Thanksgiving is almost here, and even with the Macy’s parade and the Snoopy balloon, the food coma, and the annual family political debate, there’s one Turkey Day tradition everyone looks forward to above all: NFL football.

This year’s NFL Thanksgiving triple-header sticks to the script: The Detroit Lions kick things off against the Green Bay Packers, the Dallas Cowboys host the Kansas City Chiefs in the late afternoon slot, and the night wraps up with the Baltimore Ravens taking on the Cincinnati Bengals.

The Cowboys-Chiefs game is predicted to see one of the biggest non-postseason ratings ever in NFL history, with two marquee teams fighting for their postseason lives. And this comes after the Cowboys-Giants game delivered 41 million viewers last year, the fourth most-watched Thanksgiving game on record.

But it wasn’t always this way. For most of NFL history, there was no Thanksgiving tripleheader at all. It was just the Lions and Cowboys holding down the holiday early in the day as screen filler while everyone else passed the gravy.

These two teams have been woven into the day for decades. But what if we tell you that back in the 70s, the NFL actually tried removing the Dallas Cowboys from the Thanksgiving lineup in favor of the… wait for it…

St. Louis Cardinals?

And yes, it went as badly as that idea sounds. The experiment didn’t just fail. It face-planted. And that’s where the conversation begins.

The beginnings of the NFL ownership of Turkey Day

Decades ago, the NFL floated the idea of experimenting with different teams hosting the second Thanksgiving game.

The Detroit Lions had long before taken ownership of the first game of the day when then-owner George A. Richards moved the Portsmouth Spartans to Detroit in 1934 and renamed the Lions to try to compete with baseball’s Tigers dominating the city. Richards owned one of the most powerful radio stations of the time, WJR, and used his connections to get a Lions Thanksgiving game broadcast nationally on the NBC radio network – the first nationally broadcast NFL game.

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The game sold out in the stadium (26,000 fans) and was also a huge broadcast success, making the Lions the Turkey Day staple.

But what about a second game? Much like the yearly “Hard Knocks” dilemma these days in prodding teams to participate, the NFL had the same issue in trying to expand on Thanksgiving. The league even asked for volunteers. But no team wanted to play on a holiday when fans were busy with dinner, family, and festivities.

But then the Cowboys stepped in, seeing the marketing opportunity to expand their footprint as “America’s Team” on a uniquely American holiday, and instantly turned Thanksgiving into a money-maker. Here’s how their early Thanksgiving games took off:

• 1966 vs. Browns: 80,259 attendance
• 1972 vs. Rams: +6,000 increase from the previous home game
• 1974 vs. Washington: 63,243 attendance

Why did the NFL’s Thanksgiving experiment with the Cardinals fail?

In short, the Cowboys on Thanksgiving quickly became a massive win for the NFL. But despite that success, the league decided to shake things up.

For a couple of years (in 1975 and 1977), the NFL pulled Dallas off the Thanksgiving slate and handed the spot to the Cardinals.

The result? Atrocious.

The reason? A mix of factors.

“The NFL felt by then that it had automatic ratings whenever the Cowboys played, so they could afford to experiment there with St. Louis,” said long-time Cowboys insider and EssentiallySports senior writer Mike Fisher.

We all think of the NFL as the league with the Midas touch, where they can do no wrong. But the NFL was far from its current dominating cultural presence back in the ’70s. And swapping the Cardinals in for the Cowboys was one of the most boneheaded moves in the history of the league – especially given what had just happened the year before.

“Some people thought the move, particularly in 1975, was ridiculous because it happened the year after the famous ‘Mad Bomber’ game when Clint Longley subbed in for an injured Roger Staubach and led Dallas to a come-from-behind win over Washington,” Fisher said. “So stupidly, the league lost the momentum – temporarily – that the Cowboys had given them.”

For starters, St. Louis already had a huge Thanksgiving tradition: the Kirkwood–Webster Groves Turkey Day Game, a high school rivalry more than 100 years old and packed with fans every year. That means the high school football already owned the day.

Fans weren’t asking for NFL football on Thanksgiving, and, to make matters worse, the Cardinals weren’t particularly popular in their own city. A rough combo from the start.

After all, the Cardinals moved from Chicago to St. Louis in 1960 and didn’t reach the playoffs until 1974. And even that didn’t spark anything.

During their entire St. Louis tenure from 1960 to 1987, they never won a single playoff game. Their drought was brutal; more than 50 years without a postseason win, stretching from 1947 in Chicago all the way to 1998 in Arizona.

Meanwhile, the Cowboys were the NFC’s darling in the 1970s, backed by a massive and loyal fan base. So when the league tried replacing them with the Cardinals, the experiment failed almost immediately.

And the numbers? They pretty much tell the whole story.

The fans preferred the high school game over the Cardinals game

The Cardinals’ Thanksgiving Day attendance was just as rough as the idea itself. They hosted the Thanksgiving game in 1975, and even though the team came in at 8–2, the crowd barely showed up. We’re talking about only 41,899 fans that year against the Buffalo Bills, their lowest attendance of the entire season. And the reason was straightforward.

People in St. Louis were already committed to the high school Turkey Day game, and local fans simply didn’t put the Cardinals high on their holiday priority list. It was a flop.

The league had enough sense to at least move the Cowboys back to Thanksgiving in 1976, this time against the Cardinals.

But once more, the NFL tried again to make it the Cardinals instead of the Cowboys in 1977. That time, the turnout was 50,269, which looked respectable on paper… but was still nowhere near the numbers the Cowboys or Lions pulled, or what the league was hoping for. And the game was beyond lopsided, as the Miami Dolphins crushed the Cardinals, 55-14.

The result? The NFL backed out.

By 1978, Dallas was back in the Thanksgiving slot, and just like that, stadiums were packed again, and the ratings followed. Which naturally raises a question: What did the NFL learn from this failed experiment?

Thanksgiving football only works when you stick to tradition. That’s why the Lions and Cowboys remained Thanksgiving staples, and why that’s not changing anytime soon.