The Dallas Cowboys Become a Thanksgiving Day StapleĬowboys president and general manager Tex Schramm (left), with NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle and Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt, was instrumental in getting a Thanksgiving Day game for his team. In the 1920s, the NFL lagged well behind college football in popularity. Kendle calls the debut of Grange, one of the greatest players in college football history, a “wow moment" for the league. Grange’s NFL debut with the Bears, a major event in NFL history, occurred on Thanksgiving Day 1925 before a standing-room-only crowd of 36,000 at Wrigley Field in Chicago-the largest crowd to see a league game at the time. From 1922-33, the Chicago Cardinals and Chicago Bears played each other on Thanksgiving. In 1920, a scoreless tie between the Elyria (Ohio) Athletics and Columbus Panhandles was among the six professional games played, according to the Pro Football Hall of Fame website. The Lions weren't the first professional football team to play on Thanksgiving. READ MORE: 8 Defunct NFL Teams With Unusual Histories The first nationally televised Thanksgiving game was the 1953 Green Bay Packers-Lions game, broadcast by the Dumont Television Network, one of the first commercial TV networks in the United States. "I don’t know if the reach would have been as good or had the amount of staying power that it has had throughout the years had there been these really bad, really struggling teams playing each other on Thanksgiving."Įxcept from 1939-44 during World War II, the Lions have hosted a Thanksgiving game every year since 1934. “he fact that you had really good teams playing one another early on in this series helped bring the excitement to playing NFL games on that day," Kendle says. Pro Football Hall of Fame historian Jon Kendle says the dramatic, well-played game was a major boost for the league. On their way to an NFL title the next season, the Lions defeated the Bears, 14-2, on Thanksgiving to clinch the Western Division title. "Two of the greatest lines in the game waged a fierce struggle to make way for dozen and more versatile backs who could plunge, pass, run and place-kick dropkick, block and tackle." "It was a masterful exhibition of offensive football," the Detroit Free Press noted in a story on the defending NFL champion Bears' 19-16 win. Many more tickets could have been sold, and the national radio broadcast-an NFL first-was wildly popular. A sellout crowd of roughly 26,000 fans attended the game at the University of Detroit Stadium-the largest crowd at the time to watch professional football in Detroit. Ticket sales spiked for the game between the 10-1 Lions and 11-0 Bears, who were led by future Hall of Famers Red Grange and Bronko Nagurski. Eager to boost ticket sales and improve his team's profile in a city dominated by the Tigers, Richards persuaded Chicago Bears owner and coach George Halas to play on Thanksgiving morning. He also persuaded the 94-station NBC Radio Network to broadcast the game nationally. Richards, a Detroit radio executive, headed a group that purchased the Portsmouth (Ohio) Spartans and moved the team to the Motor City. The Lions and Bears Thanksgiving Day Game Is Born But the tradition didn't become a bonafide institution in professional football until 1934, when the Detroit Lions hosted the powerhouse Chicago Bears in a Thanksgiving game broadcast nationally. By the 1890s, many college and high school teams played on the holiday. Thanksgiving football dates to at least 1876, when Yale defeated Princeton, 2-0, on a cold, bleak afternoon in Hoboken, New Jersey.
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