How the NFL became a staple of Thanksgiving in America… and why the Detroit Lions play every year

By James On Nov 28, 2024

When the Detroit Lions host the Chicago Bears to open this year’s Thanksgiving games, two men will loom large over the proceedings.

The one whose legacy is the reason we’re doomed to always watch the Lions on the last Thursday of November, and the one whose legacy is still being built, but who we have to thank for getting us excited about tuning this year, because he made the 2024 Detroit Lions the best team in the NFL right now.

Needless to say, that hasn’t always been the case, and it often meant a Thanksgiving Day ordeal that was tougher than tackling that third helping of turkey. Why have viewers had to endure them every year, for better or for worse? Well, there’s one man we can thank for that: George A Richards.

Before the NFL was even conceived, the Yale vs. Princeton game, first played on November 30, 1876 and lasting six years, spawned the 1882 Intercollegiate Football Association championship game.

Professional games were played on Thanksgiving in the late 1890s, but the league, as it was then, was a far cry from the logistical and financial behemoth it is today.

In 1934, Lions owner Mr. Richards was looking for a marketing tool to get the city excited about his fledgling football franchise, so he decided that playing a game on the holiday would raise his side’s profile. Fans were already used to watching college or high school games that day, so why not a professional game?

It was a gamble, in a city where the sports scene was dominated by the baseball team, the Tigers, who were then the reigning American League champions and would win the World Series the following summer.

Fortunately, the move paid off: not only did that game sell out the 26,000-seat stadium on November 29, 1934, they also had to turn people away at the gate. But what made Richards’ gamble capture broader imaginations was that he found a way to reach an even wider audience.

His WJR radio station was among the largest in the country, and he used his not inconsiderable influence in the industry to convince NBC to broadcast a Thanksgiving game on 94 stations nationwide.

“This may be the only major contribution to football that the Detroit Lions have made, other than Barry Sanders and Billy Sims,” CFL coach and pundit Jeff Reinebold once said.

It’s fair to say that there have been plenty of occasions when Lions fans have wished this wasn’t the case, allowing them to continue with mediocre awareness in the face of the brightest spotlight of the regular season.

They have won just 37 of 84 games played, and they are hosting their division rival the Bears this year after not winning on Thanksgiving since 2016. In 2019 and 2021, they were indeed defeated by the Bears.

THE UNAPETIZER

This year, playing the role that Detroit so often fills – the appetizer, if you will – are the 2-9 New York Giants, who travel to face their NFC East rival, the Dallas Cowboys. The U.S. team sits at 4-7, thanks to one of the most disappointing seasons in their recent history, with memories of last year’s 12-5 record that clinched the division title quickly fading.

But the Cowboys, too, are now part of the Thanksgiving furniture, and have been since the 1960s, when their franchise’s general manager, Tex Schramm — whose other innovations include the creation of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders — saw the opportunity to some national publicity.

This time, it was the league that had reservations about fans showing up, even guaranteeing the team a steady “gate revenue” in case no one showed up. But they did, setting a franchise record when 80,259 descended on the Cotton Bowl. The Cowboys defeated the Cleveland Browns that day 26-14 and a new tradition was born. Since then, the Cowboys have not played on the day just twice, in 1975 and 1977, when the league gave the underperforming St. Louis Cardinals a chance. Food for thought for next season?

But this year promises to be different thanks to the man who quietly revitalized the Lions (if that is indeed the word to describe a team that has never been to a Super Bowl).

In Dan Campbell’s first season in 2021 — which coincided with former No. 1 pick Jared Goff joining the franchise as a quarterback — it was a terrible 3-13-1 affair. But a year later, after taking defensive end Aidan Hutchinson with the second overall pick and Amon-Ra St Brown in the fourth round, they improved to 9-8.

A year ago, after adding Jahmyr Gibbs and Sam LaPorta to the offense, they not only won a playoff game for the first time since the 1991 season, they advanced all the way to the NFC Championship game, but also lost to San Francisco.

It’s a remarkable achievement, not least from a signal caller who many thought was a busted flush in LA after failing to repeat the Super Bowl run in his third year with the Rams . It is fair to say that the head coach deserves all the plaudits aimed at him, not least because he has to belie his gruff demeanor which has seen him written off as a man who, if nothing else, lacks communication skills. had the skills to succeed.

But behind the rarely controlled anger and enthusiasm there is undoubtedly an astute coaching mind.

However, a big part of his success is due to the fact that he is a guy the players want to play for, who in many ways has broken the mold of what it takes to be an NFL coach.

As offensive tackle Dan Skipper said last season, “It’s very refreshing to play for someone who doesn’t seem to care about the company culture. He is unashamedly him. You can love him or you can hate him, but he is who he is.

‘You never have to wonder where you stand. You never have to stand on your toes. He tells it like it is. He has so much passion for football, for life, for everything.”

As he was as a player and is as a coach, so are his teams. Tough and unyielding, but with hidden depths. Yes, the offense relies heavily on the one-two running back punch of Sonic (aka Gibbs, the fast one) and Knuckles (aka David Montgomery, the strong one), but the Lions aren’t afraid to play to the strengths of to take advantage of the two men. the passing game, not just a traditional running game.

In St Brown, they have one of the best receivers in the league, with perhaps the biggest chip on his shoulder, who is eager to join the roster of 16 wide receivers who came before him in the Draft. This year, he has the eight most yards among receivers (747), while his nine touchdowns are second only to Ja’Marr Chase.

Such weapons, fielded by quarterback Goff, have led to the league’s highest-scoring offense that has propelled the team into the uncharted waters of a 10-1 record.

But as the comprehensive wins of the past two weeks have shown, not only is this a team that will outscore you in a basketball game, but they will take the fight on the other side of the ball away from you.

They lost Hutchinson in mid-October to a potentially season-ending leg injury. Their response? A defense that has allowed the fewest touchdowns and the fewest points in the league. Defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn is making sure the league takes note.

Choose your stat: The Lions have not surrendered a point in the second half in three straight games, their longest streak since the first four games of the 1980 season; they have not given up a touchdown in ten consecutive quarters for the first time since November 20-December 5, 1983; they have allowed just seven passing touchdowns through the first eleven games of the season, the fewest since 1986 when they allowed just six.

Campbell would no doubt want to break his Thanksgiving duck (he lost all three he played in, twice with Dallas and once with Detroit). The holidays are about the three F’s: food, family and football. Little else matters to the Lions this year other than the W, and the Bears need to provide plenty of fodder.

But they are already looking further ahead. For Detroit, this is a generational team that has a number of ways to beat you, and it would be a brave man to bet that they won’t break the Super Bowl appearance.