Bearings

The history of both Thanksgiving and football goes back to the Middle Ages, so it may not be so strange that the two would become intertwined in modern America.

The first American Thanksgiving is generally believed to have been in Plymouth Colony in mid-October of 1621, when William Bradford and the Pilgrims gathered with local Indians to give thanks for survival and the first harvest. The first Thanksgiving proclaimed by a president was Nov. 26, 1789, when George Washington called for a national day of Thanksgiving for the new form of government.

By the end of that century the practice had faded, but through the first half of the 19th century Sarah Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, kept the idea alive by writing editorials and letters to presidents and governors urging their adoption of such a day. Finally, during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln took her advice and proclaimed the last Thursday of November, 1863, as Thanksgiving Day. The practice stuck.

Eleven years later, in 1874, the first intercollegiate football game was played. In 1876, the Intercollegiate Football Association was formed and instituted a championship game for Thanksgiving Day. Within a decade it was the premier athletic event in the nation.

Princeton and Yale participated in all but two games during the first two decades of the league. By the 1890s, when the game was played in the Polo Grounds, it was drawing 40,000 fans. Players, students and fans wore their school colors while banners flew from carriages, hotels and the city’s business establishments. It was by then one of the most important social events of the season for New York’s social elite.

In 1893 the New York Herald noted the significance of the event, declaring: "Thanksgiving Day is no longer a solemn festival to God for mercies given … It is a holiday granted by the State and the Nation to see a game of football." Indeed, it was, and would remain so. By the mid-1890s it was estimated that some 120,000 athletes from colleges, clubs and highschools took part in 5,000 Thanksgiving Day football games across the nation. The Thanksgiving Day game was established as both a tradition and a moneymaker.

The National Football League followed the example of the colleges. In 1934, George Richards bought the Portsmouth (Ohio) Spartans, moved them to Detroit, and renamed them the Lions. Richards decided to play the Lions against the Chicago Bears on Thanksgiving Day at the University of Detroit Stadium. With no other professional competition and owning a radio station of his own, Richards was able to put together a 94-station coast-to-coast radio network. This allowed a national radio audience, and a packed stadium of 25,000 fans, to witness the 19-16 Bear victory. The Detroit Lions traditional Thanksgiving Day game was born.

When professional football began to attract a national following in the 1950s as the television sport, it was the Lion’s Thanksgiving Day game that became a mid-20th century tradition, and until 1963 the Lions always played the Green Bay Packers on Thanksgiving.

I can remember watching terrible Packer teams chasing the legendary Lion quarterback Bobby Layne around Briggs Stadium. I was in awe of Layne — the tough hard-drinking Texan who was out of shape, aging and never wore a facemask. But I loved the Packers and longed for an upset of the Lions.

After Vince Lombardi transformed the Packers into champions, with Starr, Taylor and Hornung, it was the Lions who pulled the big upsets on Turkey Day in front of growing television audiences. The turkey would not be served until the game was over, as the smell of turkey, gravy, dressing, pumpkin pie and football filled the air. Some games were played in rain, others in snow, and almost always it was cold outside our Minnesota home.

Much has changed since then. The Lions are playing in a dome and now face any one of a number of teams on Thanksgiving (though in 2007 it will be the Packers). After the merger of the AFL and NFL in 1966, and with a different TV network covering each league, it became necessary to have two Thanksgiving Day games. The second one is played in Dallas.

At our house, the turkey is still served at the end of the Lions game, but after the meal we watch the fourth quarter of the game from Dallas over pie and coffee, hoping for a Cowboy loss. And almost always now it is warm outside our Florida home.

In 2006, the National Football League, in the spirit of excess consumption, introduced a third Thanksgiving Game. In case you didn’t notice, there is now an “NFL Network.” This third game, which is being offered to promote the network, is in fact the first in a series of Thursday Night Football that will continue to the remainder of the season.

So a tradition has expanded, which means of course it is not yet part of the tradition, though you can be sure someone will boldly announce that the game is a “new tradition.” The greed and avarice of the NFL, however — now that’s truly a tradition, one that has been part of American sport for almost a century. On a day when Americans stuff themselves with food, it seems appropriate to stuff in one more football game as well.