It's December 18th and on two separate occasions on this date, weather wreaked havoc on the NFL championship game.

Both times nearly forcing the cancellation or at least postponement of the big game.

Let's start on this day in 1949.

This was the Philadelphia Eagles traveling cross country to play the NFL championship in sunny California.

It was the first championship game played on the west coast.

Dreams of palm trees and sunshine, warm weather and dry conditions danced in the players heads.

Or at least that was what everybody hoped for.

That's not what the teams were greeted with on this day though.

Instead, a near constant rain made the field a muddy mess.

The weather was also impacting ticket sales.

The venue seeded 70,000 and under beautiful conditions the game was expected to sell out.

But under these conditions only 27,000 tickets had been sold.

And unlike field ticket sales had dried up since the players payment for playing in this game came directly from ticket sales.

Both the Rams and Eagles players lobbied commissioner Burt Bell to postpone the game.

But Bell refused.

Now what made that controversial is that Bell wasn't even there.

He was back home in Philadelphia making the call about the weather on the West Coast.

His absence was noticed and called out by many.

But Belle's argument was that the game was going to be televised, at least on the west coast.

And there was a nationwide audience ready to listen on the radio.

So the game had to be played.

Of the 27,000 tickets sold, there were more than 5,000 no shows.

And the players pay for the game was a third of what had initially been promised to them.

But they played it and the conditions actually played right into the hands of the defending champion Eagles.

They were a running offensive team and a strong defensive team.

They'd held six of their opponents that year to under 10 points.

Los Angeles, on the other hand, won games through the air.

They averaged 30 points a game during the regular season.

Behind the arms of their pair of quarterbacks, Bob Waterfield and Norm Van Broecklin.

The Eagles ground game was able to find some traction riding the legs of Steve Van Buren.

Van Buren ran for 196 yards on 31 carries and that helped them keep the clock moving and out of the hands of la.

Even though the Rams were the passing team, the Eagles actually scored the first points in the second quarter on a 31 yard touchdown pass from Tommy Thompson to future hall of Famer Pete Pijos.

The Eagles then used some of their dominating defense to score their second touchdown.

After stopping the Rams on offense again, they forced a punt deep in LA's end Philly rookie Leo Sclidaney broke through to block it and then scooped the ball at the two yard line and scored.

The Rams were never able to adjust to the weather and field conditions and they sputtered all day on offense.

They had just seven first downs and none of those by running the football.

And they only had 98 yards passing.

The Eagles won their second consecutive NFL championship with the 14 nothing win.

On this day in 1932, the NFL played its first ever playoff game to decide its champion.

We talked about this a little bit yesterday, but between the start of the NFL through 1931, the champion of the league was decided by winning percentage.

There weren't any playoff games or an extension to the schedule past the regular season.

But in 1932, the Chicago Bears and the Portsmouth Spartans, the team that would eventually become the Detroit lions, each had six wins and one loss.

Now the Green Bay packers were 10 and three, which you might think 10 is more than six.

Why weren't they the champs?

But 10 wins in 13 games has a winning percentage of 77%.

Six wins in seven games has a winning percentage of 86%.

They also must have really enjoyed ties back in those days.

The Bears had six ties that season while the Spartans had four of them.

But ties did not figure into the calculation.

So instead of having co champions, it was actually Chicago Bears coach George Halas that came up with the idea to have a playoff.

Let's decide it on the field.

So the game was scheduled to be played outside at Chicago's Wrigley Field.

But a huge snowstorm blew into the Windy City and made the field conditions at Wrigley unplayable.

So instead they moved the game indoors to Chicago Stadium.

Ah, but there was a problem.

Well, several problems actually.

One, the circus had been in town for a week long run and had just vacated the premises.

During their stay the circus elephants had done a lot of vacating themselves all around the building and the place smelled something awful.

A couple of players actually got sick to their stomachs on the field because it reeked so bad.

Second, the venue could only accommodate an 80 yard field, so some special rules had to be put in place.

The most significant of which was when teams moved inside the 10 yard line, the ball was pushed back 10 yards to simulate a longer field and field goals were not allowed, but extra points were.

This was also a hockey venue and the sidelines and end zone were encircled by head high boards just beyond the boundary.

The Bears and Spartans had played twice during the regular season, tying each time.

It looked like that may be the score on this day, with both teams scoreless deep into the fourth quarter.

Finally, the Bears backfield duo of Bronko Nagurski and Red Grange teamed up for the first score.

But there was a little controversy, and it revolved around one of the rules at this time in pro football that said any pass attempt had to be made at least five yards behind the line of scrimmage.

Nagurski's pass was a wobbly end over ender that landed on the belly of Grange, who'd been knocked down in the end zone.

Grange corralled it for the touchdown, but the Spartans were adamant that Nagurski had been within five yards of the line of scrimmage.

Their argument was ignored and the Bears led.

Portsmouth fumbled away their final opportunity on the day, putting the ball on the turf and then watching it roll out of the back of the end zone for a safety to provide the final score of 9 0.

This game had an impact, without a doubt.

The pro game was struggling to compete against the college game, and the owners realized they needed to make some changes.

One, they relaxed the passing rules and made the line of scrimmage the legal pass, no pass line.

They moved the goalposts to the front of the end zone to make field goals easier and promote more scoring.

That rule stayed in place until 1974, and then they split the league into two divisions and adopted a championship game to be played between the two division winners.

And just as we talked about yesterday, what happened on this day developed into the first championship game the following year and eventually the super bowl that we know today.

On this day in 2017, Kobe Bryant became the first NBA player to have two numbers retired by the same team.

The Los Angeles Lakers honored Kobe by retiring his number 8 jersey, which he wore from 1997 through 2000, 2006, and then his number 24 jersey, which he wore from 2007 until his retirement in 2016.

It is a bit strange that a player of Kobe status would change numbers midway through a career, especially with the same team.

Jordan had to switch to 45 because his number 23 had been retired after his first retirement from the Bulls, and it was against league rules to wear a retired jersey for a team at that point.

But according to Kevin Garnett, the reason that Kobe switched to 24 with the Lakers was a statement to say that he was one more than Jordan.

I don't know about you, but whenever I'm having one of those days, like I've made a mistake and I'm beating myself up over it, I like to play a little game that I call.

At least I didn't do that.

So here's one for you.

The next time you're having a really bad day on the golf course, remember what Rafa Cabrera Bello did on this day in 2010.

Cabrera Bello is a professional golfer.

He's won over $8 million worldwide, and he was a member of the 2016 Ryder cup team.

But on this day, he was playing in the second round of the South African Open, and he was on the struggle bus from his first tee shot.

After playing 11 holes, he was disqualified.

Why was that?

Well, because he'd run out of golf balls in his bag.

Cabrera Bello started the day with 11 golf balls, but after putting a pair of sixes on the card along with a Snowman and a 10 in his first 10 holes, he was 11 over for the day.

And he'd been spraying golf balls all over the place.

After losing his last ball on the 11th, he was balless and by the rules of golf, was disqualified.

Ouch.

And in 2022, Argentina beat France in a penalty shootout to win the World Cup.

Lionel Messi scored two goals and was named man of the match, while Kylian Mbappe scored a hat trick in the loss.

And time now for today's Nothing to Do With Sports.

Fun fact.

The next time you're watching how the Grinch Stole Christmas with your family, amuse them with this little ditty.

We've been pronouncing the pen name of Theodor Geisel incorrectly all along.

Geisel, better known as Dr.

Seuss, used his mother's maiden name as his pen name, but it's truly not pronounced Seuss.

Instead, it's supposed to be Soice rhymes with voice.

Geisel corrected folks at first, but then he just said, ah, the hoo hoo.

Fluff with it.

And so now it's Seuss.

Hey, this is Steve White, the host of this Day in Sports History.

Thanks for listening to this episode.

One quick thing.

I'm up for an award.

I made the short list for the best sports Talk podcast in 2024, and there are some heavy hitters in this category, such as the Kelce brothers, Scott Van Pelt, and Bill Rhoden.

There's not much hope for me winning this category against those guys, but if you're a fan of the show, then you may know that one of my favorite sports movies is Will Ferrell's Semi Pro.

And one of the things in that movie is his effort to get his team to finish in fourth place.

So I've kind of poached that idea and would love for you to help me finish in fourth place.

I put a link in the show Notes that will take you to the page where you can vote.

You can only vote once in the category, so if you would cast your vote for my podcast, that would be awesome.

Appreciate it.

Have a great day.

I'll be back tomorrow.

This has been an original Thrive Sweet production.