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The 1932 NFL Playoff Game was the first ever playoff game held by the National Football League (NFL), the major professional American football sports league in the United States. Since the league first began play in 1920, the league title had always been awarded to the team that finished the regular season with the best record. But at the end of the 1932 NFL season, the Chicago Bears and the Portsmouth Spartans tied for first place. To determine the 1932 league champion, the NFL arranged for an additional regular season game between the two teams that would count in the final standings. Due to extremely cold weather in Chicago in mid-December, the game was played indoors on December 18 at Chicago Stadium. The final score was Chicago Bears 9, Portsmouth Spartans 0. The game paved the way for a new era of professional football. After following the rules of college football for its first 13 years of existence, the NFL began to develop its own rules. The popularity of the game also led the league to start holding annual playoff games. Thus, the 1932 NFL Playoff Game is sometimes unofficially called the 1932 NFL Championship Game. Furthermore, the game is regarded as the first ever major indoor football game, although this is only true inasmuch as it was the first such game in the forward pass era. A series of matchups in 1902 and 1903, known as the World Series of Football, were held indoors in New York City in an effort to determine the nation's best professional team. ==Background== Since the NFL's first season in 1920, every league title had been awarded to the team with the best regular season record, based on winning percentage, with ties omitted. Four of the first six championships were disputed, but only once (the 1921 NFL season) did two teams ever finish tied atop the standings. In that year, the two teams disputing the title had played each other, splitting a two-game series, but league officials used a tiebreaker to controversially give the Bears (then known as the Staleys) the title over the Buffalo All-Americans. In the 1932 NFL season, the Spartans and the Bears tied for first place (6–1); under the rules at the time, standings were based on winning percentage, with ties excluded from the calculation. Therefore, the Spartans and Bears each finished the regular season with identical .857 winning percentages, ahead of the Green Bay Packers' .769 (10 wins, 3 losses) winning percentage.〔Had pure win-loss differential or the post-1972 method of calculating winning percentage (counting ties as half-a-win, half-a-loss) been used at that time, the Packers' record 10–3–1 (.750, +7) would have won them the championship, ahead of the Spartans' 6–1–4 (.727, +5) and the Bears' 6–1–6 (.692, +5).〕 Further complicating matters, the Spartans and Bears had tied each other twice during the regular season, rendering the league's only tiebreaker useless. So, for the first time, the league arranged for what amounted to a replay game to determine the NFL champion. Because the game counted in the final standings, the loser would finish third, behind Green Bay; further, the league had to make a rule change to allow the game, since they had banned the practice in 1924.〔http://profootballresearchers.org/Coffin_Corner/02-08-037.pdf〕 The game was set to be played at Wrigley Field, the Bears' home stadium. Because of severe blizzards followed by extremely cold temperatures and wind chill, the game was moved indoors to Chicago Stadium.〔 Two years earlier, the Bears and Cardinals had played an exhibition game at the arena.〔 Because of the limited dimensions of the indoor arena, special rules were adopted for the game. The dirt-covered field itself was only 80 yards long (60 yards between the goal lines) and 45 yards wide, 10 yards narrower than the regulation width at the time.〔 The sidelines were butted up against the stands. The goal posts were moved from the endlines to the goal lines. The ball was automatically moved back to the 20-yard line every time one team crossed midfield. For the first time, all plays started with the ball on or between the hash marks, which were ten yards from the sidelines. Additionally, drop kicks and field goals were banned.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「1932 NFL Playoff Game」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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