the crowd. He described the cold hitting him like a sledgehammer, and said at one point his skin turned purple.
"My dad looks over and says, 'Look at that idiot with his shirt off,'" Carroll remembers. "My brother says, 'That idiot is your son.'"
Carroll was 19. He says people assume he was drunk, but his beer froze on the walk to pick up tickets.
"It was pretty brutal," he said. "I was glad once I got my clothing back on. Because it was pretty darn cold."
The Bengals won the game, sending the team to the Super Bowl. His friends went to the bar. Carroll went home. A hot shower, chicken noodle soup and blankets. Lots of blankets. He said the water from the shower felt like bee stings.
The next day, his dad showed him the newspaper. A photographer captured Carroll with no shirt. Now 62, Carroll says the picture still follows him around. His friend even has it as wallpaper on his computer at work.
For his part, Carroll tells me he’s never taken his shirt off at another football game. And he says he never will.
A few years after the Freezer Bowl, Carroll enlisted in the Navy. There, he learned how to work on boilers, something he’s done for the rest of his life.
"I keep people cool in the summer and warm in the winter," Carroll said.
Then, he laughs.
"Maybe this is why I got interested in that."
