The Thanksgiving day football games played at Yankee Stadium
11/28/2024 10:00 AM
It's been a long, long time, but the Bronx did once play host to the institution that are Thanksgiving NFL games.
Thanksgiving here in the United States is a holiday often associated with sports, but not exactly with baseball, as MLB and baseball season in general has been over for a bit now. However as there is every year, there will be some NFL action for you to watch as you prepare and eat your meal.
It has become a well-ingrained tradition at this point for the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys to host a game on Thanksgiving day, with the NFL also adding a third primetime game. That being said, it hasn't always been that rigid of a schedule. The Lions started playing regularly on the holiday in the 1940s, with the Cowboys following suit in the '60s. Before that, there was still plenty of Thanksgiving day games, just featuring plenty of other teams as well. A couple of those even happened at the old Yankee Stadium.
As you may know, back in the day Yankee Stadium was the home field for several different football teams over the years. Famously, the New York Giants called the Bronx home for a bit, playing the Baltimore Colts there in the 1958 NFL Championship Game. Said overtime Colts win became known as "The Greatest Game Ever Played" and is partially credited with helping football become the television juggernaut that it is today.
The Giants and other teams calling "The House That Ruth Built" home meant that occasionally some Thanksgiving games ended up played there in well. With that in mind, and while it's not exactly baseball-related, let's take a look back at those games.
As was common back in the day, the baseball and football teams in a city often shared a common name. (Hence why both sports had a New York Giants before the baseball team moved to San Francisco.) That included several incarnations of a New York Yankees football team that also called the Bronx home.
One of them were founded in 1926 in the American Football League — not the same AFL that was eventually merged into the NFL in the 1960s — before moving into the NFL for 1927-29. In 1926 in the AFL and '27 in the NFL, the football Yankees hosted a Thanksgiving game in both years.
Owned by league co-founder C.C Pyle, the 1920s football Yankees featured legend Red Grange, and got a Thanksgiving day slot for 1926 in that league's first and only season. Despite losing Grange to an injury, the football Yankees led the Philadelphia Quakers late. In front of a crowd of 22,000, the Quakers scored a late touchdown courtesy of a Pie Way catch to take a 13-10 lead and hang on for a win.
That late touchdown ended up being pretty consequential for more than just that game. The two teams met again just two days later, with the Quakers winning at home to clinch the league championship. (They didn't do playoffs in that era, with the league leader at the end of the regular season being declared champions.)
The next year, while now part of the NFL, the 1927 game featured the Yankees losing 30-19 to the Cleveland Bulldogs. Once again, some incredible old-timey football names took part, with Wild Bill Kelly of the Yankees and Al Bloodgood of the Bulldogs being among the game's key players. Despite the win, the Bulldogs folded after that 1927 season. However, their coach — Roy Andrews — later went on to lead the New York Giants to two NFL runner-up finishes.
That iteration of the football Yankees didn't end up lasting, as the agreement which brought the original AFL teams into the NFL fold limited the amount of home games the football Yankees could play, which led them to being primarily a road team until they folded.
While the current Yankee Stadium does play host to a couple college football games a year, it's unlikely we'll ever see a Thanksgiving game grace the playing surface there.
Sources
"The Football Encyclopedia: The Complete History of Professional Football, From 1892 to the Present" by David S. Neft, Richard M. Cohen, and Rick Korch
