The NFL games no one wanted to play


Navy to start giving gay couples marriage benefits in JapanSen. Harry Reid goes to hospital as a Wholesale Jerseys precautionFla. nuclear general boozed it up, chased 'hot women' in Russia: report45 Calif. students at one school test positive for tuberculosis exposureRob Ford on women: Give them cash 'and they are happy'Ku Klux Klan group holds recruitment meeting in MarylandAirport assassination: Mayor, 3 others killed at Manila airportTea party type lawmakers take mysterious, off books trip to MideastThe Philadelphia Eagles were having a team meeting. America was reeling from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The Eagles, like many players throughout the NFL, were reeling from the news that commissioner Pete Rozelle said the league would play that Sunday just two days after the death of the president while the country was in mourning.


The Eagles would face the team from the nation capital, the Washington Redskins, at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.


The story goes that while the Eagles were talking about Rozelle, defensive end Bill Quinlan referred to the commissioner with an ethnic slur. Cornerback Ben Scotti, a University of Maryland graduate who had played for the Redskins, objected to it. Defensive tackle John Mellekas jumped up and started arguing with Scott, and the two of them went into another room.


When they were done, both men had to be hospitalized, according to accounts. Mellekas suffered a broken nose, a black eye and lost several teeth. more >


knocked him down, and I stood over him and worked him over, Scotti told New York Post columnist Milton Gross.


had fights, said Sonny Jurgensen, who was playing for the Eagles in 1963. wanted to play that game. It felt like a preseason game. Everybody was in shock. years later, the decision by Rozelle the man who helped usher the NFL into its place today in America as the national passion to allow football to be played while feelings were still so raw over the death of the president is still a dark cloud over his legacy.


It has been reported that Rozelle had a conversation with Kennedy press secretary, Wholesale Jerseys Pierre Salinger, about whether or not to play football that Sunday, and supposedly Salinger told him that Kennedy would have wanted the games to go on.


The Kennedy interest in football Wholesale NFL Jerseys went beyond touch football at the Kennedy compound. The family actually expressed interest in buying the Eagles franchise the year before JFK was killed.


Despite the wishes of many players around the league, the NFL played its games that Sunday, and more than 60,000 fans showed up in Philadelphia on Nov. 24, 1963, to watch the Redskins defeat the Eagles 13 10. was going through the motions, said Jurgensen, who would wind up playing for the Redskins the following season.


were two bad Wholesale Jerseys teams, Jurgensen said (Washington was 3 8, while Philadelphia was 2 8 1). was like, just get this over with and get out of here. Everybody would have been better off if they had not played that day. 22 and were at a sandwich truck getting something to eat when they heard the news President Kennedy had been shot.