From the Sidelines: Turkey Day Football
Sports reporter
Football has long been a tradition of Thanksgiving Day. Whether it's in the backyard between relatives, or NFL games on TV, the two have become synonymous with each other.
The NFL has been playing on Thanksgiving every year since 1934, (except for a five-year break during World War II) starting with a match-up between the Detroit Lions and the Chicago Bears.
Since then the Lions have been hosting games on Turkey Day, along with the Dallas Cowboys since 1966, creating a relationship between the NFL and Thanksgiving much stronger than Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston.
For the non-sports fans who roll their eyes every year when someone turns on the television the fourth Thursday of every November, should know last year's game between the Cowboys and the Chicago Bears was watched by 22.7 million people, the most of any NFL game in 2004.
According to NFL.com, this season's holiday games (Atlanta at Detroit and Denver at Dallas) will be broadcast on ships and oversees to more than one million listeners via the American Forces Radio Network.
While Dallas has been dubbed "America's Team" for decades, Detroit has never won a Super Bowl or been adopted by the country like the Cowboys. Still fans tune in on Thanksgiving just to get a dose of football no matter who is playing.
Although seldom run, football has a formation called the wishbone (a backfield consisting of a fullback and two halfbacks) once again linking the turkey holiday and the country's most popular sport.
So Thursday gather round with the family (or by yourself if you don't like your family too much), set out the food, and flip on the TV, because football and turkey belong together.
