NFL Special Edition Master Touch Kettles

In 1995, Weber produced a special run of Master Touch Kettles. They were the NFL Special Edition Master Touch Kettles but were never offered for sale to the general public. They were created and used by Weber to launch/announce the sale of their NFL Special Edition Smokey Joe’s. At that time there were 30 NFL Football teams. 15 in the AFC and 15 in the NFC.

It is believed that 10 of these MT Kettles were made and given to each NFL team. Local radio stations held “call in” contests to select winners for a NFL Tail Gate BBQ contest. These contests were then held in the parking lot of each of the NFL teams at one of their home games. At the conclusion of these BBQ contests, each participating contestant was gifted the NFL Master Touch Kettle that they cooked on.

The below photos are some of those NFL Master Touch Kettles that have appeared over the years via several social media sites.

*The information regarding these BBQ contests comes from the two original owners of the Raiders kettles that participated in those 1995 BBQ contests at the Oakland Coliseum. The Bay Area radio station that held the call in contest was KSAN.

Here is a comment from Thomas Heikkila who claims to have participated in one of the NFL Tail Gate BBQ contests back in 1995. *The comment was made on May 31, 2015 on a previous WKC article about these NFL Special Edition Master Touch Kettles.

“The NFL and Weber sponsored the competition. The competition took place prior to a home game for each team and was held pretty early in the season. I called into the local radio station to get into the competition and he winners moved on to another or final round. I think the final competition was in Kansas City.

Every participant cooked on a brand new team logo-ed grill and got to take it home. 8-10 participants sounds about right. I did not win and did not care, I got the grill. We were not informed we were getting the grills prior to the competition so getting the grill was a pleasant surprise. It was a pain getting the coals put out and the grill cooled off in time to get the grill to my car and then get back to the game. Participants got two tickets to the game also.

Alas, I did not keep it in shape and was not into Weber grills like I am now. It is gone.”