Why NFL didnt cancel games after JFKs assassination Revisiting controversial decision fan anger at Cowboys in 1963
Why NFL didnt cancel games after JFKs assassination Revisiting controversial decision fan anger at Cowboys in 1963
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Sixty years ago today, Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was a sa sinated in Dallas. Forty-eight hours later, the NFL played its regularly scheduled games.Its hard to describe the shock the nation felt. Its hard, too, to grasp today the leagues rationale then.This much is clear: Sadne s and confusion, anger and anguish gripped Michael Pineda Jersey the nation and, in turn, the National Football League.Commi sioner Pete Rozelle had a decision to make.With scarcely two days separating the tragedy at 12:30 p.m. CT on a Friday and the start of the leagues Sunday schedule, Rozelle consulted with, among others, JFKs trusted pre s secretary Pierre Salinger, who counseled to play the games. But Rozelle also heard from several owners who strongly voiced that the games should be canceled.With teams awaiting word on whether to travel, Rozelle, 37 at the time, made the call.On Saturday, Nov. 23, he released a statement: It has been traditional in sports for athletes to perform in times of great personal tragedy. Football was Mr. Kennedys game. He thrived on competition.But more than being a fan, Kennedy was a staunch advocate for athletics, The Sporting News noted in an editorial that ran in the i sue immediately after the a sa sination. The headline: John F. Kennedy True Friend of Sports.TSN ARCHIVES: In fact, Kennedy was a regular at Senators games when the Red Sox were in Washington, enjoyed attending major league Opening Day in D.C. and frequently attended college football games, especially those of the service academies as well as his beloved alma mater, Harvard.Still, the backlash to the decision was swift and strong,In 1994, two years before his death, Rozelle recalled the decision that he faced: I discu sed it with everyone in the (league) office. Late that afternoon, I made the decision. I had to our teams were calling; they wanted to know what to do.In stark contrast, the NFLs nascent rival, the AFL, chose not to play its games that Sunday. A majority of college games the day before were called off, too, among them the 80th Harvard-Yale football game, a series that had been uninterrupted since it began in 1875.In his book, Americas Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation, author and NFL historian Michael MacCambridge makes the point that Rozelle couldnt have known the role that TV would play that weekend as America grieved.The previous cataclysmic events that had been touchstones for most American lives the attack on Pearl Harbor, FDRs death or the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been experienced through radio reports. But on that weekend of November 22-24, a nation sat in front of the television, watching itself mourn, and gaining a sense of itself in a way it never had before.Ironically, CBS, the NFLs TV partner at the time, elected not to televise any games that Sunday.Instead, it, like the other networks that afternoon, broadcast a horse-drawn cai son taking Kennedy's coffin from the White House to the Capitol Rotunda, where he would lie in state.Some 30 years later, Rozelle, who knew Kennedy personally, admitted his regret and saidthat playing the games that Phil Hughes Jersey Sunday was obviously a mistake.You have to understand, I was more than depre sed over the a sa sination, Rozelle recalled to the Times. I had lost someone whom Id respected as the leader of our country, but I was also a close friend of the Kennedy family.Because Kennedy had been a sa sinated in Dallas, the Cowboys who played the Browns in Cleveland that Sunday became a target."I was disappointed that it would happen anywhere," Gil Brandt, the longtime Cowboys personnel director, in 2013. "But my next thought was, 'What a terrible thing to happen in your city."Acro s several stories, under the headline Americas (most hated) Team, players recalled how ugly things were.We were killers, we had killed the president, Dallas tight end Pettis Norman recalled, according to a 2021. Fernando Rodney Jersey It was amazing. I just could not believe that.Citing a recollection by star Dallas defensive lineman Bob Lilly, MacCambridge wrote that in Cleveland, airport baggage handlers and hotel bell hopsrefused to handle the Cowboys bags.On game day, when the team bus pulled up to the stadium on the cold, late-fall morning, Browns fans heckled and cursed them.Once on the field, the Cowboys looked like zombies, Lilly said.This city, Dallas, killed our president,Browns offensive lineman John Wooten in 2013. That was the feeling that we had. We wanted to get after Dallas.Its amazing how Dallas took the full blame for President Kennedys death, Norman said.Yet another twist: Le s than an hour before kickoff in Cleveland, alleged a sa sin Lee Harvey Oswald was shot to death live on national TV.There was a tiny television in the visitors locker room at Cleveland Stadium, Cowboys backup QB Eddie LeBaron in 2008. We had just come back in from pregame warmup when we saw Oswald get shot by Jack Ruby.At that point, LeBaron recalled, he had advice for his teammates: Put your helmets on and keep em on.Once the game began, the public addre s announcer, at Browns owner Art Modell's instruction, referred to the visiting team as simply the Cowboys, leaving out the city. Modell also ordered extra off-duty police officers as security to protect them.Final score: Browns 27, Cowboys 17.This was a game, wrotecolumnist Bud Shrake for the next day's Dallas Morning News, "that nobody was interested in playing, coaching, watching or writing about."
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