Thanksgiving Football: History of a Holiday Tradition
Why football and Thanksgiving belong together: college championships in the 1800s, the Detroit game of 1934, Dallas joining in 1966, and the high school and backyard games around them.
For many American families, Thanksgiving has a predictable shape: a long morning of cooking, a meal in the afternoon, and a television tuned to a football game that nobody quite plans to watch but everybody ends up watching. The pairing feels so natural that it seems it must have always existed. It nearly did.
Football has been played on Thanksgiving Day for well over a century, first by college teams, then by early professional clubs, and later through a pair of NFL games that became fixtures. The tradition has also spread outward, to high school rivalry games played that morning, to college rivalry games played that weekend, and to the pickup games in backyards and parks that no scoreboard records.
This article tells that story: how the pairing began, why one NFL team has hosted the holiday for generations, how a second team joined, and what the tradition looks like at each level of the sport. Where records are loose, we say so, and we send you to the live pages for the current schedule.
Why a Thursday in late November?
Thanksgiving as a national holiday is older than football. President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation in 1863 naming the last Thursday of November a day of thanksgiving, and later presidents repeated it each year. The date was disrupted briefly when President Franklin Roosevelt moved the holiday a week earlier in 1939 and 1940, which divided the country: some states followed the change and some did not, and football schedules in a few places had to cope with two different Thanksgivings. In December 1941, Congress fixed the holiday on the fourth Thursday of November, where it has remained.
Two features of the day made it attractive for football. First, it was a day off, with schools, offices and factories closed, so there was an audience with free time. Second, the season was winding down. By late November, the major college teams had played most of their schedules, and the season's biggest games were due. A holiday that put people at leisure at exactly the point where the stakes rose was almost an invitation.
The college game claims the day
In the late 1800s, college football was the main form of the sport, and Thanksgiving was a premier date on its calendar. Championship contests among the leading eastern colleges were commonly played on Thanksgiving Day, and in some years they were held in New York City, where crowds of spectators filled the stands and fans traveled in from other cities. A game on that day was a social occasion for the cities that hosted it, with the sport as the excuse.
The date remained important for college rivalries for a long time. For long stretches of the twentieth century, some schools in the South and Southwest saved their fiercest annual game for Thanksgiving. Over the decades, many rivalries shifted to the Saturday after the holiday as the college schedule became standardized and television made weekend slots more valuable. The tradition of playing the biggest rivalry games at the very end of the regular season has stayed, even if the exact date moved. You can read more about why those games matter in Rivalry Games and Trophies: Why They Matter.
Early professional football and the idea of a holiday game
When the professional league was founded in 1920, as described in our history of the founding of the NFL, it was a loose set of clubs in smaller industrial cities, and many of them played Thanksgiving Day games because the holiday guaranteed free time for local fans. Scheduling was informal, and teams arranged games on dates that suited them. Thanksgiving was one of those dates.
For the early league, a game on Thanksgiving was not special, because there was no national audience. Nothing on the schedule suggested that one team would eventually own the day.
Detroit in 1934
The tradition that gave the NFL its Thanksgiving identity began in 1934. That year, a Detroit businessman who owned a radio station bought a struggling team that had moved to the city from Ohio, and renamed it the Lions. The team was new to a city that had a lot of other things to do, and the owner needed a way to get attention. He arranged for a game on Thanksgiving Day against the Chicago Bears, who were the league's dominant team at the time. The game was broadcast on the radio to a national audience through a network of stations, which was an unusual and ambitious step for the era.
The game drew a full house. The Bears won a close contest, 19 to 16. The idea worked, and the Lions repeated it the next year and the year after. The team has played at home on Thanksgiving ever since, with the exception of a stretch during the Second World War, when the tradition paused between 1939 and 1944. After the war, it resumed and has continued.
Why does one franchise host the holiday every year? The answer is history and habit. The league never decided that Detroit deserved the slot, so much as it accepted that the game had become a tradition that fans, broadcasters and the team all expected. In the years that followed, the Lions' opponent changed, and the Green Bay Packers were a regular visitor for a number of years in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Dallas joins in 1966
The second long-running tradition began in 1966. The Dallas Cowboys, then a young team, wanted a Thanksgiving date, reportedly because the holiday offered a national television audience and a day without much competition. League officials were reportedly concerned that few people would attend a game on a holiday when families were gathering. The game drew a large crowd, and the Cowboys have hosted a Thanksgiving game almost every year since, with a couple of short exceptions in the 1970s when the league gave the slot to another team.
By the late 1960s, then, the NFL had two Thanksgiving games: one in the Midwest and one in the Southwest, played in the afternoon on national television. The pairing became so familiar that many fans assume the two teams are guaranteed the slot by league rules. In practice, the arrangement is a long-standing custom that the league and its broadcast partners have kept. Check the league's current announcements if you want to be sure which teams are hosting in a given year.
The third game
In 2006, the NFL added a third Thanksgiving game, played in the evening. Unlike the two afternoon games, the host of the late game is not fixed; the league chooses teams each year, and the network that carries it varies according to the league's broadcast contracts. The addition meant that a viewer could watch football from early afternoon through late at night, which suited the holiday's rhythms of long meals and long visits.
Because broadcast arrangements change with each contract cycle, we do not list networks here. For the matchups and kickoff times in any year, the league's schedule and our schedule page are the best sources. For how those contracts work in general, see The Rise of Television and the NFL.
Playing on a short week
A Thanksgiving game comes on a Thursday, so a team that played the previous Sunday has only about four days to prepare, instead of the usual six. That makes the holiday game a test of planning for coaches and trainers. Teams typically play the Thanksgiving game with a short-week routine: lighter practices, adjusted film study and extra attention to recovery. Players who were hurt in the previous game have fewer days to get back, which is one reason the league's injury reporting matters, and you can check the latest on our injuries page.
Teams that play at home on Thanksgiving also have an advantage in routine, since they do not have to travel on a short week. Visiting teams, by contrast, have to travel on a compressed schedule. How much that matters is debated, and we do not attempt to measure it here.
Why the tradition lasts
A holiday tradition survives when it is useful to everyone involved, and Thanksgiving football is useful to several groups at once. For families, a game on the television gives a gathering a shared focus and something to talk about with relatives who may not agree on much else. For broadcasters, the holiday offers an audience that is at home, awake and often looking for something to watch together, in a period with relatively little competing sports programming. For teams, a Thanksgiving date brings attention that a regular Sunday game does not.
There is also a plain habit effect. Once generations of fans have associated a game with the smell of dinner, the date takes on a meaning that has little to do with the teams playing. That is why the pairing keeps going even when the matchups themselves are ordinary, and why a lopsided Thanksgiving game is still on in the background at so many homes.
Thanksgiving in high school football
In many parts of the country, Thanksgiving belongs to high school football. In New England, in particular, a tradition of rivalry games on Thanksgiving morning, between neighboring towns, goes back well over a century in a number of places. These games are as much community events as athletic contests: alumni return, families gather before the holiday meal, and the stands fill early.
Not every state treats the holiday this way. Many state associations schedule playoff games on the weekend of Thanksgiving, and others avoid the holiday altogether. The calendar depends on the state, the classification and the length of the season. To find out what your local school does, consult your state association or use our high school directory, which can help you find schools and their schedules. The tradition of local rivalries also shows up in our piece on high school rivalry games.
College rivalry weekend and the HBCU classics
For college fans, the holiday weekend is a major date. The final regular-season games for many conferences fall on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and many of the oldest rivalries are scheduled then. The weekend is often called rivalry week, a name that reflects how many of the season's emotionally charged games come together in a few days.
Historically Black colleges and universities also hold some of their best-known events on this weekend. One example is a game between Grambling State and Southern University, played in New Orleans around Thanksgiving, which pairs a football game with a large celebration featuring the schools' marching bands. The bands are a central attraction, and for many fans the halftime performances are as important as the game. To learn more about the history of these programs, see our article on HBCU football traditions.
The backyard version
Thanksgiving football is also something people play. The pickup game that families and friends stage before or after the meal is often called a turkey bowl. It is usually touch or flag football, with rules improvised on the spot and teams assembled from whoever is present. Nobody keeps official statistics, and that is the point.
If you plan to play, keep a few practical safety notes in mind. Warm up before you run, because cold muscles and a sudden sprint are a risky combination. Agree on touch or flag rules before the game starts and stick to them. Check the playing surface for holes, ice or hard patches. And if anyone is injured, stop the game and get proper help. Our Play section has resources for recreational players, including how flag football works.
Canada has its own version
Canada celebrates Thanksgiving in October, on the second Monday of the month, and the Canadian Football League has scheduled games on that holiday weekend. That is a reminder that the connection between harvest holidays and football is not unique to the United States, even if the American tradition is the more famous one. We discuss the Canadian game in Canadian Football and the American Game.
Thanksgiving weekend at each level
| Level | What the tradition looks like | What varies |
|---|---|---|
| NFL | Two afternoon games and an evening game on Thursday | Which teams host the evening game, and the networks |
| College | Rivalry games, often on the Saturday after the holiday | Dates and matchups depend on conference schedules |
| High school | Rivalry games in some regions, playoffs in others | Rules and calendars are set by each state association |
| HBCU | Classic games with marching band showcases | Locations and dates differ by event |
| Recreational | Turkey bowl pickup games | Entirely up to the participants |
Common misconceptions
"The Lions and Cowboys are guaranteed the games by rule." Not as far as we know from public sources. The arrangement is a long-standing custom, so check current league announcements.
"The NFL invented Thanksgiving football." The college game came first. Pro football built a tradition on top of it.
"Every high school plays on Thanksgiving." Some do and many do not. It depends on the state and the region.
"The tradition has been unbroken." There was a pause in the Detroit games during the Second World War years, and the date of the holiday itself shifted briefly before Congress fixed it.
The short version
- Thanksgiving became a fixed national holiday on the fourth Thursday of November by an act of Congress in 1941.
- College football claimed the day first, in the late 1800s, with championship games among eastern schools.
- The Lions began hosting the holiday in 1934 after the Bears game drew a national radio audience, and paused only during the war years.
- The Cowboys joined in 1966, and a third, evening game was added in 2006.
- Teams playing on Thanksgiving have a short week, which is a real planning challenge.
- High schools, colleges and historically Black universities each have their own versions, and the details vary by state and conference.
- For the matchups and kickoff times in any given year, check the league schedule and our live pages rather than relying on memory.