Remembering When They Had to Defrost Football Fields with Flamethrowers

We didn’t always have the whole “temperature control” thing figured out.

Nowadays, you can have a professional-level game in pretty much any sport at any time of year you’d like. Want to go skiing in summer? Fuck it, head to Dubai and do it in the desert. Want to play soccer in winter? Yup, there are plenty of indoor fields. Want to play jai alai in autumn? Uh, actually, I have no idea if that would be a problem. Jai alai experts, chime in in the comments.

Anyway, it didn’t always used to be like this. We used to be pretty bad at keeping the hot hot and the cold cold — resulting in incidents like these, where the field for the 1969 NFC Championship was defrosted by flamethrowers.