1941 NFL Championship Game
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| Date | December 21, 1941 | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Stadium | Wrigley Field, Chicago, Illinois | ||||||||||||||||||
| Referee | Emil Heintz | ||||||||||||||||||
| Attendance | 13,341 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Radio in the United States | |||||||||||||||||||
| Network | Mutual | ||||||||||||||||||
| Announcers | Bob Elson, Red Barber | ||||||||||||||||||
The 1941 National Football League Championship game was the ninth annual championship game, held at Wrigley Field in Chicago on December 21. Played two weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the attendance was 13,341, the smallest ever to see an NFL title game.
Prior to the title game, the Western Division champion needed to be determined. The defending NFL champion Chicago Bears (10–1) had ended the regular season on December 7 tied with the Green Bay Packers (10–1), the 1939 NFL champions. The two had split their season series in 1941, with the road teams winning, so the tiebreaker was the first-ever divisional playoff game in the NFL, played on December 14 at Wrigley Field.
The Packers had completed their regular season on November 30 and the playoff game was sold out by Tuesday, December 9, at over 46,484, with over 10,000 seats to Packer fans. Chicago was favored, and attendance on game day was slightly lower than capacity at 43,425, the week after Pearl Harbor. The Bears jumped to a 30–7 halftime lead under clear skies and 16 °F (−9 °C) temperatures and easily won, 33–14. The Eastern Division champion New York Giants (8–3) completed their regular season on December 7 with a 21–7 loss to the runner-up Brooklyn Dodgers (7–4), who had defeated the Giants twice in the regular season.
Both the Bears and Giants were making their fifth appearances in the title game, and each had two victories. It was the third time the two teams matched up in the big game; the home teams had won both: the Bears in 1933 and the Giants in 1934. The Bears were favored by two touchdowns and 35,000 were expected to attend. The game time temperature was an unseasonably warm 47 °F (8 °C).
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