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  • The Atlantic

    On Thanksgiving, the NFL Faces a Collision of Crises

    Turkey Day usually represents a late-season reset for pro football, but myriad controversies portend a more serious tone this year.
    by Alex Putterman Nov 23, 2017 4 minutes
    Source: Tim Fuller / USA Today Sports / Reuters

    The National Football League’s tradition of playing on Thanksgiving Day is also its oldest. Back in 1920, the year the league was founded, 12 proto-football teams squared off in six Turkey Day matchups. Since then the NFL has hosted Thanksgiving games in every year but four—all during World War II—with the Dallas Cowboys and Detroit Lions emerging as annual hosts and other teams rotating through to play in front of a tryptophan-tripping, football-mad nation.

    And as the NFL has ballooned into the most popular professional sports league in North America,its Thanksgiving custom has grown as well, adding pyrotechnics and halftime shows to impress massive TV audiences. Aside from the Super Bowl,escapism than Thanksgiving—theleague’s entire self-image, shrunken down to one day.

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