Football Daily

December 17, 1933 - Wrigley Field, Chicago - The First National Football League Championship Title Game that the League scheduled before the season started is played. A Title game was played in 1932, but it was thrown together in a week at the end of the season. The Football History Headlines for December 18 will go into detail about the 1932 contest. In the closing minutes, with the ball on the Giants' 33-yard line, Bronko Nagurski throws a jump pass to end Bill Hewitt, who reaches the 19, when he makes a long lateral to the other end, Billy Karr. Eluding two Giant defenders, Karr races into the end zone for his second touchdown, giving the Bears the lead. The pass play was extremely controversial as to where Nagurski was when he threw the ball. At the time of this contest, one rule that constituted a legal forward pass was that the person throwing the ball had to be at least five yards or more behind the line of scrimmage when they released the ball forward. At the League Meetings later in 1933, the "Bronko Nagurski Rule" was created, which made a forward pass legal anywhere from behind the line of scrimmage like it is currently in all levels of football. Anyhow, back to the end of the 1933 Championship game. In the final seconds, The Galloping Ghost, Red Grange preserved Chicago's 23-21 victory with a touchdown-saving tackle. The Chicago Bears defeated the New York Football Giants 23-21. This game also helped institute other rules at the 1933 meetings. The NFL was divided into two divisions, and the top two teams in each would meet for the title. The hash marks were moved, and so were the goalposts to open the game up a little bit to provide more action, similar to what the ever-popular collegiate game was doing at the time. The game set an NFL record of six lead changes in a championship game, which still stands at the time of this writing in 2020. The champs each received $210.34, and the Giants pocketed a cool $170 each for participating in the game.