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Detroit and Dallas have been traditional TV games on Thanksgiving for a long time. When I was growing up there was always the Detroit-Green Bay game to watch followed by Dallas against whomever.
When I was in the NFL, there was always a feeling among many -- especially coaches and GMs -- that the Lions and Cowboys had an unfair advantage playing at home every Thanksgiving Day.
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| Should other teams be able to cut the turkey on their home field? (Getty Images) |
On a normal week, teams:
• Watch tape of Sunday's game on Monday as well as get treatment.
• They are off on Tuesday. This is a union rule, but also a good idea.
• Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are the main practice days.
• Saturday is a 30-minute walkthrough, usually, and then the team travels to the away city or stays at a local hotel for the home game.
So both teams have to condense six days into three during Thanksgiving week. The advantage day for the home team is Wednesday since they don't have to travel. The players can go home and relax before they head to the team's hotel for meetings the night before the game.
A second advantage gained from a Thanksgiving game is a 10-day break to rest up at a critical point in the season. Now, you can say both away teams get this break, too, and you are right, but Dallas and Detroit get it every year.
The final advantage is hard to measure, and that is the publicity the team gets.
This is why Dallas wanted to play on Thanksgiving. Former Cowboys general manager Tex Schramm was a brilliant marketing man who saw the value of having the whole country be able to see his team on national television on Thanksgiving Day, a day in which people would be gathered at homes and a natural TV audience would be available to watch football.
In the AFL, before the merger, Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt had the idea to play at home in Kansas City on Thanksgiving. When the merger came this game was taken away from Kansas City.
The first coach to raise the issue of a competitive advantage was Vince Lombardi, whose Green Bay Packers had to travel to play to Detroit every Thanksgiving.
In 1962, which might have been Lombardi's best team, the Packers made their traditional trip to Detroit and ended up being upset by a very good Detroit Lions team. After that game Lombardi was able to get the NFL to start rotating the teams that had to play in Detroit on Thanksgiving Day.
To my knowledge, the next discussion about this came after I became general manager of the Redskins in 1989. The Cowboys had been down and we were told by the NFL office that the networks were concerned about the drop in TV ratings for the Dallas games, so the NFL asked for volunteers to host a Thanksgiving Day game.
