Football and Thanksgiving are two things that just go hand-in-hand. They've been paired since the earliest days of both the sport and the holiday, but the 150 years of tradition turned a morning football game before a big family dinner into a national pastime enjoyed in every community and township across the American landscape.
They are huge deals, and anyone who lived or grew up in Massachusetts understands how the long-standing rivalries date back to the ancient times near the immediate aftermath of the Civil War era in New England. Matchups between Boston Latin and Boston English date back to the 1880s, and other games between Wellesley and Needham or Malden and Medford aren't easily erased by the passage of time.