Thanksgiving Classic: Map

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The Canadian Football League also holds a Thanksgiving Day Classic on Canadian Thanksgiving.

The NFL Thanksgiving logo used for 2009; the year is updated annually, with the new NFL shield being used for the first time in 2008.

The National Football League's Thanksgiving Classic is a series of games played during the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. It has been a regular occurrence since the league's inception in 1920. Since 2006, three games are played every Thanksgiving. The first two are hosted by the Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys, with one team from each conference playing either team. The game with an NFC team as the visitors airs on Fox, as it has the rights to the NFC; CBS airs the game with the AFC team as a visitor. Since 2006, there has been a third NFL game on Thanksgiving that airs on NFL Network.

History

Football on Thanksgiving is actually a tradition that predates the league's formation itself. Records of pro football being played on Thanksgiving date back to as early as 1902, when the "National" Football League, a Major League Baseball-backed organization based entirely in Pennsylvania

and unrelated to the current NFL, attempted to settle its championship over Thanksgiving weekend; after the game ended in a tie, eventually all three teams in the league claimed to have won the title. Members of the Ohio League usually placed their marquee matchups on Thanksgiving Day; for instance, in 1905 and 1906 the Latrobe Athletic Association and Canton Bulldogs, considered at the time to be two of the best teams in professional football (along with the Massillon Tigers), played on Thanksgiving. A rigging scandal with the Tigers leading up to the 1906 game led to severe drops in attendance for the Bulldogs and ultimately led to their suspension of operations. In 1919, the New York Pro Football League featured a Thanksgiving matchup between the Buffalo Prospects and the Rochester Jeffersons. The game ended in a scoreless tie, leading to a rematch the next Sunday for the league championship.

The first owner of the Lions, G.A. Richards, started the tradition of the Thanksgiving Day game as a gimmick to get people to go to Lions football games, and to continue a tradition begun by the city's previous NFL teams. It is widely rumored that the Cowboys sought a guarantee that they would regularly host Thanksgiving games as a condition of their very first one (since games on days other than Sunday were uncommon at the time and thus high attendance was not a certainty).

Several other NFL teams played regularly on Thanksgiving in the past, including the Chicago Bears and Chicago Cardinals (1922-33; the Bears played the Lions from 1934 to 1939 while the Cardinals switched to the Green Bay Packers for 1934 and 1935), Frankford Yellow Jackets, New York Giants (1929–38, who always played a crosstown rival), and Green Bay Packers (1951–63, always as the away team to the Lions). In 1939 and 1940, during the Franksgiving controversy, the only two teams to play the game were the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles, as both teams were in the same state (Pennsylvania

); at the time, then-president Franklin Roosevelt wanted to move the holiday purely for economic reasons and many states were resistant to the move, which would have complicated scheduling for the game; the two teams were, at the time, exploring the possibility of a merger.

The two "traditional" Thanksgiving Day pro football games were in Dallas

, Texas

and Detroit

, Michigan

. Because of TV network commitments, to make sure that both the AFC-carrying network and the NFC-carrying network got at least one game each, one of these games was between NFC opponents, and one featured AFC-NFC opponents. Thus, the AFC could showcase only one team on Thanksgiving, and the AFC team was always the visiting team.

AFL, AAFC and AFC Thanksgiving games

The Detroit and Dallas arrangements were made in spite of the fact that the American Football League played Thanksgiving Day games in each of its ten years of existence, 1960-1969, actually beginning the tradition six years before the NFL Dallas Cowboys. From 1960 through 1966, one AFL game was played every Thanksgiving. In 1967, 1968 and 1969, in the buffer period before the AFL-NFL merger, each Turkey Day had two AFL games. The team with the best record in AFL Thanksgiving Day games was the New York Titans, who played in the first three, and were 3-0. The Oakland Raiders were second best, with a 3-1 record. The addition of the NFL Network game on Thanksgiving has AFC fans hoping that their conference will now have equal exposure, perhaps with an NFC-NFC, AFC-NFC, and an AFC-AFC game each Thanksgiving; in fact, the Kansas City Chiefs (after the Thanksgiving 2006 game) attempted to regain "regular" status with the night game (it was Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt who actively pushed for the night game to be established, and the league appeased him with the request).

The Chiefs' claim as Thanksgiving "regulars," however, was dubious, as they had only played an AFL Thanksgiving game once—in the inaugural AFL season as the Dallas Texans—prior to when the AFL-NFL merger was finalized in 1967, when the AFL decided to put mostly West Coast and Midwestern teams on Thanksgiving. The Buffalo Bills, on the other hand, played five games on Thanksgiving in the AFL's existence, between 1962 and 1968, more than any other team, although all of those were away games (Western New York's predecessor 1920s NFL franchises also played numerous times on Thanksgiving in their first 5 years, and the Bills of the AAFC, see next paragraph, also played once and won; incidentally, the Buffalo team always was away in these cases as well). The Titans, Chiefs/Texans, Raiders, and Broncos each played four Thanksgiving games. The Chargers played on Thanksgiving three times in the AFL's time span and the Oilers twice (both of those in the last two years of the league's existence).

After Hunt's death in December 2006, the NFL effectively turned around, deciding not to give any AFC team (or even the conference in general) the permanent hosting for that night game, as the subsequent Thanksgiving night games have both been hosted by still other NFC teams: the Atlanta Falcons in 2007 and the Philadelphia Eagles in 2008. It would not be until 2009 that another AFC team (incidentally, the same Denver Broncos that were the away team in the 2006 match) would host the night game.

From 1946 to 1949, the All-America Football Conference also played on Thanksgiving; the first season, 1946, featured the crosstown rivalry of the Yankees and Dodgers of New York City, much as the NFL did in the 1920s and 1930s. Then, in 1947, the league began scheduling two games on Thanksgiving, with the Los Angeles Dons getting an annual home game and the Cleveland Browns, the league's best team, playing away (and amassing a 3-0 record in these games). The Dodgers hosted a 1947 Thanksgiving game, but ceded hosting to the Chicago franchise in 1948 and 1949. The other away team was rotated. Incidentally, all of the AAFC's Thanksgiving games featured the away team winning. When the AAFC merged with the NFL in 1950, the newly expanded league gave the Chicago Cardinals a second Thanksgiving game (the league, at this time, was only playing one game on Thanksgiving, the Lions game) as recognition of Chicago's AAFC team having done the same. This was not renewed in 1951, when Thanksgiving became exclusively for the game when the Green Bay Packers went to Detroit to play the Lions (in 1952, a second Thanksgiving game was played, but only because the Dallas Texans lost their stadium midseason and had to squeeze a home game in at the Rubber Bowl

in Akron, Ohio

on that day to complete their schedule).

The first AFL of 1926 also played two games in its lone season. The Philadelphia Quakers defeated the New York Yankees in New York by a score of 13-10, while the Los Angeles Wildcats and Chicago Bulls played to a scoreless tie. Neither of the subsequent American Football Leagues (1936-37 or 1940-41) played on Thanksgiving.

Throwback uniforms

From to , teams playing on Thanksgiving wore throwback uniforms to celebrate the teams' heritage, similar to those adopted in the 1994 season when the league celebrated its 75th anniversary. As the traditional home teams Detroit and Dallas were, naturally, the most notable. Detroit always wore uniforms based on those of their early years. Therefore, they had to remove all decals from their helmets to reflect the absence of helmet logos in that earlier era, and for the 2008 season, revived that tradition against the Tennessee Titans on November 27.

From 2001– , Dallas chose to represent the 1990s Cowboys dynasty who won 3 Super Bowls in a 4 year span by wearing the navy "Double-Star" jersey not seen since the 1995 season. In , the team went further back into their history by wearing uniforms not seen since the team's inception in . The 2007 season marked the first time since 2000 that the Cowboys chose to wear their home white uniforms for their annual Thanksgiving game.

Since the 2005 season, teams have been permitted to wear their throwback jersey on any two weeks of the year, not necessarily Thanksgiving.

While not usually playing on Thanksgiving, the San Diego Chargers also wore their throwback white helmets and "powder blue" jerseys on Thanksgiving weekend during this time. The popularity of the throwback jerseys led to the team returning to white helmets in 2007 as well as several other teams (beginning with the Buffalo Bills in 2005 and subsequently with many other teams in 2007) adopting throwback uniforms as their third jersey.

During the years when throwbacks were used regularly, NFL.com altered its team logo frame to have the logos of each team be retro.

Memorable games

The 1921 Thanksgiving matchup between the Chicago Staleys and the Buffalo All-Americans was notable in that the two teams were undefeated; after Buffalo defeated Chicago, the Staleys (who had refused to play any games outside of their home stadium at all that year) demanded a rematch. Buffalo agreed, on the condition that the rematch be considered an exhibition game and not be counted in the standings. After Chicago won the December 4 rematch, team owner George Halas turned to the league and demanded the game be counted. The league agreed with Chicago, and furthermore instituted a now-obsolete tiebreaker saying the rematch actually counted more than the original game, giving the championship to Chicago in a decision to this day referred to as the "Staley Swindle" by some Buffalo sports fans.

DuMont was the first network to televise Thanksgiving games in ; CBS took over in , and in , the first ever color television broadcast of an NFL game was the Thanksgiving match between the Lions and the Baltimore Colts.

Some memorable Thanksgiving Day games include the 1974 Cowboys-Redskins game in which unknown Cowboys backup quarterback Clint Longley took over for an injured Roger Staubach with the team down 16-3 and rallied them to an improbable victory on two deep passes. A similar experience occurred in 1994 when Troy Aikman was injured and third-string Cowboys quarterback Jason Garrett was forced to start against the Green Bay Packers and won in a shoot-out with Brett Favre 42-31. Furthering this a decade later, Drew Henson started for the Cowboys in 2004 against the Bears; after showing no performance in the first half, he was benched in favor of Vinny Testaverde. Testeverde, with the help of then-rookie running back Julius Jones, led the Cowboys to a 21-7 win.

In the 1976 Thanksgiving matchup between the Lions and the Buffalo Bills, the Bills put forth at the same time one of the best and the worst performances in Thanksgiving history. On the positive side, running back O. J. Simpson set the league record for most rushing yards in a single game, with 273. However, Simpson achieved this feat due in large part to the fact that the Bills' backup quarterback, Gary Marangi, gained only 29 yards passing and completed only 4 out of 21 passes, in addition to throwing an interception affording a passer rating of 19.7. Despite Simpson's record-setting performance, the Bills lost the game, 27-14. Simpson's record would later be surpassed numerous times (the current record is 296, set by Adrian Peterson in 2007 against San Diego).

In 1980, Chicago Bear David Williams returned the opening kickoff in overtime for a touchdown against Detroit, the only time that has happened on a Thanksgiving game.

The 1989 Bounty Bowl between the Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles, a 27-0 drubbing of the home team, led to allegations that the Eagles had placed a bounty on the Cowboys kicker, thus becoming the first of a string of three bitterly-contested games between the two teams, the other two being Bounty Bowl II later that year and the Porkchop Bowl the next season.

Some of the games have been infamous for other reasons. In , the Cowboys led the Dolphins 14-13 with just seconds remaining in a snow-filled Texas Stadium

. Miami's Pete Stoyanovich attempted a game winning 40 yard field goal that was blocked by the Cowboys' Jimmie Jones. Dick Enberg of NBC proclaimed "The Cowboys will win." However, Cowboys defensive lineman Leon Lett chased the ball and touched it, giving the Dolphins a chance to regain possession, and then kick a much shorter field goal to take an improbable 16-14 victory.

In , the Steelers and Lions went to overtime. Pittsburgh's Jerome Bettis called the coin toss in the air, but confusion surrounded the call. The officials misheard Pittsburgh's call and awarded Detroit the ball, who went on to win 19-16 on their first drive in overtime. As a result of the fiasco, team captains are now required to call the coin toss before the coin is tossed.

Home team controversy

While it has remained a tradition to keep the games in their host cities every season, in recent years NFL fans as well as other teams have wanted the Thanksgiving games rotated on an annual basis. The NFL somewhat reached a compromise in 2006 when it added the third game to NFL Network, which, while it is rotated on an annual basis, also allowed the Cowboys and Lions to keep their annual home games.

The issue once again came ahead in 2008, albeit solely focusing on the Lions, heading into that year's Thanksgiving games. Leading into the game, there was already some popular support (including from NFL.com columnist Nick Bakay and ESPN personalities Mike Ditka, Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic) for removing the Lions from the Thanksgiving game and replacing it with a game with more of a playoff impact, either through rotation like the night game or one that is flexibly scheduled. The Lions matchup was with the Tennessee Titans, whose undefeated season had come to an end in their regular Sunday game that week to the New York Jets, while the Lions were entering the game winless and, by the end of the season, had become the first NFL team to lose every game in a season since the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers finished 0–14 in their expansion season. The team has also had three local blackouts heading into the game, the first non-sellouts for the team since 2001, and required an extension to sell out the Thanksgiving game in time for it to be televised locally. Indeed, the Titans improved to 11–1 for the year by crushing the Lions 47–10, dropping the Lions to 0–12 and handing them their worst loss ever (measured by margin of loss, 37 points) on Thanksgiving.

Following the 2008 season, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell confirmed that the Lions will be permitted to keep their Thanksgiving game for at least the 2009 season. Though league officials reserved the right to revisit the situation, this did not occur, and the Lions played on Thanksgiving as usual. Lions president Tom Lewand claims that their game is not in jeopardy, the controversy is media-generated and that the owners have never seriously talked about removing them; however, this contradicts Goodell who stated that "it's come up a few times." On March 23, 2009, the league owners officially kept the Lions on the Thanksgiving game with an announcement that the Lions would host the Green Bay Packers, one of their division rivals, on November 26. In addition, some have felt that if the Lions were to lose their Thanksgiving game, it would be bad for the Detroit economy, given the fact that the Big 3 automakers have been in dire straits.

If a change were to be made, under current television contracts with CBS and Fox (which expire after the 2013 season), the early game (with a 12:30 start time) would have to be hosted by a team in the Eastern Time Zone and in the United States (if it were to be moved back a half-hour, the Central Time Zone would also be eligible to host, but because of numerous issues including extended halftime shows, this is unlikely; the annual game in Toronto

is also out of the running because the date of American Thanksgiving is not a holiday in Canada), and their opponent be of the opposite conference of the one playing the Cowboys (as it is today). Furthermore, such a move would leave the Dallas Cowboys as the only team to always play on Thanksgiving, and with the Cowboys being the league's biggest television draw, there have been far fewer calls to remove them. SI.com columnist Peter King has speculated that when the current schedule rotation ends after 2009, both the Cowboys' and Lions' home Thanksgiving games will be reassessed by the league and possibly revoked.