YESTERDAY

FOOTBALL HASN’T ALWAYS been the main course on Thanksgiving in Dallas. The game started as a mere side dish on Thanksgiving Day 1900-long before the “Aggie War Hymn,” even before the Longhorns got their nickname. In that first game, Texas Varsity beat State Agricultural and Mechanical College 11-0 in a sea of mud before a crowd of about 700 in Austin.

The Aggies and the Horns swapped wins for a few years until 1911 when A&M was placed on probation for unnecessary roughness, and Texas refused to play them for three years. The tea sippers carried on the Turkey Day tradition against imported opponents, losing to Notre Dame, then crushing the Wabash Little Giants.

The Texas vs, A&M series resumed in 1915, and with the advent of radio in the 1920s, Dallas fans were treated to tackle-by-tackle accounts. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving Day a week ahead on the calendar to boost Christmas sales during the latter days of the Depression, the State of Texas refused to go along with the sacrilege, since the big game was already scheduled. The state did not relent until the mid-’50s.

Ironically, the first local telecast of a Thanksgiving Day football game was the 1952 NFL encounter between the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers. Dallasites who watched were mostly curious about how Southwest Conference alums Bobby Layne and Doak Walker were doing.

The first national telecast of the Aggies and Horns was in 1955, and until the mid-’60s, the bitter rivals owned Thanksgiving. Then came an ever so subtle intrusion: at the Cotton Bowl in 1966, the Dallas Cowboys, a team of paid professionals, cranberried the Cleveland Browns, a team likewise comprised. The telecast was arranged for 5 p.m. so as not to interfere with the traditional feast, and local television coverage was blacked out.

By 1971, the kick off had been sneaked up to 2:30 p.m. for the first Texas Stadium Thanksgiving match-up against the Los Angeles Rams, but the game was still not televised locally. Then in 1973, in the second half of a TV doubleheader, the Cowboys, facing the Miami Dolphins, took legal title to Thanksgiving Day. The Dallas Times Herald covered the devastating effect on Dallas’ “housewives,” who could not get Dad to give up his 50-yard-line seat in the den to come to the holiday dinner. By the 1980s, thousands of local mothers had resigned their positions as family chefs and were bringing turkey with trimmings home from Wyatt’s, Lu-by’s or Tom Thumb to dump in Dad’s lap. The term “tailgater” was coined to denote the species of pigskinus fanaticus who wielded his turkey leg from the back of a Silverado in the parking lot at Texas Stadium.

Meanwhile, the Aggies and the Longhorns have been looking for a television home ever since, even trying Thanksgiving night; this year they’ll try the day after Thanksgiving.

LEFTOVERS

ORPHANS, 27; BEARS, 23 On Nov. 14,1952, Commissioner Bert Bell found the owners of the fledg ling Dallas Texans “guilty of acts detrimental to the NFL” (ie,. the team couldn’t pay its bills), and repossessed the franchise. The Thanksgiving Day Dallas game was moved to the Rubber Bowl in Akron, Ohio, where the Texans upset the Chicago Bears for their first win of the year.

BURYING THE HATCHET During half-time at the UT/A&M game in Austin on Turkey Day 1904. temperance crusader Carry Nation bombarded the captive fans with a tirade against the evils of strong drink.

BAD SEED In 1950, Aggie students sowed Texas’ Memorial Stadium with oats and fertilizer. After the first rain, “A&M” sprouted in dark green letters. In 1963, in retaliation for the kidnapping of the Longhorns’ mascot, Texas students poured chemicals on the Aggies’ Kyle Field to kill the grass in a pattern spelling “Bevo.”

THE MAD BOMBER The Redskins thought they were home free after knocking Roger Stanbach senseless in the third quarter of the Thanksgiving game in 1974. But baby-faced rookie Clint Longley passed for 203 yards and two touchdowns to lead the Pokes to a comeback victory.