The permeation of sports into our holiday traditions is nothing new. The bond between Thanksgiving and football dates to the 19th century. The holiday became the stage for local bragging rights. Rival schools met for “Turkey Day” showdowns. It was the perfect blend of homecoming and holiday, where families gathered in the stands before heading home for dinner.
Abraham Lincoln signed the proclamation declaring the first official Thanksgiving holiday in 1863. The first Thanksgiving football game took place only six years later in Philadelphia between the Young American Cricket Club and the Germantown Cricket Club.
Two weeks earlier, Rutgers defeated Princeton in what is recognized as the first official collegiate football game. By 1876, the Yale versus Princeton Thanksgiving contest became the unofficial college championship game.
In 1882, The Intercollegiate Football Association started inviting the top two schools in the country to New York City to play in the Thanksgiving Championship Game. That lasted until 1901 when Michigan became the first non-Ivy League school to win the championship. The Michigan-University of Chicago Thanksgiving rivalry games of the 1890s were national news and spread the game to a Midwestern fanbase.
Locally, Waynesburg College played its first football contest on October 19, 1895. They beat West Virginia University 10-8 at the old fairgrounds. It is believed the Mountaineers sent their “reserves” because they were expecting an easy win against the “farmers”. Waynesburg then lost back-to-back away games against Washington & Jefferson and the Mountaineer’s varsity.
However, there is discussion about what constituted an official game and what was simply an exhibition. What many consider to be the Yellow Jackets’ first real game was played on Thanksgiving that year at the Fairgrounds in Waynesburg with the locals avenging their earlier defeat to W&J by a 4-0 score. (Note: A touchdown was worth four points at the time. Two points were awarded for extra points and safeties, while field goals were worth five.)
The following year, the W&J game was moved to the third Saturday in November because the Presidents had scheduled Duquesne Country Club for Thanksgiving. Two hundred Waynesburg fans boarded the W&W train with the team to cheer them on against their archrivals. Unfortunately, Waynesburg was on the short end of a 20-0 score.
However, the season ended on a high note five days later with a 14-5 Thanksgiving Day victory over Western University of Pennsylvania, the school that would become Pitt in 1908. The following year, the season was canceled due to the Spanish-American War. Football resumed in 1899, and the season ended with a 20-0 victory over WVU on Thanksgiving.
Throughout the 1920s and halfway through the 1930s, the W&J / WVU Thanksgiving Day games alternated between the schools and were the center of media attention throughout the region. The Presidents were a national power at that time, even playing in the Rose Bowl in 1922.
When high schools started playing football in the early decades of the 20th century, many young men were needed by their families to help harvest the crops in late summer. Therefore, the season often didn’t start until late September. Since there were no playoffs, Thanksgiving Day games were usually the season finale against a traditional rival.
The annual holiday game quickly became a community event. Traffic jammed the roads leading to the field, and bleachers overflowed with fans bundled in wool coats and school colors. The games were played on frosty fields, the band’s brass instruments froze, and cheerleaders warmed their hands over makeshift fire barrels.
The oldest high school Turkey Day rivalry is between Boston Latin and English High Schools in Massachusetts. They have played on that date every year since 1887. In Pennsylvania, Easton High School has taken on its rival across the river in Phillipsburg, New Jersey each Thanksgiving since 1916.
In 1920, Waynesburg High School decided to try to bring back football after a three-year hiatus because of World War I. A six-game schedule was announced in October with home and away games against Morgantown, Cameron, and Claysville. The season was to run from mid-October to Thanksgiving. However, they failed to finish the season because of too many injuries.
The following year’s Thanksgiving game was a 41-0 victory over Bridgeville. The 1922 Thanksgiving season finale against Washington High School drew 3,000 people to College Field, despite the fact the team was “not exceedingly brilliant,” according to the school’s yearbook.
Jefferson started football in 1926 and began a holiday tradition against traditional powerhouse Cumberland Township. Their yearbook proudly reported the Jeffs held the Red Birds to a very respectable 12-0 score.
In the 1930s, the WPIAL started using different classifications and expanding the playoffs, and eventually the traditional high school holiday games began to dwindle.
However, the newly formed National Football League scheduled six Thanksgiving Day games in 1920 to generate interest. The struggling Detroit Lions franchise started their holiday tradition against the Chicago Bears in 1934. The game was such a financial success the tradition took root, and the Lions have played it every year since (Except for a couple years during WWII)
The fledgling Dallas Cowboys took the same path starting in 1966. Forty years later the league decided to completely monopolize the day and added a third game that rotated between cities and teams. That addition all but eliminated the college Thanksgiving games except for the occasional Egg Bowl (Ole Miss vs. Mississippi State) and the Tuskegee vs. Alabama State game, which has been played every Thanksgiving since 1926.
The Steelers have played on Thanksgiving seven times. Their only win came in 1950 against the Chicago Cardinals. They lost twice to the Eagles (1939, 1940) and the Lions (1983, 1998) and once to the Cowboys (1991) and Ravens (2013).
Unfortunately, the evening game this Thanksgiving is between the Bengals and the Ravens, which will force me to start searching for a college basketball game to help digest my turkey.
