George Richards was a wealthy man looking for a team of his own when he brought the Detroit Lions to Detroit in 1934. With three failed attempts by owners to bring a professional football team to Detroit, Richards knew starting a franchise in the middle of the Great Depression would be difficult. Despite a hot 10-0 start, it was a baseball town, home to the Detroit Tigers, with little support for football. Richards knew he needed something unique to football. He and his team participated in the league’s first Thanksgiving game. Over ninety-four radio broadcast aired the event. Since then it is one of the league’s longest traditions, continuing on every year with the exception of a few years during WWII. None of the previous teams looking for their birth in the city of Detroit succeeded. Not one lasted over a year and a half. Low attendance, questionable finances, …show more content…
The Detroit lions competed with the league’s best including their natural born rival, the Chicago Bears. The two teams tied for the 1932 national championship. The Detroit Lions were not the first professional sports team to play on Thanksgiving day. In fact, before the Lions, the Detroit Panthers played in a Thanksgiving day game. “Since early in the 20th century, Thanksgiving Day football was a major tradition and part of high school football around the country,” Ray Schmidt, a football historian says, “It was the day that the big arch-rivals always met”. Thanksgiving Day played an important role in the league’s season. Richards was able to sell his product on that notion. He arranged the first ever national broadcast of a football game with NBC. At home, the team sold 26,000 tickets filling the University of Detroit’s stadium. Facing their arch-rival, the Chicago Bears, the Lions lost in the remaining minutes of the game, but it grew enough support to continue on the tradition and win over the