For the many Americans who celebrate the holiday, watching NFL football on Thanksgiving Day is as much a tradition as turkey and mashed potatoes. We have become familiar with watching the Detroit Lions play in the early window, the Dallas Cowboys in the late one, as well as the prime time matchup that debuted in 2006.
But it wasn’t always the Lions and Cowboys that have participated in games on the final Thursday of November. In fact, the tradition dates back further than the existence of either franchise.
When Was The First Thanksgiving Day NFL Game?
The tradition of playing football on Thanksgiving dates back to the same month that the sport itself was invented. The first documented American football game took place on November 6th, 1869, and featured an intercollegiate matchup between Princeton and Rutgers. Less than 20 days later, “foot ball” was played on the young holiday, which was advertised by a Philadelphia newspaper as a meeting between the Young America Cricket Club and the Germantown Cricket Club. In the mid-1870’s, Yale and Princeton began a yearly rivalry that would be played on Thanksgiving.
As the sport caught on and grew in its early years, playing on Thanksgiving become tradition.
Professional teams have been playing football on Thanksgiving since roughly 1890. Long before the advent of the NFL, organizations like the “Ohio League” and “New York Pro Football League” played some of their marquee games on the holiday, which were considered to be the first official professional Thanksgiving games.
When the NFL as we know it today was invented in 1920, they carried on the tradition. There were 6 games played that first year, which featured teams that included the Decatur Staleys, Akron Pros, and Dayton Triangles. As the years went on, some more familiar teams began to get involved, including the Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers, and New York Giants.
Lions Didn’t Appear Until 1934, The Cowboys Until 1966
It wasn’t until 1934, their first year in existence, that the Detroit Lions would start appearing regularly on Thanksgiving. In an attempt to boost popularity and viewership, Lions’ owner George A Richards used his connections in the radio industry to have the yearly holiday game broadcasted on 94 stations nationwide, and Detroit has played on Thanksgiving every year since.
The Dallas Cowboys weren’t even established as a franchise until 1960, and joined the Lions as the traditional mainstays in 1966. There were two years in the 1970s when the St. Louis Cardinals took Dallas’ slot for the holiday, but the Cowboys have played on every Thanksgiving Day since then.
Aside from the Lions (84) and Cowboys (56), the teams with the most Thanksgiving Day game appearances are the Bears and Packers (both tied at 37). The only team to never appear in a Thanksgiving game is the Jacksonville Jaguars.
