Thanksgiving Day Games: Is it time for a change?

Photo courtesy of midwestsportsfans.com

Thanksgiving and football go together like gravy and mashed potatoes.  For my part, I watch football with my family before and after, sometimes even during, the games that have become such a large part of the tradition.  Now, it is no question that a lot of fans have been calling for different options of teams in the famed Turkey Bowl Games, but the NFL has not budged on the tradition, outside of the night games that's been added.  The question is, should the NFL Network change the teams for the Turkey Bowl?  Haven't the Lions and the Cowboys become synonymous with Thanksgiving?

Every Thanksgiving, my family will play our game of flag football that ends in tears, and then we sit down to watch the Lions, and then after we're done with our first feast, we sit down and watch the 'Boys.  Who can forget the Dallas-Denver game five years ago, with two of the top teams in the NFL matching blows, only to take us all the way to overtime.  Ron Dayne's 98 yards on 3 carries and a touchdown helping Denver beat Bill Parcels's Dallas Cowboys in Dallas.  It's games like those that make not just football great, but the Thanksgiving Days' games.

Now, yes, the teams' reputations have not been quite as incredible in recent seasons.  This year, we had the 2-8 Detroit Lions taking on the powerhouse of the AFC New England Patriots, and the 3-7 Dallas Cowboys taking on the defending Super Bowl Champions New Orleans Saints.  Despite the closeness of the games (well, the closeness of the first half of the Lions game) , both of the favorites came out with the wins away.  Even in the added night game, Cincinnati and New York Jets, was dominated by the heavily favored Jets, and made it very hard not to turn off the tv.  In the end though, the games are still part of the tradition.

Although the Lions and the Cowboys have been dominant teams in the past, their play has clearly taken a turn for the worse in the last couple seasons.  In the last ten years, only two games in the last five years on Thanksgiving has been decided by less than 10 points, making for a lot of white noise in the background, rather than a true game of professional tackle football.  On the otherhand, what is the real alternative to this?  If the NFL tries to change the teams to make a better game, who's to say it will actually turn out to be a good game?  At the start of this season, the New York-Cincy game was all set to be an AFC Championship preview, only to turn out to be a disaster for the Bengals.  So, what should the NFL do that it isn't doing already?

Unfortunately, Roger Gooddell doesn't have a crystal ball that tells him which games are the best ones to schedule.  If the fans are unhappy with the games and want a change, they need to come up with a solution and give it to the league.  There is simply no way to tell what will be the best choice of teams to match-up.  Even if the league were to change the Detroit game to be a different team, there is no guaruntee that it will still be a good game.  Plus, Detroit is a team that will be a contender for the top spot in the NFC North any season now, and changing the schedule will take away for of the televised exposure of one of the competitors in the NFL's most black-and-blue division.