America CFL Spurs

The first Thanksgiving Day football game took place in Philadelphia, on Thanksgiving Day of 1869, less than two weeks after Rutgers defeated Princeton in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in what is widely recognized as the first intercollegiate football game in the United States, and only six years after Abraham Lincoln declared the first fixed national Thanksgiving holiday in 1863.

On November 17, 1869, the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph published the following announcement: "Foot Ball: A foot-ball match between twenty-two players of the Young America Cricket Club and the Germantown Cricket Club will take place on Thanksgiving Day at 12 1/2 o'clock, on the grounds of the Germantown Club." The proximity of Philadelphia to both Rutgers and Princeton invites speculation that this game may have been played under similar rules and perhaps involved some of the same participants, or at least people familiar with the game played at Rutgers, and a second match at Princeton, earlier that month.

Princeton played Yale in the New York City area on Thanksgiving Day from 1876 through 1881. The Thanksgiving Day football game became an institutionalized fixture of organized football in 1882, when the Intercollegiate Football Association determined to hold an annual collegiate championship game in New York City on Thanksgiving Day between the two leading teams in the association. Previously, the 'Champion' was to be determined by a team's records over the entire season against all members of the association. For at least the three previous years, the championship had been a matter of dispute as a result of Yale and Princeton playing to scoreless ties on three Thanksgiving Day games in a row.

On November 25, 1897, American students of the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian played a game in Paris, France. This is considered the first American football game ever played in Europe.

The tradition of playing football games on Thanksgiving continues to the present-day. At the high school level, the tradition is declining rapidly as schools drop their Thanksgiving games and shorten their regular season in favor of playoff tournaments and allowing players to focus on winter sports such as basketball.