Football and Thanksgiving have built their traditions together. President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the first national day of thanksgiving in 1863. In 1876, the Thanksgiving matchup between Yale and Princeton was the first college football game played away from a campus, a precursor to the modern bowl games. The words of the New York Herald in 1893 are just as true in the 21st century as they were in the earliest years of the holiday and the sport, “It is a holiday granted by the State and the nation to see a game of football.”