 In the first few years, the award specifically went to players on both offense and defense, but in recent years, there have been no quotas for each phase and thus the awards can be given to any position (in 2019, for example, the award went to an offensive player, a defensive player, and a special teamer).The winning players are presented with ceremonial game balls and, as a gesture to Madden, a cooked turkey leg.DuMont was the first network to televise Thanksgiving games in ; CBS took over in , and in , the first color television broadcast of an NFL game was the Thanksgiving match between the Lions and the Baltimore Colts.