One of Detroit’s great sporting traditions isn’t going anywhere. The Lions have hosted a game on Thanksgiving every year since 1934, barring a six-year pause due to World War II, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. <\/p>\n
“It\u2019s uniquely Detroit,” Lions president Rod Wood said Thursday on a panel at the Detroit Economic Club. “We have the parade, we have the game. It\u2019s the only game on. It kind of kicks off the holiday season for the whole country. There was a push a few years ago to try to take it away from us and take it away from Dallas and move it around, but that never got serious legs. I think now it would never be considered to be taken away from us. The last two years it\u2019s been the second highest-rated regular season game behind only the Dallas game that follows us in a little better time slot.” <\/p>\n
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Lions-Packers last season and Lions-Bears in 2024 indeed drew the second highest TV ratings of those seasons, bested only by Cowboys-Chiefs last season and Cowboys-Giants in 2024. The Cowboys have hosted a Thanksgiving game every year since 1966, typically kicking off at 4:30 after the Lions’ traditional start time of 12:30. <\/p>\n
“It\u2019s an unbelievable Detroit tradition,” said Wood. “And I\u2019ve talked to other teams who would be scared to death to have a game on Thanksgiving, fearing that no one would show up. Because think, if it\u2019s not part of your DNA and you had a game in \u2014 pick a city, Nashville \u2014 would anybody show up on Thanksgiving? Whereas here, it\u2019s precious to us, and our fans show up. And I\u2019m very confident that we\u2019re going to keep it forever.”<\/p>\n
Wood said the Lions are also “very happy with the entertainment aspects of (the game) the last couple years, last year having Jack White (as halftime performer) and Eminem (as halftime producer) blew the roof off.’ Will be a tough act to follow this year, but we\u2019re already working on some ideas.”<\/p>\n
Wood, who’s stepping aside as Lions’ president and CEO this year once the franchise identifies his successor, also touched on what he’s proudest of over his 10-year tenure. <\/p>\n
“I think the decision to hire Dan (Campbell) and Brad (Holmes) really changed the trajectory of the team,” he said. “We took some criticism at the time, they were obviously not as well-known commodities then as they are now. Dan’s press conference set a tone for who he is, and also led to a lot of criticism about him not being ready for primetime. So I\u2019m very happy that I\u2019ll leave that behind.<\/p>\n
“And the thing I\u2019ll never forget is that Rams playoff game. Three hours before kickoff the place was packed, and (Matthew) Stafford runs on the field and 50,000 people are chanting \u2018Jared Goff.\u2019 Which was a moment that has kind of continued. People do it all over town now. And then the way that game ended, with us getting the first down to clinch it, it was a night that I\u2019ll never forget.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of Detroit’s great sporting traditions isn’t going anywhere. The Lions have hosted a game on Thanksgiving every…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":867913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2071],"tags":[146,113,2506,7,147,6,79748],"class_list":{"0":"post-867912","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-lions","8":"tag-detroit","9":"tag-detroit-lions","10":"tag-detroitlions","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-lions","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-rod-wood"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116416237005511797","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=867912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/867913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=867912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=867912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=867912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}