Thanksgiving football in Detroit goes back farther than you think, farther than the Lions
by Mike Payton
We're a day away from the Detroit Lions playing Thanksgiving football for the 85th time since 1934. The Lions have played on the holiday nearly every single year of their existence with the exception of 1939 to 1945 when a lot of players were fighting in World War II.
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Thanksgiving football is the the Lions thing when it comes to the NFL. They created it being a big media spectacle and that's why they get the game every year. But Thanksgiving NFL football in Detroit still goes back farther than the Lions. All the way back to 1920.
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Here's a history of Detroit football teams playing on Thanksgiving day:
Detroit Heralds
The earliest recorded NFL football game on Thanksgiving day was between the Canton Bulldogs and the Akron Pros in 1920. Just a short while later on that same day, the Detroit Heralds traveled to Dayton to take on the Triangles. Interesting names from an interesting time. What’s also interesting is that the Heralds weren’t technically a pro team.
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The Heralds were more of a club if anything. The results of the University of Detroit not fielding a squad. In my studies I found that despite the early records, this was not the Heralds first thanksgiving day game. They faced the Canton Bulldogs three years earlier in a losing effort as part of the Ohio league. While it wasn’t their first turkey game in 1920, it was however their last. The Heralds became defunct later that year. At least the name did.
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Detroit Tigers
The early days of the NFL began that same year. Only at that time the league was called the American Professional Football Association. In 1921 the Heralds merged with the Buffalo All-Americans and became the Detroit Tigers. That’s right I said the Detroit Tigers. There was no association between the football team and the baseball team other than the former being named after the later.
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With baseball being the biggest sport in America at the time, football teams would name themselves after the football team in order to market themselves to baseball fans. There was a New York Yankees team, a St. Louis Cardinals team and more. The Tigers played one thanksgiving day game. coincidentally this was the first Detroit team to win a game on thanksgiving day as they defeated the Chicago Staleys in a 7-6 defensive battle. After this win the team began to fall apart and lose its roster due to non-payment. The franchise shut down after the season, beginning a four year drought for Detroit football fans.
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Detroit Panthers
In 1925 the Detroit Panthers were formed by Jimmy Conzelman. Interesting enough, Conzelman was the team’s owner, head coach and starting quarterback. That’s the way things went back then. Like the Heralds, the Panthers did not last long in what was now being called the NFL. They were lucky enough to become the first Detroit football team to host a Thanksgiving day game. The previous ones were on the road. In fact they hosted the first two. Unfortunately both were losses and the team deactivated in 1926.
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Detroit Wolverines
In 1928 the Detroit Wolverines became the final Detroit football team not named the Lions to host a Thanksgiving day game.
The Wolverines are an interesting story about a team of players that had played for the Cleveland Bulldogs the year before. The team was purchased and immediately deactivated. With no place to go, some of the remaining players got together and formed the Detroit Panthers. They played one season in Detroit which included a Thanksgiving day win over the Dayton Triangles 33-0.
The team would be purchased the next year by the New York Giants. A move that absolved most of the Wolverines best players, most notably their starting quarterback Benny Friedman.
Five years later the Portsmouth Spartans would move to Detroit and rename themselves the Lions and here we are today.
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