Lions on Thanksgiving is one turkey too many

Money that's flooded into sports has usually overwhelmed traditions.

So it's doubly amazing that the sports world's Daddy Warbucks the NFL clings to a Depression Era invention that makes no 21st-century sense: playing Thanksgiving Day games in Detroit and, later, in Dallas leaving fans with the less-than-festive Tennessee (10-1) vs. Detroit (0-11) on Thursday.

The Lions, despite not having a winning season since 2000, actually draw pretty well. In this century, the team's Thanksgiving games have averaged 11.9% of U.S. households. The Cowboys, despite being America's Soap Opera and getting a later (and thus better) time slot, aren't doing much better averaging 12.1%. That suggests fans are hungry for any Thanksgiving Day NFL action imagine if the NFL rotated game sites to schedule something tasty.

Howard Katz, NFL senior vice president/broadcasting, suggests "one thing people have forgotten is how we got this. Lots of clubs felt it was hard to sell a game on Thanksgiving, that it might conflict with other local traditions or it would be hard to get municipal services. But more clubs have expressed interest and there may be a reason to re-examine it."

Well, yes, given that this quaint anomaly has somehow survived in a media-savvy machine whose annual TV revenues $3.7 billion are about the size of Fiji's GDP. The NFL manages to give NBC prime-time flex-scheduling despite a complicated formula mandated that neither Fox nor CBS will give up more than 23 Sunday games each season for the NFL's 42 prime-time slots. And next week, the league tests 3-D TV game coverage "a glimpse into our future," says Katz in hopes of making a 3-D theatrical movie of the 2010 Super Bowl.

So why the stale Turkey Day menu?