The 1929 NFL season marked a significant milestone in the annals of American football, heralding the inaugural championship victory for the illustrious Green Bay Packers. As we delve into this season, we explore the landscape of the league, which witnessed the addition of new franchises and substantial changes to officiating protocols, including the introduction of a fourth on-field official. The competition was fierce, with the Packers and the New York Giants emerging as the dominant teams, culminating in a pivotal matchup that was hailed as an unofficial championship game. Ultimately, the Packers secured their first championship title, concluding the season with a remarkable record that solidified their place in football history. We invite you to join us as we recount the thrilling events and key players defining this landmark National Football League season.

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This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history on a day to day basis.

Your host, Darren Hayes is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

So as we come out of the tunnel of the Sports History Network, let's take the field and go no huddle through the portal of positive gridiron history with pigskindispatch.com.

This podcast is part of the Sports History Network, your headquarters for the yesteryear of your favorite sport.

You can Learn more at sportshistorynetwork.com hello my football friends.

This is Darren Hees of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

We're covering the championship years before there was a postseason.

There was no championship game, no playoff.

It's a team with the best record and that's where our story starts.

The Buffalo Bisons were also added as they suspended operations for the previous year and happily enjoyed re entry into the fray of active NFL franchises.

There was also a few revisions to returning teams.

The Pottsville Maroons, they moved their operations to Massachusetts and became the Boston Bulldogs and the New York Yankees folded.

Then the Detroit Wolverines.

Well they were bought out by Tim Mara and merged into the New York Giants, staying under the umbrella of the Giants name.

Now there were some officiating changes before the season started as the National Football League made some stage substantial change to their officiating crews.

There was an addition of a fourth on field official, the field judge and he would join the referee, the umpire and the linesman so that there would be four sets of eyes looking at the action from all sides.

The field judge joined the referee, umpire and headlinesman on the field and according to a recent post on Football Zebras website, the field judge position was optional during the next few seasons as clarified by the NFL and and a Pro Football hall of Fame.

But the field judge would cover a few areas of the field in the sideline opposite the headlinesman and the deep secondary of the defense behind the umpire.

These offenses explored both areas of the game used the forward pass as it became more frequently used.

Now the season itself was an exciting one and it had some dominant teams going into it.

The first nine weeks of play the front runners in the standings were the Green Bay packers and the New York Football Giants.

Neither franchise had lost a game and the Press touted the Nov.

24 matchup of these two between the 801 Giants and the 90 packers as the unofficial National Football League championship game.

So these records meant everything.

And there was probably some pretty close on his prediction as each team had the other games remaining on their schedules afterwards, but none threatened these powerhouse 11 square.

Now the game was everything it was built up to be.

The Pack took the early lead when Verne Llewellyn sailed a touchdown pass.

The hurtis McCrary and Bo Melinda's extra point gave Green Bay a 70 lead in the first quarter.

The Giants responded with a touchdown pass strike of their own when Benny Friedman found Tom Plansky for the score.

But the extra point attempt was blocked and New York trailed 76 in the third quarter.

The packers padded this lead in the final stanza winning 20 to 6 to take a one game lead in the standings.

And as predicted neither Green Bay or New York lost their remaining games.

So it did come down to one special game on Thanksgiving Day when the Green Bay packers the week after playing the Giants they were worried about having a letdown and they almost did.

They had to travel to Philadelphia where they would play the very powerful Frankfurt Yellow Jackets.

Now the Wisconsin team made its claim to the National Pro League more secure because of the Yellow Jackets were last formidable opponent on their schedule.

All they had to do is get by the Yellow Jackets and they would be the National Football League champs and win the rest of their games.

Now both elevens in this game had some scattered chances to score but there was some really strong defense of stands by both teams.

But the excitement went right down to the wire because Lavi Dillwig of the packers had just caught a pass from Llewellyn and took it to the jackets 12 yard line.

And as the Green Bay was looking to score and time expired down that Deep into the Frankfort Yellowjackets territory.

It ended up in a 0 to 0 tie.

And what that meant was that the two teams at the top were the Green Bay packers and the New York Giants.

And what happened was the Giants ended up being that one game short from losing.

Green Bay had a12.01 record, the New York Giants 131 1.

Frankford fell in third with 104 and 5 record.

So that was it.

The Giants had took second place.

And the Green Bay packers won their very first National Football League championship.

That was quite an exciting thing as it was.

But there was one last chance for the New York Giants.

Now these were rival teams and the Green Bay packers had a very formidable team.

Now they had players like Cal Hubbard, Hurl McCrary, Tom Nash, Bernard Darling, Claude Perry, Red Smith, Vern Llewellyn, Roger Ashmore, Johnny Blood McNally, Jim Bowdoin, Lavi Dillwig, Jug Earp, Curly Lambo was the coach.

Paul Minick, Bo Melinda, Roy Baker, Eddie Cottle, red Dunn, Dick O'Donnell, Mike Miloski, Bill Kern, Whitey Whitney Wooden and Carl Lidberg.

Now some great players indeed.

This game against the Bears in Chicago was everything to these two teams at least the Giants and the Packers.

A crowd of 5,000 fans packed the stadium and they came with expectations to see the Bears maybe come to life and try to humble this great packers team.

But it was the packers that proved to be the champions.

Carl Lindbergh, the former Golden Gopher of Minnesota, well, he had some terrific runs into the middle, tearing off gain after gain, ripping the Bears line to pieces.

And Carl wasn't rendering to the Chicago line.

Well, it was little Eddie Cottle from Lawrence University.

He would tear it up with his speed runs through the line.

After Lydberg would soften him up a little bit.

Well then you had Dillwig and Llewellyn throwing passes.

And with those runs it was just too much to cover.

Now the Bears had some very formidable players themselves.

Red Grange had returned to the Bears lineup and he was sort of not the same galloping ghost that he was a few years earlier.

And Eddie Kodal ended up catching a long pass that he came down with his one handed over red Grange and scampered 25 yards for the touchdown and brought the whole crowd to its feet.

It was play after play like that.

And the packers ended up winning score of 25 to nothing.

And they were the National Football League champions as voted by the owners.

Just A few months later at their owners meeting and what a thrilling season it was for the Packers.

It was the first of their championships and they had brighter things to come.

And this guy named Curly Lambeau was going to be something special for the team.

And he's a hometown guy born in Green Bay and now coaching the Green Bay packers.

And he was going to take them to some special heights.

No wonder they named a stadium after him.

We hope you enjoyed this little bit of football history.

We're going to be covering more of these games here as we go through February.

We've got four more seasons before there's championship games.

Then on March 3, we're going to start the championship games themselves.

We're going to have experts, historians, authors of the teams that won telling us about those seasons.

And boy, we have a really star studded lineup to bring you those games.

You're going to really enjoy that.

Every Monday we're going to have an NFL championship game.

But that's our mission.

Hope you enjoyed this little bit of football history.

Hope you come back for more next time.

And we'll till next time.

Have a great gridiron day.

We're taking a peek over at the chains and the down marker.

It's fourth and long.

We're gonna have to punt the ball and get on out of here.

But we'll have another series tomorrow for your football history headlines, so be sure to tune in.

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