As we prepare for a Thanksgiving of football, it’s fun to look back at how the tradition began. America’s oldest public school, the Boston Latin School, also is half of America’s oldest continuous Thanksgiving football rivalry. The Latin School Wolfpack have played the English High School Bulldogs every year since 1887.
There were several NFL teams that played Thanksgiving day games in the 1920s and ’30s, with the Chicago Bears, Chicago Cardinals, Green Bay Packers, New York Giants, Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles.
The Detroit Lions were one of the teams that hosted a Thanksgiving game as part of a promotion they had with a local department store. In 1934, the Lions’ George A. Richards talked NBC into broadcasting the game against the Chicago Bears nationally on the radio. The NFL considered the game a success, and it became a tradition.
| Thanksgiving games |
|
New England at Detroit 12:30 p.m., CBS |
| New Orleans at Dallas |
| 4:15 p.m., Fox |
| Cincinnati at New York Jets |
| 8:20 p.m., NFL Network |
This year, what started out as a promotional stunt with a department store will mark the 71st time the Lions play on the holiday when they host the New England Patriots.
While Detroit was happy to host a Thanksgiving game, other cities were not pleased about disrupting the Sunday schedule. But the TV networks wanted a second game, and that’s where Dallas came in. The Cowboys were run by a former TV boss, Tex Schramm, and he jumped at the chance to lock down the late afternoon holiday game in 1966. The NFL held the game in St. Louis in 1974 and 1975, but the ratings were down, and so Schramm took the game back to Dallas with assurances the league never again would move the game.
Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt wanted the NFL to rotate the Thanksgiving games around so all teams would have a chance to host, but the league has held true to its word to both Dallas and Detroit. In the late 1990s the NFL started exploring a way that they could find one more TV partner to carry a partial season package of games. In 2005 the league was talking about a six-game package that would start on Thanksgiving and finish out the regular season. Comcast at the time seemed like the leader to get the package, but at the last minute the league made the choice to use that game to help bolster its own young outlet, the NFL Network.
The NFL now rotates a Thanksgiving night broadcast around the league. Eventually every city will get to host a holiday game. And for that you can thank Lamar Hunt.
Examiner columnist Jim Williams is a seven-time Emmy Award-winning TV producer, director and writer. Check out his blog, Watch this!
