American football is one of the many traditions in American culture that is associated with Thanksgiving Day. Virtually every level of football, from amateur and high school to college and the NFL (and even the CFL on Canadian Thanksgiving), plays football on Thanksgiving Day (Thursday) or the immediately following holiday weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday).
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Early days
Thanksgiving Day football games in the United States are nearly as old as the game--and the organized holiday--themselves. The first Thanksgiving Day football game took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Thanksgiving Day of 1869, less than two weeks after Rutgers defeated Princeton in New Brunswick, New Jersey in what is widely considered to have been the first American Football game, and only six years after Abraham Lincoln declared the first fixed national Thanksgiving holiday in 1863. On November 17, 1869, the Evening Telegraph newspaper of Philadelphia published the following announcement: "Foot Ball: A foot-ball match between twenty-two players of the Young America Cricket Club and the Germantown Cricket Club will take place on Thanksgiving Day at 12 1/2 o'clock, on the grounds of the Germantown Club." The proximity of Philadelphia to both Rutgers and Princeton invites speculation that this game may have been played under similar rules and perhaps involved some of the same participants, or at least people familiar with the game played at Rutgers, and a second match at Princeton, earlier that month.
Princeton played Yale in the New York City area on Thanksgiving Day from 1876 through 1881. The Thanksgiving Day football game became an institutionalized fixture of organized football in 1882, when the Intercollegiate Football Association determined to hold an annual collegiate championship game in New York City on Thanksgiving Day between the two leading teams in the association. Previously, the 'Champion' was to be determined by a team's records over the entire season against all members of the association. For at least the three previous years, the championship had been a matter of dispute as a result of Yale and Princeton playing to scoreless ties on three Thanksgiving Day games in a row.
On November 25, 1897, American students of the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian played a game in Paris, France. This is considered the first American football game ever played in Europe.
The tradition of playing football games on Thanksgiving continues to this day.
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High school football
High school football games played on Thanksgiving are often called a Turkey Day Game or a Turkey Bowl (not to be confused with Turkey bowling), as Americans typically eat turkeys on Thanksgiving, although the title varies with each game. Most commonly these games are between high school football rivalries although in many cases, when poor weather requires a shorter season, the game can be the culmination of league play among a high-school league, in which the winners of this game will be the league champions for the year. (Statewide playoffs were generally rare until the 1970s and 1980s, which allowed for longer regular seasons.) The custom dates back more than 100 years and is particularly prevalent in the Northeast. In most cases, games are contested with kickoff times as early as 10 a.m., allowing the participants to have the rest of the holiday off.
This list is sorted alphabetically, first by state, and then by school, with team leading the series listed first wherever possible. State and regional championship tournaments are listed ahead of rivalries. If the rivalry involves two states, the rivalry is listed under the school whose state comes first alphabetically (e.g. a New Jersey-Pennsylvania rivalry is listed under New Jersey).
California
Connecticut
Connecticut has at least 48 Thanksgiving games. Some of the better known ones are as follows:
Staples vs. Greenwich
Stratford vs. Bunnell
In town rivalry, annual attendance of 3,000 or more people. A number of players involved in this game have gone on to NFL careers. Including Marcus Easley and Mark Harrison
New Milford vs New Fairfield
Longtime rivals that have played each other for decades but have been playing each other on Thanksgiving morning since 2007. Winner of game is awarded the "Candlewood Cup" trophy which is named for the lake that separates the two towns. New Fairfield currently holds a 7-2 series lead on Thanksgiving.
District of Columbia
Florida
Maine
Maine has only one Thanksgiving football game
Maryland
Massachusetts
In Massachusetts, where high school football is not nearly the draw it is in other parts of the country, the Thanksgiving Day game is a long-standing tradition that brings out thousands of alumni and other fans. Virtually every school in the Bay State has a traditional rival and the holiday game is a focal point for all of them, no matter how unsuccessful the regular season may have been.
Agawam vs. West Springfield: Since 1924, the two schools have met every year but 1949.
Michigan
Missouri
New Hampshire
New Jersey
Montclair and Bloomfield have met annually on Thanksgiving since 1937.
New York State
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
Virginia
Woodberry Forest vs. Episcopal
The longest-running high school football rivalry in the South takes place each year between Woodberry Forest and Episcopal High School of Alexandria, Virginia. The schools first played against each other in 1901 and have competed in over a hundred consecutive games. "The Game," as it is known, draws back many alumni and is considered the homecoming game for both schools. The 100th contest, which Woodberry won, took place in 2000, drew nearly 15,000 spectators, and was featured on ESPN.
"Turkey Bowl" games
Unorganized groups have also been known to partake in American football on Thanksgiving. These informal matches are usually known as a Turkey Bowl (not to be confused with some high school football games that also use the name "Turkey Bowl", see above, and with Turkey Bowling). These games are usually unofficiated with a flag football, street football, or touch football format.
While the games themselves are not generally nationally known, Turkey Bowls hold importance for those who participate and it is not uncommon for rivalries to last for decades. Turkey Bowls are played by a variety of people including extended families, college fraternities, volunteer fire departments, and local churches across the country which use the day and the game to have fun, exercise and renew old acquaintances.
College football
Thanksgiving weekend historically marks the end of the college football regular season, before conference championships and bowl games begin play in December (the Army-Navy Game is the lone exception). Today, this is only true for the top-level NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision, where it has become a tradition to play a fierce rival on the last week of the regular season. At levels below the Bowl Subdivision, the NCAA begins its championship tournaments either on Thanksgiving weekend (for the Division I FCS championship) or the week before (in the cases of Divisions II and III; the NAIA, a separate body, also begins its tournament at that time). Other college football sanctioning bodies end their seasons well before Thanksgiving.
The University of Kansas and University of Missouri played the first of nineteen consecutive Thanksgiving Day football games in Kansas City, Missouri in 1892. After new conference rules that required all games to be played on college campuses, the Thanksgiving Day tradition was temporarily suspended in 1911, but then reinstituted in spurts starting in 1916 and continuing through the 1940s.
The University of Michigan made it a tradition to play annual Thanksgiving games, holding 19 such games from 1885 to 1905. The Thanksgiving Day games between Michigan and the Chicago Maroons in the 1890s have been erroneously cited as "The Beginning of Thanksgiving Day Football." Since the Maroons no longer play at the Division I level, the Wolverines now play their modern-day archrivals, the Ohio State Buckeyes, during Thanksgiving weekend. Yale and Princeton began an annual tradition of playing against each other on Thanksgiving Day starting in 1876. From 1945 to 1956, the Burley Bowl pitted two small colleges against each other in an unofficial bowl game.
The Turkey Day Classic, a college football game between Alabama State University and Tuskegee University, has been played on Thanksgiving Day annually from 1924 to 2012 and again since 2016; as such, it has historically been known as the "Turkey Day Classic." It is also the oldest black college football classic, since the two colleges first played each other in 1901. Tuskegee University pulled out of the contest after 2012 (they were replaced by Stillman College in the 2013 contest), and Alabama State did the same from 2013 to 2015, deciding to move its homecoming to the Saturday before Thanksgiving; in both cases, the NCAA football tournaments prompted the schools to move the end of their seasons to before Thanksgiving so that they would be able to compete for the national championship should they qualify. (The establishment of the Celebration Bowl for historically black schools allowed the Turkey Day Classic to resume; the 2016 contest was between Alabama State and Miles College, as the Tuskegee-Alabama State rivalry is not scheduled to resume until 2017.) Another popular black college football classic played on Thanksgiving weekend is the Bayou Classic between Grambling State University and Southern University, which is held the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
Other prominent college football rivalries that take place over Thanksgiving weekend include:
- Auburn Tigers vs. Alabama Crimson Tide (the Iron Bowl)
- Ole Miss Rebels vs. Mississippi State Bulldogs (the Battle of the Golden Egg, played on Thanksgiving night from 1998 to 2003)
- LSU Tigers vs. Arkansas Razorbacks (the Battle for the Golden Boot), through 2013
- Arkansas will play Missouri on Thanksgiving weekend from 2014 onward.
- Georgia Bulldogs vs. Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets (Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate)
- BYU Cougars vs. Utah Utes (the Holy War, to 2010)
- Colorado Buffaloes vs. Nebraska Cornhuskers (Colorado-Nebraska rivalry, through 2010)
- Colorado Buffaloes vs. Utah Utes (Rumble in the Rockies, since 2011)
- Nebraska Cornhuskers vs. Iowa Hawkeyes (since 2011)
- Oklahoma Sooners vs. Oklahoma State Cowboys (the Bedlam Series)
- Texas Longhorns vs. Texas A&M Aggies (the Lone Star Showdown, played on Thanksgiving from 2008 until its end in 2011, also played on Thanksgiving many other times prior to 2008)
- Texas is currently scheduled to host a game on Thanksgiving night almost every year, against TCU in even-numbered years and against Texas Tech in odd-numbered years. (It opted not to do so in 2016.)
- Texas A&M plays LSU during Thanksgiving week beginning in 2014, with the game being played on Thanksgiving night in 2014 and 2016. (see also: LSU-Texas A&M football rivalry)
- Florida Gators vs. Florida State Seminoles (the Sunshine Showdown)
- Notre Dame Fighting Irish vs. USC Trojans (the Jeweled Shillelagh; rivalry is played every year but only scheduled for Thanksgiving weekend when Southern Cal hosts; Southern Cal has hosted on Thanksgiving in even-numbered years since the 1960s)
- Clemson Tigers vs. South Carolina Gamecocks (the Palmetto Bowl)
- Virginia Tech Hokies vs. Virginia Cavaliers (the Commonwealth Cup, erratically scheduled)
- Kentucky Wildcats vs. Tennessee Volunteers (historically the Battle for the Bourbon Barrel; played annually but no longer on Thanksgiving weekend)
- Kentucky Wildcats vs. Louisville Cardinals (the Governor's Cup, moved to Thanksgiving weekend starting in 2014)
- Michigan vs. Ohio State (The Game), played the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
The frequent changing of conferences stemming from the early-2010s realignment of NCAA teams and conferences complicated the numerous rivalries that traditionally play Thanksgiving weekend.
While collegiate games have been played on Thanksgiving Day itself (with perhaps the most notable being the Nebraska-Oklahoma game of 1971), the vast majority of the current traditional Thanksgiving weekend college football games listed above are played on the Friday or Saturday after the holiday. Texas, as previously mentioned, has had more or less of a permanent spot on the night of the holiday itself since at least 2008.
Professional football
Professional football teams and leagues have played on Thanksgiving from the start, with pro leagues and teams having played on Thanksgiving since the 1890s. It carried over when Buffalo and Rochester, two members of the New York Pro Football League which had held its championship on Thanksgiving 1919, and the Ohio League, which traditionally held its marquee matchups on Thanksgiving, combined into the NFL upon its founding in 1920, and as such, the NFL has played on Thanksgiving ever since. The Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys have played home games on Thanksgiving since 1934 and 1966, respectively, in a traditional series of NFL games. Beginning in 2006, the NFL added a third game on Thanksgiving night with a rotating host team.
The rival American Football League also played on Thanksgiving in the 1960s, as did the All-America Football Conference in the 1940s and the original AFL in 1926.
In the Canadian Football League, where games are played on Canadian Thanksgiving, the CFL hosts two games in the Thanksgiving Day Classic; it is one of only two weeks each year in which the CFL plays on a Monday, the other being the Labour Day Classic. The difference between the Thanksgiving and Labour Day games is that the Thanksgiving Day games do not have the same matchups each year; however, like its American counterpart, one of the games has a regular host (in the CFL's case, the Montreal Alouettes). Coincidentally, both the Grey Cup, the CFL's championship game, and the Vanier Cup, the championship of Canadian college football, are both traditionally played on the fourth weekend in November, which amounts to the week before or the week after American Thanksgiving.
The World Football League originally planned to hold its 1974 championship game, World Bowl 1, the day after Thanksgiving in 1974; the business failures of the 1974 season led to the league reorganizing the playoff structure and pushing the World Bowl one week back (although the WFL regularly played on Thursdays during the regular season, it instead split its semifinals between the day before Thanksgiving and the day after). Had the United States Football League completed its move to autumn for the 1986 season, it would have played one of its games on Thanksgiving (a game featuring the Tampa Bay Bandits at the Memphis Showboats was scheduled for that night), but the league suspended operations prior to the season and, even if it had survived, the Bandits went bankrupt before the season would have been played. Similarly, the United Football League, which began play in 2009, held its first two UFL Championship Games over Thanksgiving weekend; both the truncated 2011 UFL season and the 2012 UFL season were cut short well before the Thanksgiving holiday due to financial shortfalls. The Fall Experimental Football League had scheduled its championship for the day before Thanksgiving Day 2014, in Brooklyn, but the game was cancelled after the season was shortened.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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