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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 airs on Fox, as they have the rights to the NFC; CBS airs the games where an AFC team plays the Lions or Cowboys). The third game airs on NFL Network as part of its Thursday Night Football package and pits two different teams against each other each year. The Lions have hosted a game each year since 1934 (excluding the years 1939-1944), and the Cowboys have hosted a game each year since 1966 (excluding 1975 and 1977 when the St. Louis Cardinals hosted a game instead).
[edit] HistoryThe 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.[1] 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 Pirates 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 "traditional" Thanksgiving Day pro football games were in Dallas and Detroit. 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. [edit] AFL and AFC Thanksgiving gamesThe 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 lowly 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. 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 (Buffalo's predecessor 1920s NFL franchises also played numerous times on Thanksgiving in its first 4 years). The Titans, Chiefs/Texans, Raiders, and Broncos each played four Thanksgiving games. The Chargers played on Thanksgiving thrice in the AFL's time span and the Oilers twice (both of those in the last two years of the league's existence). The NFL decided 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. [edit] Throwback uniformsFrom 2001 to 2004, 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, will revive that tradition against the Tennessee Titans on November 27. From 2001-2003, 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 2004, the team went further back into their history by wearing uniforms not seen since the team's inception in 1960. 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. [edit] Memorable gamesCBS was the first network to televise Thanksgiving games in 1956; in 1965, 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 1976 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 led the Cowboys to a 42-31 win. 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 runningback 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). 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 1993, 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 1998, 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. (The story originally claimed that Bettis had called one side of the coin and the referee heard something else, but in 2007, Steelers coach Bill Cowher, working as an analyst on The NFL Today, clarified, stating that Bettis himself had made an unclear declaration of "head-tails" and it was not necessarily the referee's fault.) As a result of the fiasco, team captains are now required to call the coin toss before the coin is tossed. [edit] Game results(Winning teams are denoted by boldface type; tie games are italicized.) [edit] 1920-1959* Non NFL team games between league teams and non league teams counted in the 1920 standings. The All-Tonawanda Lumberjacks later joined the league as the Tonawanda Kardex, albeit only for one game.
[edit] 1960-1969
[edit] 1970-Present
[edit] Thanksgiving Day standingsOf current NFL franchises. This includes American Football League games.
The current active franchises that have never played on Thanksgiving through 2007 include:
In addition, Nashville, Tennessee is the only other NFL city that has yet to have a team play in the Thanksgiving game. The last time the Tennessee Titans played, they were the Tennessee Oilers and their home stadium was in Memphis. Incidentally, both Tennessee and Jacksonville were the two AFC teams eligible to play the 2008 match against Detroit; Tennessee was chosen and will face off against the Lions on November 27, 2008. Conversely, Baltimore and Houston have had previous franchises based in the city play the Thanksgiving game. [edit] Thanksgiving Day records of defunct teams
[edit] Game MVPsIn 1989 (the year of the infamous Bounty Bowl), John Madden of CBS awarded the first "Turkey Leg Award," for the game's most valuable player. Reggie White of the Philadelphia Eagles was the first recipient. The gesture was seen mostly as a humorous gimmick relating to Madden's famous multi-legged turduckens served on Thanksgiving. Since then, however, the award has gained subtle notoriety, and currently, each year an MVP has been chosen for both the CBS and FOX games. Madden brought the award to FOX in 1994, but it was abandoned and replaced with the "Galloping Gobbler" -- a running silver turkey wearing a football helmet -- when Madden left for ABC in 2002. When CBS returned to the NFL in 1998, they introduced their own award, the "All-Iron Award", which is, suitably enough, a small silver iron, a reference to Phil Simms' All-Iron team for toughness. The All-Iron winner also receives a skillet of blackberry cobbler made by Simms' mother.[1] Because of the informal nature of the award, the awards can be given to multiple players. John Madden has done this five times (all on Fox), to as many as four players (in fact, for Fox's first Thanksgiving broadcast in 1994, Madden actually issued the Turkey Leg Award to players on both teams, the only time this has ever happened). Since Madden left Fox, the network's "Galloping Gobbler" has only been awarded to one player. CBS had never issued the award to more than one player until 2007, when Phil Simms gave the All-Iron Award to a record five players on the Dallas Cowboys squad. Neither NBC nor NFL Network have ever issued an MVP award for games they have aired.
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[edit] External links
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