Wham! His back was implanted in the dirt, eyes gazing up at an overcast November sky. The man who had brought him to the ground stood up, arm outstretched in an offer to help him up. He accepted the offer, but looked disoriented when he came to his feet.

“Where is the football?” asked 48-year-old Alexandria, Va., resident Ray Shay.

Shay, who had just been tackled by a friend of his 25-year-old son, was participating in his family’s annual Thanksgiving football game. They, along with all their friends who were invited to dinner, travel to a nearby field every year to play a pick-up football game.

“It has become just as big a tradition for us as eating turkey and pumpkin pie,” Shay said. “It’s a great way for everyone to get to know each other, even if it is rough on my old body.”

Whether people are watching it, playing it, or both, football seems to have become as much a part of Thanksgiving as feasting on turkey and catching up with family. According to tvbythenumbers.com, more than 20 million people watch at least one game of football on the major American holiday, which is second to only the Super bowl, which pulls in nearly 30 million viewers.

“Even I get excited about football on Thanksgiving,” said Cindy Shay, wife of Ray Shay. “I’m a Redskins fan, so for me it’s about yelling at the Cowboys with everyone around the television with me.”

Football has become deeply rooted within American culture over the past 20 years, and football on Thanksgiving is a prime example of that.

It first became a part of the Thanksgiving ritual when the Detroit Lions hosted a game on the American holiday back in 1934. The Lions have continued to host a game on that day with the exception of 1939-1944 due to World War II. The National Football League began to nationally televise the games in 1962, and four years later added a second game to the program.

The Dallas Cowboys have played host to the later game in all but two years since 1966, and in recent years the NFL has added a third game. This third game was first introduced in 2006, and can only be viewed on the NFL Network, a channel owned and operated by the NFL.

When football passed baseball in terms of popularity, it began to take over the American Sunday. People developed a routine around the games.

Americans would roll out of bed, dress up for church, eat lunch, and plop down on a plush living room sofa to watch the game in front of the biggest screen possible. Football became associated with lackadaisical afternoons in which people would eat food and cheer for the home team.

The “home team” concept allows for the development of a sense of camaraderie with those around you. Because a football team that represents the same area your friends and family live in, you all have a common cause to root for. Thanksgiving and football complement each other perfectly because Thanksgiving has become less about being thankful for what we have and more about eating good food and building relationships with family and friends.

Like the Shays, the Nickley family’s house is always chock full of people on Thanksgiving. The screen door squeaks open and closed an innumerable amount of times from the hours of noon to 1 p.m. when the majority of their guests arrive. Chatter fills the main floor as family and friends stand around talking about new pictures that clutter countertops, new jobs, and the like.

In the oven sits a turkey, and on the counter sits another one. The Nickleys play host to a large crowd. Lynne-Anne Nickley, who owns the house along with her husband Marty, has to shout several times before the people in the house realize it is meal time. She lines up the dishes on their dining room table so that people come by and take what they like. It resembles an all-you-can-eat buffet.

People give themselves heaving helpings of whatever they can get: mashed potatoes, stuffing, turkey, cranberry sauce, macaroni, and much more. The majority of the family seems to be happy to be amongst one another, especially with all the food. However, they will tell you the best part of the day is yet to come.

“The food is great, but eating it while watching football is so much better,” said Marty Nickley. “It’s just really fun to yell and scream about something stupid like a football game with people you know and care about.”

There is certainly a lot of yelling and screaming when game time rolls around. Once a person exits the buffet line, they hustle downstairs to the basement. There sits a widescreen television that those in attendance will gather around to watch the dreaded Dallas Cowboys play.

“I hate the Cowboys,” said Scott Nickley, son of Marty and Lynne-Anne. “It’s really fun to be in a room full of Cowboy haters.”

The couch in front of the television seats four. Those four spots are the most coveted in the house. If an occupant gets up to go to the bathroom, there is no way their seat will be available upon their return. The Nickleys and their friends sing “Hail to the Redskins,” their home team’s theme song, and holler all the way through the game about bad calls made by the referee. For them and many other families across the nation, the culture surrounding football accentuates what the holiday of Thanksgiving was already trying to accomplish; lazy afternoons and camaraderie.

Colin Daileda is a media studies student at Radford Universtiy.