The 1941 NFL Championship Game was the ninth annual championship game of the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the majo ...

(NFL), held at

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Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

on December 21. Played two weeks after the

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, the attendance was 13,341, the smallest ever to see an NFL title game.

Western Division playoff game

Before the title game, the Western Division champion needed to be determined. The defending NFL champion

Chicago Bears The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) North division. The Bears have won nine ...

(10–1) had ended the regular season on December 7 tied with the

Green Bay Packers The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) North division. It is the t ...

(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 temperatures and easily won, 33–14. The Eastern Division champion

New York Giants The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divisio ...

(8–3) completed their regular season on December 7 with a 21–7 loss to the runner-up

Brooklyn Dodgers The Brooklyn Dodgers were a Major League Baseball team founded in 1884 as a member of the American Association before joining the National League in 1890. They remained in Brooklyn until 1957, after which the club moved to Los Angeles, Californi ...

(7–4), who had defeated the Giants twice in the regular season.

NFL Championship Game

The Bears were making their fifth appearance in the title game, the Giants were making their sixth, 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 Events January * January 11 – Sir Charles Kingsford Smith makes the first commercial flight between Australia and New Zealand. * January 17 – The United States Congress votes in favour of Philippines independence, against the wis ...

and the Giants in

1934 Events January–February * January 1 – The International Telecommunication Union, a specialist agency of the League of Nations, is established. * January 15 – The 8.0 Nepal–Bihar earthquake strikes Nepal and Bihar with a maxi ...

. The Bears were favored by two touchdowns and 35,000 were expected to attend. The game time temperature was an unseasonably warm . The hometown Bears kicked three field goals in the first half to lead 9–6 at the intermission. The Giants took the opening drive of the second half down to the five but settled for a short field goal to tie the score. Chicago dominated the rest of the second half with four unanswered touchdowns and won 37–9. The Bears became the first team in the NFL championship game era (since 1933) to win consecutive titles; it was the franchise's fifth league title (, ,

1940 A calendar from 1940 according to the Gregorian calendar, factoring in the dates of Easter and related holidays, cannot be used again until the year 5280. Events Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix. January * Januar ...

, 1941).

Scoring summary

''Sunday, December 21, 1941''
Kickoff: 1:00 p.m. CST Source: Ray "Scooter" McLean elected to

drop kick A drop kick is a type of kick in various codes of football. It involves a player dropping the ball and then kicking it as it touches the ground. Drop kicks are used as a method of restarting play and scoring points in rugby union and rugby lea ...

the extra point on the last touchdown, the last successful drop kick in the NFL for 64 years.

Doug Flutie Douglas Richard Flutie (born October 23, 1962) is an American former football quarterback whose professional career spanned 21 seasons. He played 12 seasons in the National Football League (NFL), eight seasons in the Canadian Football League (CF ...

of the

New England Patriots The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East divisio ...

kicked one in his final regular season game, in the fourth quarter of the last game of the

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regular season on January 1, 2006.

Officials

*Referee: Emil Heintz *Umpire: John Schommer *Head Linesman:

Charlie Berry Charles Francis Berry (October 18, 1902 – September 6, 1972) was an American athlete and sports official who enjoyed careers as a catcher and umpire in Major League Baseball and as an end and official in the National Football League. His ...

*Field Judge: Chuck Sweeney The NFL had only four game officials in ; the back judge was added in , the line judge in , and the side judge in .

Players' shares

With the poor attendance, the net gate receipts were a record low with under $42,000. Each Bears player received $431, while each Giants player saw $288, less than half of the previous year's. Ticket prices were $4.40 for the grandstand and $2.20 for bleachers.

War casualties

Two players in the game, back

Young Bussey Young may refer to: * Offspring, the product of reproduction of a new organism produced by one or more parents * Youth, the time of life when one is young, often meaning the time between childhood and adulthood Music * The Young, an American ro ...

of the Bears and end Jack Lummus of the Giants, were killed in action three years later in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, in early 1945.

Navy A navy, naval force, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operations and related functions. It in ...

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Bussey died in the Invasion of Lingayen Gulf in the

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and

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Lummus was posthumously awarded the

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for valor at the

Battle of Iwo Jima The Battle of Iwo Jima (19 February – 26 March 1945) was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps (USMC) and United States Navy (USN) landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA ...

References

{{NFL pre-sb Championship Game National Football League Championship games Chicago Bears postseason New York Giants postseason

NFL Championship Game Throughout its history, the National Football League (NFL) and other rival American football leagues have used several different formats to determine their league champions, including a period of inter-league matchups to determine a true national c ...

1940s in Chicago Wrigley Field Sports competitions in Chicago American football in Chicago