When the world stopped
America's Thanksgiving holiday has not succumbed to the commercial potential of Christmas or even Halloween, but rather waits a full 24 hours before the orgy of shopping on Black Friday is given free reign over our souls.
On chi flat iron website Thursday, it's only the orgy of eating heaping helpings of family hospitality that consumes us. That and football. Specifically, NFL football, which has become as much a Thanksgiving staple as cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.
The commercial potential of professional football began to be fully realized in the 1960's with the country's ever booming affluence and appetite for television. Like the TV westerns and war dramas that populated prime time shows of the day, NFL football gave its viewers the action and violence America craved in abundance.
So much did the country take to watching football, that two professional leagues were able to exist side by side and on rival television networks: the NFL broadcast on CBS, home of Cronkite and Gunsmoke, and the upstart American Football League, initially covered on ABC and later on NBC, home of Bonanza and Disney.
Weekends spent watching football on TV became a ritual even to those who felt otherwise alienated by Kennedy era America. "Look at Wholesale Snapbacks Hats the Marxist, watching football on TV like a good American" thought Michael Paine, as he viewed one of his wife Ruth's tenants, Lee Oswald, stretched out on the floor one Sunday long ago.
Football was that big, especially in Texas. It remains big, of course in the biggest state in the lower 48 as Texas devotes every autumn weekend to football: Friday nights to high school, Saturday afternoons to college games and Sundays to the NFL.
When President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Friday afternoon, November 22, 1963, the country was shocked, transfixed before its televisions to watch the non stop news coverage of the event and its aftermath.
All regular programming was canceled. High school Cheap Snapbacks football games, college football games, all canceled out of deference to the tragedy. The AFL suspended its schedule that weekend as well.
But not the NFL. New commissioner Pete Rozelle nervously debated within his inner circle as to whether the schedule of games for Sunday, November 24th should be allowed to go on despite the death of the president. Rozelle even contacted the White House and spoke with press secretary Pierre Salinger to seek advice.
Salinger opined that President Kennedy, an ardent football fan, would have wanted the games to go on. How he knew this was anybody's guess as JFK's thought processes came to a sudden and violent end when the third bullet exploded his head during that fateful motorcade.
But even the President's own brother, attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, was said to have agreed with Salinger and told Rozelle that the Kennedy Family would not be offended if the football games were played on Sunday while the President's body lay in state inside the Capitol Rotunda.
Exactly what motivated Rozelle to even debate the obviously decent idea of postponing all the NFL games that Sunday remains puzzling. Was it the potential lost revenue from ticket sales despite the fact that many of the host stadiums 50 years ago barely held 20,000 seats? And since the games wouldn't be televised (even commercial TV had its limits), advertising dollars were not the issue either.
Rozelle gave the go ahead to have the games played on Sunday with no television broadcasts. The games themselves were played in an eerie gloom, absent the usual enthusiasm of fans in attendance or even from the players on the field.
The Bears managed a 17 17 tie against the Steelers that day at Pittsburgh where tight end Mike Ditka made one of the finest signature plays of his Hall of Fame career after catching a Bill Wade pass and knocking a host of defenders to the ground like a man possessed. The 63 yard play turned out to be crucial in that pivotal game for the Bears enroute to their last NFL chi flat irons championship under George Halas.
Pete Rozelle went on to be the most successful commissioner of America's most successful pro sports league. In 1966, an agreement between the rival NFL and AFL was reached whereby the leagues would merge into one NFL with a championship game added to the schedule: the Super Bowl.
Rozelle survived his gaff of November 1963, but always regretted his decision. Those days were filled with regret for the country and some even feel life has never been the same since Kennedy's death. However, the country carried on, albeit differently than it had been. But the NFL has largely remained the same except to become even more prosperous and powerful with each passing year.