"The Lions have played every Thanksgiving since 1934, with the exception of 1939-44, despite the fact they haven't been a good team most of those years. The Lions played their first season in Detroit in 1934 (before that, they were the Portsmouth Spartans). They struggled their first year in Detroit, as most sports fans there loved baseball's Detroit Tigers and didn't come out in droves to watch the Lions. So Lions owner George A. Richards had an idea: Why not play on Thanksgiving?"
"Richards also owned radio station WJR, which was one of the biggest stations in the country at that time. Richards had a lot of clout in the broadcasting world, and convinced NBC to show the game nationwide. The NFL champion Chicago Bears came to town, and the Lions sold out the 26,000-seat University of Detroit field for the first time."
"The Cowboys first played on Thanksgiving in 1966. They came into the league in 1960 and, as hard as it is to believe now, struggled to draw fans because they were pretty bad those first few years. General manager Tex Schramm basically begged the NFL to schedule them for a Thanksgiving game in 1966, thinking it might get them a popularity boost in Dallas and also nationwide since the game would be televised."
Both the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys became Thanksgiving Day fixtures to boost local attendance and national exposure. The Lions moved to Detroit in 1934 from Portsmouth and struggled to attract fans, so owner George A. Richards used his WJR radio influence to secure nationwide NBC coverage and a Thanksgiving game that sold out the 26,000-seat University of Detroit field. That scheduling continued after World War II, with the Lions playing nearly every Thanksgiving. The Cowboys, an expansion team that began in 1960, won a huge Thanksgiving audience when Tex Schramm persuaded the league to schedule a 1966 televised game.
Read at Los Angeles Times
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