At 12:30 p.m. Thursday, the NFC North-leading Minnesota Vikings (8-2) will visit their lone division challenger, the Detroit Lions (6-4). It will be the only hour of the day it can be said that Thanksgiving football is better than Thanksgiving basketball.
The NFL’s longest scheduling tradition, nearly a century old, suffers from a poor diet of games. Since 2006, the year Thanksgiving expanded from two matchups to three, these have been the final records of the teams competing:
The total wins and losses, 558-495, actually point to more quality competition than bad. The number of “good” teams, those that finished 11-5 or better, were 20; the number of hopeless causes ending their seasons 5-11 or worse was just 13. But there are two other statistics more relevant to level of play and competitiveness: contests between teams with winning records and average margin of victory. Rarely are there stakes on turkey day: Just six of the last 33 Thanksgiving games featured two clubs that wound up 9-7 or better. And the mean winning margin in each of the 33 showdowns was an unholy 16.5 points.
For perspective, about 29 percent of NFL games end with a point spread between 16 and 37 points. The number of blowouts on Thanksgiving day the last 11 years was twice that: Twenty of 33 games, or 61 percent, concluded with the victorious side up between 16 and 37. Don’t blame tryptophan for your evening drowsiness. Blame football.
As always, a Cowboys game will follow the Lions game Thursday. This year’s will be an L.A. Chargers-Dallas tilt: combined record of 9-11, neither team a playoff threat, and both starting quarterbacks middling in league passing stats. (Cowboys signal-caller Dak Prescott is 16th in QB rating, and his opponent, Philip Rivers, is 17th.) The best offensive player on either side, Dallas running back Ezekiel Elliott, is suspended.
The nightcap, which the NFL introduced in 2006 as a potential showcase game and alternative to the frequent Lions and Cowboys snoozers, is Washington versus New York. Last year, this would have been a battle between teams with winning records. This year, it’s between a 4-6 club and a 2-8 club, respectively. Washington is not a playoff factor in a loaded NFC. The Giants are the second-worst squad in the conference.
If you’re into watching brutal athletic competition, better to do it early in the season, while teams just may be rusty and have time to grow. Might I then suggest Thanksgiving tournament basketball in the NCAA! The Maui Invitational and Preseason NIT once were the flagships of holiday hoops in the amateur ranks. Now, just like there’s a bowl game in football for everyone, including the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl and Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, chances are your alma mater’s men’s basketball program found its way into a bracket someplace.
There are so many of these events that a compilation of them assembled by SB Nation could make your browser crash. Some of them have finished already, like the U.S. Virgin Islands Paradise Jam and Jamaica Classic Montego Bay. Some of them are just wrapping up, like the Cancun Challenge and the Maui Invitational—sponsored, of course, by Maui Jim. Some of them were scheduled to begin Thanksgiving eve or day, like the Battle 4 Atlantis, brought you by, once again, Bad Boy Mowers. Because nothing makes you think “trimming your grass somewhere over the windswept plains” quite like The Bahamas.
The most indulgent tourney of all, however, is a new entrant this year: the Phil Knight Invitational in Portland, Ore., commemorating the 80th birthday of the Nike co-founder. One bracket isn’t enough for this celebration of life and wild corporate success. There are two brackets: the Victory Bracket and the Motion Bracket. Each one includes eight teams for 16 total. You can guess whose apparel they’re wearing.
The field is stacked: North Carolina and Michigan State are on one side, and Duke and Florida are on the other. In all, the Nos. 1, 4, 7, 9, and 17 are competing. Many of the teams not ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 are advanced-statistics darlings: KenPom.com, the gold standard, rates Oklahoma No. 23, Texas No. 31, Oregon No. 33, Arkansas No. 37, and Butler No. 49. That would account for 10 of the country’s top 50 teams.
Some of them play Thursday: A tasty Oklahoma-Arkansas matchup is at 5 p.m. followed by Texas-Butler at 7 and defending national finalist Gonzaga versus Ohio State at 9. The game of the day, though, is in Nassau, when No. 5 Villanova takes on Tennessee, which could be nationally ranked next week after it knocked off No. 18 Purdue on Wednesday. Tipoff is at 12:30—the same time as Vikings-Lions. It’s not like you lack options.
