Lambeau and December means hearing about bratwurst, cold, and Favre

A Bit More Humid tells me he's seen commercials on My29 for this game. I'll assume he was watching "The Simpsons" and not "Wicked Wicked Games" or "Watch Over Me" when he saw this commercial.

So it looks like the game will be on the PV household TV. This means we get to listen to the NFL Network announcers yuk it up about how cold it is. I've written before about this inevitability; when broadcasters come to cold-weather locations, they can't stop talking about the cold. You'd think they've come to cover the weather and not a football game.

As somebody who has spent every day of every winter of his life in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota, or North Dakota, as somebody who brought the recycling out to the curb today with sandals and no socks, and as somebody who was just standing in front of the library in fingerless gloves doing the NY Times Crossword, let me fill our warm-weather friends in on dealing with the cold.

If you're engaged in athletic activity, the cold really has less effect on you than one might think. The broadcasters are just standing around, and that's going to get a person feeling pretty cold. The players who are running around are probably MUCH less affected than the announcers or the fans. Move around in the cold, and you might actually feel good; stand around in the cold, and eventually you're going to feel pretty lousy.

Admittedly, I've never played football in the very cold; I bet it hurts. But I've played a ton of basketball outside. If it's over 20 degrees, it takes about 5-10 minutes of moving around to get the fingers warmed up; after that, weather is not a factor. If it gets down into single digits, it's incredibly difficult to get the fingers loosened up. The key, then, is the fingers; players either need to protect them with gloves, keep them moving, or for QBs and WRs, keep them covered up between plays.

While the announcers cannot stop thinking about the cold, the players are professionals and will likely not be affected by it once the game starts. Bud Grant knew that thinking about the cold itself can be a distraction; that's why he banned heaters from the Viking sidelines when they played in the Met. It's a factor, but it really shouldn't be as big a deal as the announcers make it.

Take it from me, resident cold weather snob. When Blue Viking Devil comes up to visit from North Carolina this week, I'll probably wear shorts and a t-shirt just to mock him.