11 Things You May Have Missed On The Internet | 12.20.23

The Ghost of NFL Christmas Day Games Past

Author

Brandon Wenerd
December 20, 2023

Last night, while delirious on cough medicine and Vick’s Vapor Rub fumes, I started thinking about Christmas Day NFL games. I’m showing my age here, but I don’t really remember watching an NFL game on Christmas Day in the ‘90s? NBA, sure - watching Michael Jordan play the Knicks or Magic on Christmas Day was tradition in my house growing up. But never football on Christmas Day, even when it fell on a Sunday.

Turns out the NFL has only played 27 games on Christmas Day. There’s a triple-header on the slate this year, timed perfectly for after everyone rips open their presents:

  • 1 p.m. EST: Raiders vs. Chiefs on CBS, Nickelodeon.

  • 4:30 p.m. EST: Giants vs. Eagles on FOX.

  • 8:15 p.m. EST: Ravens vs. 49ers on ABC.

The first NFL games played on Christmas Day were in 1971. These were big ones too: NFC and AFC divisional playoff games, back when the NFL season was only 14 weeks.

The first Christmas Day game was the Dallas Cowboys vs. the Minnesota Vikings. The Vikings tried to claw their way back from a 20-6 Cowboys lead at the end of the third quarter, but it wasn't enough. Final score: 20-12. The Cowboys won Super Bowl VI that year. Also: That Cowboys team had Mike Ditka on it.

The second game, featuring the Kansas City Chiefs vs. Miami Dolphins at Municipal Stadium in Kansas City, is generally cited as the reason the NFL didn’t play Christmas Day games for a while. It became the NFL’s longest game and an instant classic, clocking 82 minutes, 40 seconds of game time.

Seventeen future Hall of Famers, including Chiefs' Len Dawson and Dolphins' Bob Griese, battled for a grueling 82 minutes. Ed Podolak's 350-yard heroics for Kansas City were matched by Miami's will to stay in the game, culminating in a decisive 37-yard field goal by Garo Yepremian. Victory by Don Shula’s Dolphins, 27-24.

As riveting as the game was, professional football on Christmas Day wasn’t very popular in Nixons’ America. The Karens of the time complained. A 2022 Sporting News article claims that “some lawmakers even proposed legislation that would ban NFL games on Christmas,” though no such documents are referenced, and I’m too lazy on account of this cold I’m battling to dig that much deeper into news archives right now. I also read somewhere that NFL brass and TV executives were also a little shaken up by having such a big game on Christmas Day.

Plus, pivoting away from Christmas was a savvy business move: Why share cultural bandwidth with a holiday when you can just move schedules around and own the entire month of January?

The NFL didn’t play an NFL game again on Christmas Day for 18 years. When Christmas fell on a Sunday in 1977, 1983 and 1988, the NFL played divisional playoff games on Saturday and Monday to avoid viewer overlap with holiday plans. In 1989, the Bengals and Vikings played a Christmas Day game that kicked off at 9 p.m. ET, after everyone’s bellies were full on ham, shrimp, and prime rib. Don Shula made NFL history again on Christmas Day in 1994 when he won his 319th regular-season victory, a league record. Then Rodger Goodell brought Christmas Day games back in a big way: 15 games have been played on December 25th since 2006.

Don’t expect a slate of Christmas Day games next year, however. Hans Schroeder, the NFL’s executive vice president for media distribution, told The Athletic:

“I don’t think we’re going to look at Tuesday or Wednesday football,” he said. “We’re looking at the days where we’re already playing football and have the opportunity to celebrate something larger on a holiday with a lot of our fans together.”

Anyway, I thought that was interesting! Tell everyone at your Christmas Day dinner that you read it in the BroBible.com newsletter. Now back to our regular scheduled programming…

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Thanks for reading. Hang in there, everyone. Just a few more days to go in 2023.

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