The only known photograph of the game.
Number 7 is Ace Parker. Number 56 is Bill Hewitt.
Both men are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
No, Hewitt hasn't lost his helmet: He didn't wear one
until the NFL passed a rule requiring it in 1940.
October 22, 1939: For the 1st time, a professional football game is televised, on experimental New York station W2XBS, the forerunner of WNBC-Channel 4. The Brooklyn Dodgers -- yes, there was an NFL team with that name -- play the Philadelphia Eagles at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. The Dodgers win, 23-14, before only 13,057 fans.
There's no record of how many people paid to watch it in person, but there were apparently less than 300 TV sets capable of receiving the signal. No footage of the game survives, not even on newsreel.
There's no record of how many people paid to watch it in person, but there were apparently less than 300 TV sets capable of receiving the signal. No footage of the game survives, not even on newsreel.
The Dodgers struck first, on a 1-yard run by Clarence "Pug" Manders, who was in the middle of a run of 3 straight Pro Bowls. In the 2nd quarter, Fran Murray scored on a 1-yard run of his own for the Eagles. It remained 7-7 at the half, but the Dodgers took over: Ralph Kercheval kicked field goals of 44, 38 and 45 yards, and future Hall-of-Famer Clarence "Ace" Parker threw a 47-yard touchdown pass to Perry Schwartz. The Eagles added a 22-yard touchdown pass from Davey O'Brien, winner of the 1938 Heisman Trophy with Texas Christian, to Hall-of-Famer Bill Hewitt, but that would be as close as the Eagles got.
Football and television is an epic love story, but it was far from love at first sight. It would really take another 19 years, and the 1958 NFL Championship Game -- Baltimore Colts 23, New York Giants 17, in overtime at Yankee Stadium -- for it to become more than a flirtation. If there is an event that can be called "the wedding," it's probably Super Bowl III, 10 years after that, on January 12, 1969.
But the couple is inseparable, partly because of the shared TV revenue which allows Green Bay, Wisconsin, with a metropolitan area of 300,000 people, to compete on the same level as New York City, with a metro area of nearly 24 million people. It's also why the Big Ten Conference wanted to add Rutgers and the University of Maryland: Between the markets of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, they added about 40 million.
The NFL's TV revenue is so big (How big is it?), it's been said that the NFL can shut the doors of all 16 stadiums hosting games in a given weekend, with a total official attendance of zero, and still make a profit.
*
October 22, 1939 was a Sunday. George Cohen, the right back on the England team that won the 1966 World Cup, was born on this day.
The baseball season was over, the NHL season hadn't begun yet, and the NBA hadn't yet been founded. But there were 4 other NFL games founded:
* The New York Giants beat the Chicago Bears, 16-13 at the Polo Grounds.
* The Washington Redskins beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 21-14 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. The Pirates, like the Giants named for their city's oldest baseball team, became the Pittsburgh Steelers the next season.
* The Cleveland Rams beat the Chicago Cardinals, 24-0 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. The Rams moved to Los Angeles in 1946, St. Louis in 1995, and back to Los Angeles in 2016. The Cardinals moved to St. Louis in 1960, and Arizona in 1988.
* And the Green Bay Packers beat the Detroit Lions, 26-7 at City Stadium in Green Bay.
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