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The short answer: tradition.
Victor Mather
On Thursday, the Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys will each host an N.F.L. game.
If that sounds familiar, it should, because for decades the Lions and Cowboys have always hosted N.F.L. games on Thanksgiving. The Cowboys have played a home game on that day all but two years since 1966, and the Lions’ streak goes back uninterrupted to 1945.
People in Detroit or Dallas don’t celebrate the holiday with any more gusto than other Americans. There is nothing particularly turkey-like about a lion or a cowboy. So how did it come to pass that Thanksgiving in America became synonymous with two particular football teams?
Professional football has been played on Thanksgiving since before the N.F.L. got its name; the league was initially saddled with the name American Professional Football Association.
There were six Thanksgiving Day matchups in the inaugural season in 1920, with such mighty sides as the Dayton (Ohio) Triangles and the Rochester (N.Y.) Jeffersons hosting games.
Pro football was mostly a Midwestern thing then, far overshadowed by the college game, which also held many Thanksgiving Day games. The day after the 1920 games, The New York Times sports report breathed not a word on the A.P.F.A. action, but it did have headlines like “Cornell No Match for Pennsylvania” and “Hobart and Rochester Tie.” College football games had already been played on the holiday for decades by then, a tradition begun by Princeton and Yale way back in 1876.
The pro league, renamed the N.F.L. in 1922, continued to hold Thanksgiving games, including matchups featuring teams like the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers that remain familiar to modern fans.
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