Happy Thanksgiving!
Originally published by Gameday.Style in football season 2011.
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| Thanksgiving 1928 |
From Drew Dernavich of The New Yorker, November 20, 2008
Since you asked for it, Matt, a bit of history: The year 1621 brought us not only the first Thanksgiving, but the first Thanksgiving Day football game.
Naturally, it was the Pilgrims vs. the Indians. The Indians, not wanting to be politically incorrect, wore a picture of a Native American on their helmets. By helmet, I mean a decorative maple leaf, which covers the loins.
Records show that they used a thirty-five-pound turkey as a football. It is hard to throw a spiral with a thirty-five-pound turkey, and darn near impossible to kick one through the uprights, so the ground game was key. And the Indians, running silently in their moccasins so as not to be detected by the defense, racked up touchdown after touchdown, although their dancing in the end zone was seen as bad sportsmanship. The Pilgrims were encouraged by lone cheerleader Hester Prynne, who shouted from the sidelines, “Gimme an ‘A’!”
There was no halftime, lest the Puritan players fall idle for a moment and be tempted to play for the Devil’s team.
We don’t know if it was the fatigue, the frigid temperatures, or the handling of so much tryptophan that did the Pilgrims in. But whatever the cause, they became confused. Quarterback Winthrop Rutmanhammer called for the Statue of Liberty play a full two hundred and sixty-five years before the Statue of Liberty existed, completely baffling his offense. With ten seconds to play, he then accidentally called for a Hail Mary, and the overwhelmingly Protestant Pilgrims stoned him. Although the Indians were well ahead, they agreed to record the final score of the game as milwaukee, which is the Native American word for “nobody wins.”
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonlounge/2008/11/turkeyball.html#ixzz1eNKvoHof
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