THANKSGIVING FOOTBALL

Today is the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S.; congratulations to them. My son is spending the day with a very good friend of mine from university days and his family in Greenwich, Connecticut, so he should have a good time.

As anybody who has seen Friends will know, one of the traditions of Thanksgiving is American football. Watching the game on television while stuffing the turkey, that sort of thing. And one of the traditions of American football on Thanksgiving is that it always involves the Detroit Lions. The tradition goes back to 1934, when the franchise decided to play on the Thursday in order to boost the crowd, the football team being at the time markedly less popular than the successful baseball team in the same city.

In 1966, the Dallas Cowboys made a similar decision. Since then, they have played every Thanksgiving except twice.

With the proliferation of television, the football league decided in 2006 to add a third game, thereby giving the public 9+ hours of football during the holiday. This match is not awarded to any particular team.

I have just watched the end of the first match, between Detroit and the league-leading Houston Texans. Houston should have won easily, but it ended 31-31 in normal time, when I came in. The 15-minute overtime period was sensational, both teams conceding turnovers and missing by inches field goals that would have won the game. Finally, with 2.21 left in the game, Houston slotted a field goal to give them the win. It was Detroit's ninth successive Thanksgiving defeat.

Walter Blotscher