One of the greatest traditions during Thanksgiving is watching the NFL games that take place every fourth Thursday in November, the date on which this American holiday is celebrated.
And although in Mexico we do not celebrate Thanksgiving as such, those of us who are fans of the NFL wait for this day with great excitement since we always have 3 games of the best American football in the world on Thursday.
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Below we tell you the story of why there is NFL during Thanksgiving Day and why the Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys always play on this date.
Why is there NFL on Thanksgiving? The tradition started by the Detroit Lions
It all began in 1934, when the first owner of the Detroit Lions, George A. Richards, sought to attract the attention of that city’s sports fans by placing a game during Thanksgiving Day.
At that time, Detroit’s baseball team, the Tigers, was the most popular in the city and the owner of the Lions wanted people to start going to football games.
That’s why he decided to schedule his game against the Chicago Bears, NFL champions at that time, on this date and the rest is history.
From that time on, the Detroit Lions always star in one of the games during Thanksgiving, except for the period between 1939-1944, when the world was involved in World War II.
And why do the Dallas Cowboys always play on Thanksgiving Day, too?
The history of the Cowboys playing on Thanksgiving is similar to that of the Lions.
The Dallas Cowboys came to the NFL in 1960 as an expansion team. The first years for the franchise were bad, obtaining a record of 25 wins, 53 losses and 4 draws during its first 5 seasons.
By 1966, the team began to play better and the Cowboys’ general manager at the time, Tex Schramm, offered the team to play on Thanksgiving Day to increase the popularity of his franchise.
Schramm signed a contract with the NFL in which he agreed to pay the league for tickets if the game was a failure. However, the game that took place at the Cotton Bowl stadium was a success and 80,259 fans attended the match between the Cowboys and the Cleveland Browns, a duel that Dallas won.
Since then, except in 1975 and 1977, the Cowboys have always played on Thanksgiving Day, becoming, along with the Lions, the only two teams that have their game guaranteed on this date.
