First indoor football game

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Welcome to the discussion. Close 1 of 4. Notifications Settings. The one year they did not play in , attendance dipped to a little over 2, Henry would go on to a year career as a head coach in the NFL. The Thanksgiving Bowl was played for one year in There were also annual high school games played at the convention hall including championship games.

However, it would be another decade until football would return to the boardwalk with a Temple win against Toledo in front of 5, people. There was the task of getting the facility ready for football.

A layer of burlap was put down to keep the sod and grass together and artificial lighting was installed to help keep the grass growing. The field was close to a regular football field, but there were some oddities, including both end zones being shortened by two-yards, one because of the permanent Miss America stage, and temporary bleachers set on the stage that towered over the endzone.

There were also a few dead spots in the field where the grass would kick up after a play. It would take another years before a football game would return to the building. Boardwalk Hall celebrates its 90th year and has seen its share of other sports and entertainment besides football. The AFL hopes that its future expansion team will set the stage for future sports and entertainment on the Atlantic City Boardwalk. Did you enjoy this content? Because a circus had recently been held at the venue, the teams played on a field composed of tons of dirt.

Most punts sailed into the seats, forcing spectators into evasive maneuvers. But with America in the midst of the Great Depression , Bears owner and coach George Halas and the league were eager to play a championship game before a big crowd. The week before, only 5, fans had attended the Bears' season finale at home against the Green Bay Packers. The title game relocation and stipulations overshadowed the actual result—a Bears victory—and the strange game laid the groundwork for seminal NFL changes.

In the first 12 seasons of the NFL, which played its inaugural season in , no playoff format existed. Regular-season winning percentage determined a champion, with ties excluded. In the league's early days, teams often did not even play the same number of games. In their season finales against Green Bay, Portsmouth and Chicago won, leaving each team with a win-loss record the Bears had six ties, the Spartans four.

To determine the NFL champion, the Midwestern teams agreed to play a winner-take-all game in Chicago. Quarterback Dutch Clark anchored the rushing attack in the single-wing offense for Portsmouth, the underdog against the Bears. But the versatile playmaker couldn't play in the championship game because of a conflict with his offseason job. The Colorado native graduated from the school in and stayed on as its basketball coach. Portsmouth requested the school give its high-profile employee a personal day, even offering to pay for transportation from Colorado for the game.

Not happening , the school said. Bronko Nagurski and Red Grange on the other side made that prospect difficult. The two Hall of Fame-bound backs were Bears teammates for five seasons, with Nagurski—a 6-foot-2, pound fullback—Chicago's centerpiece.

The hulking ball-carrier, who had A knee injury had stripped Grange, a star at the University of Illinois, of his celebrated elusiveness.