There’s no shortage of weird traditions in sports, from the Detroit Red Wings’ octopus throw to the Taylor University “Silent Night” game. But none is more iconic than the late John Madden’s celebratory turkey leg.
Someone just forgot to tell Jason Garrett’s wife about it.
Jason and his wife, Brill Garrett, have known each other since college, when Jason was the quarterback for the Princeton Tigers’ football team in 1985. Fast forward to 1994 when Jason’s Dallas Cowboys defeated Brett Favre’s Green Bay Packers on Thanksgiving Day.
Jason was Madden’s MVP of the game and earned the celebratory turkey leg, which stayed in his freezer for well over a decade, the now-NBC analyst revealed during the Thanksgiving Day broadcast of the Packers’ game against the Miami Dolphins.
“I had it in the freezer. It was in tin foil,” he told play-by-play man Mike Tirico. “I probably had it for 15 years, then we finally moved. I called my wife the other day and said, ‘do we still have the turkey leg?’ She said ‘no, it’s long gone.’”
Few would blame Brill for throwing out 15-year-old poultry, but in a way it’s still sad to see another piece of Madden’s legacy disappear. The legendary football-coach-turned-TV-personality died in 2021 at age 85. The namesake of one of the most popular sports video games in the world, Madden won 16 Emmy Awards and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2006.
The turkey leg award originated in 1989 when Madden decided the MVP of the Thanksgiving Day game he was calling between the Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys deserved a prize. He presented the inaugural award to Eagles linebacker Reggie White, and the tradition quickly took hold.
The next year, he gave the turkey leg to the Cowboys’ Emmitt Smith. When Madden remarked that he wanted to give out six legs – one to Smith and one each to his five offensive linemen, Joe Pat Fieseler, owner of Harvey’s Barbecue Pit in Texas, created a six-legged turkey, further adding to the award’s popularity.
“We had to find turkeys that had a lot of legs on them,” Madden told the Star-Telegram in 1998. “There’s only one place you can get a turkey with more than two legs, and that’s in Texas.”
The tradition continued until Madden left Fox in 2001, at which point the network began handing out the Galloping Gobbler trophy.
It’s not as fun as a turkey leg, but at least it doesn’t need to be frozen in tin foil in order to last.
