The game hardly received the sort of buildup we associate with Super Bowls. In New York, the newspaper deliverymen were on strike, so Giants fans could barely read about it.
The New York players felt less than hyped after battling through two must-win games against the Cleveland Browns.
"We weren't focused at all," Gifford said. "We were most focused on getting out of town. The wives were bitching about having to go to another game, how cold it was."
It was a bigger deal for Baltimore, which sent 15,000 fans up the New Jersey Turnpike to invade Yankee Stadium.
The effect of playing the game there can't be overestimated.
"When you ran out of that dugout and the announcer was calling your name, I'll tell you, there was nothing else like it," Giants linebacker Sam Huff said. "It was really something special."
Marchetti remains certain that if the game had been played in Baltimore, accounts would have been read one day and tossed in the trash the next. "In New York, that's a different story," he said. "Then, it's a big game."
Through 3 1/2 quarters, no one would have called the game the greatest anything. The Colts took advantage of Giants turnovers to go up 14-3 but squandered a goal-line chance to go up 21-3. The Giants then scored two unanswered touchdowns, aided by another sloppy play in which Kyle Rote fumbled, only for Alex Webster to pick up the ball and advance it for an 86-yard gain. But Unitas' masterful drive - 71 yards in 2 minutes, 5 seconds to set up a tying field goal - moved the game into iconic territory.
As the clock ran out with the score tied, confusion reigned.
"What happens now?" Summerall remembered asking Rote, as they crouched on the sideline.
The players had never participated in a sudden-death overtime, but that, too, added to the wonder of the occasion. As Unitas and Berry began their masterpiece, the television audience grew and grew.
None of this registered with the players on the field. After Alan Ameche crashed through for the decisive score, few thought they had participated in an event that would be discussed for decades.
"I was concerned about getting off the field," Summerall said. "That was it. I don't remember that anybody in the locker room thought anything about the magnitude of it.
"I thought we had played better games. I thought they had played better games."
But things were forever altered for the NFL.
