Thanksgiving and football are as classic of a combo as it gets. The smell of turkey in the air and the jubilation of your team winning are a match made in heaven.
How did the NFL and Thanksgiving become so linked in the minds of Americans? The idea of playing football on Thanksgiving actually predates the league’s inception, becoming a tradition shortly after the game was invented in the late 1800s.
The NFL was founded in 1920, but the annual NFL Thanksgiving games as we know them began in 1934 when it became traditional for the Detroit Lions to host a game.
With the rise of “America’s Team,” the Dallas Cowboys started hosting a game of their own every year in 1966.
The league leaned into the success of its traditional Thanksgiving games in 2001 by changing up its branding. It began to be known as the “Thanksgiving Classic.”
After that, the tradition grew once more in 2006, when they added an additional primetime night game, with no specific team set to host it.
More recently, the league re-branded the Thanksgiving Classic to be the “John Madden Thanksgiving Celebration” in 2022, to honor the passing of the legendary coach. This was done in part because the iconic figure had announced 20 Thanksgiving games over the course of his life.
Last year, the league made one more change, adding a Black Friday game into the mix, once again with no particular team set to host it.
This year’s slate of Thanksgiving games features the Chicago Bears going to Detroit to face the seemingly unstoppable Lions, the New York Giants traveling to Dallas to play their bitter rivals, the Cowboys and the Miami Dolphins going to Green Bay to play against the Packers. In the Black Friday game, the Las Vegas Raiders are playing the Kansas City Chiefs.
Watch some football, eat some good food and enjoy spending time with the people you love. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.
