The 1948National Football League Championship game was the 16th NFL title game played. The game was a rematch of the previous year's championship game between the Chicago Cardinals, champions of the Western Division and the Philadelphia Eagles, champions of the Eastern Division. It was the first NFL championship game to be televised. In the early days of television, "snow" was a frequent problem, but in this case the snow was real. The grounds crew needed the help of players from both teams to remove the tarp from the field, because of the heavy snowfall[1].
Game summary
The game was played at Philadelphia's Shibe Park on December 19, 1948 during a significant snowstorm. Bert Bell, commissioner of the NFL had considered postponing the game but the players for both teams wanted to play the game. The attendance for the game was 36,309. The teams played a scoreless game until early in the fourth quarter when, after Chicago had fumbled in their own end of the field, the Eagles recovered the fumble that set up Steve Van Buren's five yard touchdown at 1:05 into the fourth quarter.
This game turned out be the Cardinals' last appearance in any NFL Championship game until Super Bowl XLIII.
1 – Dates in the list denote the season, not necessarily the calendar year in which the championship game was played. For instance, Super Bowl LIV was played in 2020, but was the championship for the 2019 season.
2 – From 1966 to 1969, the first four Super Bowls were "World Championship" games played between two independent professional football leagues, AFL and NFL, and when the league merged in 1970 the Super Bowl became the NFL Championship Game.
