Football season is underway. As millions of Americans sit back in their easy chair and crack open a cold one to watch their alma mater or their favorite pro team or head down to the stadium for the full experience they don’t think of lighting. Outdoor lighting helped to make football the game that it is today and while there may be nothing better than a fall Saturday or Sunday afternoon game the real money comes at night in prime time. That could only be possible because of outdoor lighting.
The First Football Game Played Under The Lights
Football helped to pioneer outdoor lighting at sporting events playing its first night game in 1892 in Mansfield, Pennsylvania in a college game between Mansfield State Normal (modern Mansfield University) and the Wyoming Seminary, a high school from the Scranton, Pennsylvania area. Colleges playing high schools in many sports at the time was not uncommon due to the small number of colleges that fielded sports teams. The game ended in a 0-0 tie at halftime due to insufficient lighting. Only 10 plays total were run and both teams agreed to end the game when several players ran into the light posts. The game though is still celebrated during an autumn festival in Mansfield during the Mansfield Heritage Weekend (formerly the Fabulous 1890s Weekend) that features an exact reenactment of the game. Ironically Mansfield University has yet to install lights at its football stadium making this game the only night game the school has ever hosted and the university folded their football program after the 2006 season.
Several other attempts to play under the lights were attempted and failed after that. The first successful game was played in 1905. The Coleman Company wanted to show off their gas lamps and convinced Cooper College (modern day Sterling College) and Fairmount College (now Wichita State University) to play a game at night at Association Park in Wichita, Kansas. The whole game was completed and Fairmount won 24-0. William Coleman wanted to show what his gas lamps were capable of and considered the the event a success. It must have been as you can still buy his company’s equipment today.
Outdoor Lighting Comes To The Pros
The fledgling NFL was quick to adapt to night games when the Chicago Cardinals played the defending NFL champion Providence Steam Roller in 1929. Heavy rains in Providence had made their stadium’s field, the Cycledrome, unplayable. A new venue needed to be found and quickly so that Providence would not miss out on what they hoped was a high gate game. Kinsley Park Stadium, which had recently installed floodlights, fit the bill and the game was played there November 3.
The ball was painted white for the game and appeared to be a large egg according to one reporter. 6,000 fans attended the game to watch Chicago win 16-0, a well attended game for that era. Providence installed floodlights in their home stadium the following year but were forced to fold after the 1931 season. In 1930 Steam Roller star running back Tony Latone’s contract even called for him to receive less money for night games to help mitigate the cost of the installation of the lights. Kinsley Park Stadium was torn down in 1933 and no trace of the field remains today.
Birth Of Monday Night Football
The first pro game played on a Monday was on October 10, 1921 and featured the Rock City Independents and the George Halas led Chicago Staleys, which Rock City won 14-10. Rock City, who had played in the first official American Professional Football Association (which would be renamed the National Football League in 1922) game the previous year and was at the time the most popular pro football team in the midwest. The Staleys were a company team who had been purchased for $100 and were being moved out of Decatur to seek a bigger market. They would be crowned NFL champions that year in controversial fashion. It was played in front of 5,000 fans at the 1,500 seat Staley Field. The Independents would fold in 1926 but the Staleys would rebrand the following year and become the Chicago Bears. The game was not played at night but the powers that be may have taken notice.
5,000 and 6,000 fans was a lot for an NFL game in 1921 and 1929 but just like everything the Great Depression hit the fledgling NFL and its fans hard. NFL leadership took a chance that night games would be popular with the fans and moved some games to Monday as part of an experiment in the 1930s. CBS and NBC broadcast these first games, usually only one game per year (and on the radio) but Monday Night Football was born. Most of these games were played as part of the yearly promotion or as a result of a scheduling conflict.
In 1934 it became an annual game beginning with the Detroit Lions defeating the Brooklyn Dodgers 28-0. With the outbreak of World War 2 Monday Night Football went on hiatus but resumed after the war with games being played consistently until 1955. In the early 1960s NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle sought to not only bring Monday Night Football back but also to televise it to the nation. It was not an easy sell as the NFL had televised Saturday night games with poor ratings. Rozelle also explored playing games on Friday nights but that effort was soundly defeated as it was believed that it would interfere with high school football and ratings would be even worse. Monday night was the only viable option and it made sense as little else happened on Monday nights. Rozelle devised an experiment scheduling the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions game in Detroit for Monday, September 28, 1964. The game was not televised but it proved to be a hit as it was attended by 59,023 fans, the largest crowd to ever watch pro football in Detroit up to that point.
Monday Night Football As We Know It
This gave Rozelle the push to give Monday Night Football a try and the NFL entered into a contract with ABC to televise 2 games over each of the 1966 and 1967 seasons. NBC followed suit inking the AFL for the 1968 and 1969 seasons. Following the NFL-AFL merger Rozelle further explored televising Monday Night games. NBC and CBS were not interested and ABC’s interest was lukewarm. Rozelle did draw interest from Hughes Sports Net, bankrolled by the reclusive Howard Hughes, and this interest caused ABC to pull the trigger on the deal, if just to prevent Hughes from getting an edge. ABC at the time was the 3rd ranked network of the big 3 and it needed something to boost itself. ABC’s Roone Arledge saw the possibility of turning this into a must-watch spectacle and made several key innovations like doubling the number of in-stadium cameras, expanding the broadcasting team, using graphic designs with the broadcast and pioneered the use of instant replay.
To broadcast the games Arledge hired New York City sportscaster Howard Cosell to do the play-by-play and ABC Sports announcer Keith Jackson for commentary. Former Dallas Cowboy Don Meredith was also hired to round out the booth. For the initial game on September 21, 1970 between the New York Jets and Cleveland Browns ABC charged $65,000 per minute for advertising. This proved to be a bargain as the broadcast captured one third of all viewers nationwide who watched the Browns defeat the Jets 31-21. Ironically due to the NFL’s blackout rules Browns fans could not watch the game in Cleveland as the game did not sell out. Gametime was after 9 PM, so that may not be a surprise.
Monday Night Football would evolve with improved on field lighting and with color television sets to become what it is today and what you know and love. It is one of the longest running television shows on the planet and is also one of the highest rated shows on the planet, even after moving from network TV to ESPN after the 2005 season. The same can be true of Sunday Night Football as well.
So as you sit back and relax for a night at the ballpark or a little later in the year for Sunday or Monday Night Football you will know that you have outdoor lighting to thank for those events. Your outdoor lighting system is far more advanced and powerful than the system used that night in Mansfield, Pennsylvania in 1892 but like anything it has evolved over time. Just think what life would be like without it? You can watch football on nearly any night of the week at this point and nearly every stadium from high school to the NFL have lighting installed to help make that possible. It is a great time that we live in!
