Sport and Society 11/26/09

[David P. Dillard]

.


Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:14:22 -0500 (EST)
From: Richard C. Crepeau <cre...@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu>
Subject: Sport and Society 11/26/09


As you may have noticed I have not been writing with any regularity. I hope
that will change after the first of the year and I will have the time to resume
Sport and Society. I send this one on as a Thanksgiving special which in fact I
missed last year.


Dick Crepeau




SPORT AND SOCIETY FOR H-ARETE
NOVEMBER 26, 2009



(As with all American traditions if it happened once or twice it is one.
Therefore I present my traditional Thanksgiving piece)


The History of Thanksgiving and of Football both go back into the Middle Ages,
and so it may not be so strange that the two would become intertwined in modern
America.

The first American Thanksgiving is generally believed to have been in Plymouth
Colony in mid-October of 1621, when William Bradford and the Pilgrims gathered
with local Indians to give thanks for survival and the first harvest. The first
Thanksgiving proclaimed by a President was November 26, 1789 when the first
president called for a national day of Thanksgiving for the new form of
government.

By the end of that century the practice had faded into disuse, but through the
first half of the nineteenth century Sara Hale, editor of Godey's Lady's Book
kept the idea alive by writing editorials and letters to presidents and
governors urging their adoption of such a day. Finally
during the Civil War Abraham Lincoln took her advice and proclaimed the last
Thursday of November, 1863, as Thanksgiving Day. The practice stuck.

Eleven years later in 1874 the first intercollegiate football game was played.
Two years later the Intercollegiate Football Association was formed and they
instituted a championship game for Thanksgiving Day.
Within a decade it was the premier athletic event in the nation.

All but twice in the first two decades of the league Princeton and Yale were
the participants, and by the 1890s when the game was played in the Polo Grounds
it was drawing 40,000 fans. Players, students, and fans wore their school
colors while banners flew from carriages, hotels, and the
business establishments of the city. It was by then one of the most important
social events of the season for New York's social elite.

In 1893 the New York Herald noted the significance of the event, declaring:
"Thanksgiving Day is no longer a solemn festival to God for mercies given...It
is a holiday granted by the State and the Nation to see a game of football."

Indeed it was, and would remain so.

By the mid-1890's it was estimated that some 120,000 athletes from colleges,
clubs, and high schools took part in 5,000 Thanksgiving Day football games
across the nation. The Thanksgiving Day game was established as both a
tradition and a moneymaker.

The National Football League followed the example of the colleges. In 1934
George Richards bought the Portsmouth, Ohio, Spartans, moved them to Detroit,
and renamed them the Lions. Richards decided to play the Lions game against the
Bears on Thanksgiving Day at the University of Detroit
Stadium. With no other professional competition and owning a radio station in
Detroit, Richards was able to put together a 94-station coast-to-coast radio
network. This allowed a national radio audience, and 25,000 fans, to
witness the 19-16 Bear victory. The Detroit Lions traditional Thanksgiving Day
game was born.

When professional football began to attract a national following in the 1950s
as the television sport, it was the Lion's Thanksgiving Day game that became a
mid-20th century tradition, and until 1963 the Lions always played the Green
Bay Packers on Thanksgiving.

I can remember watching terrible Packer teams chasing the legendary Lion
quarterback Bobby Layne around Briggs Stadium. I was in awe of Layne, the tough
hard-drinking Texan, who was out of shape, aging, and never wore a facemask.
But I loved the Packers and longed for an upset of the Lions.

After Vince Lombardi transformed the Packers into champions, with Starr,
Taylor, and Hornung, it was the Lions who pulled the big upsets on Turkey Day
in front of growing television audiences. The turkey could not be
served until the game was over, as the smell of turkey, gravy, dressing,
pumpkin pie and football filled the air. Some games were played in rain, others
in snow, and almost always it was cold outside our Minnesota home.

Much has changed since then. The Lions are playing in a dome. They play a
variety of teams on Thanksgiving, no longer just the Packers, although this
year it will be the Packers. After the merger of the AFL and NFL in 1966 and
with a different TV network covering each league, it became necessary to have
two Thanksgiving Day games, the second one in Dallas. At our house the Turkey
is still served at the end of the Lions game, and after the meal we watch the
fourth quarter of the game from Dallas over pie and coffee, hoping for a Cowboy
loss. And almost always now it is warm outside our Florida home.

Last year the National Football League, in the spirit of excess consumption,
introduced a third Thanksgiving Game. In case you haven't yet noticed, and many
have not, there is now an "NFL Network" in search of more outlets on Cable
Systems across America. To promote the new network and give it wider
circulation the NFL has decided to offer this third game for Turkey Day. It
follows the Dallas game and this year features two mystery teams as the
struggling New Jersey Giants go to Denver to decide which team is the more
succulent turkey.

Thursday Night Football on the NFL Network now in its third year is still
struggling to find an audience and to sell their product to Cable systems.
Perhaps this game should be seen as the first important sales gimmick of the
Holiday Shopping season, although the lack of consumer confidence may keep the
telecast in cable netherworld.

So a tradition is expanding, which means of course it is not yet part of the
tradition, although you can be sure someone will boldly announce that the game
is a "new NFL tradition." It is of course the greed and avarice of the NFL
that truly is a tradition, one that has been part of American sport for over a
century. But on a day when Americans stuff themselves with food, it seems
appropriate to stuff one more football game into them as well.

And so as it was in the 1890s, so it is in the 21st century, The NFL Century,
that Thanksgiving remains "a holiday granted by the State and the Nation to see
a game of football."

On Sport and Society this is Dick Crepeau wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving and
reminding you that you don't need to be a good sport to be a bad loser.


Copyright 2009 by Richard C. Crepeau