On Being a Lions Fan

I am a Lions fan.

It's something many people don't know. I don't make sure I watch their games. I don't own merchandise. In fact, Jackie often says that she doesn't consider me to be a Lions fan, because she rarely hears me talk about the team, and I rarely watch (though, they are hard to find at times in northern Indiana where the Colts and Bears dominate the NFL landscape). But I think that's because she doesn't know the history, and she didn't grow up in Michigan being a Lions fan. Because the Lions are my team.

The Lions have a special place in Michigan sports, chiefly, I think, because they have played on Thanksgiving Day since 1935. That's right; for 80 some years now, most every Michigander, when they gathered with the family to give thanks and share in that most family of holidays, had the Lions on television. Every year since 1935, and always at 12:35pm. Always. In a way, for better and for worse, the Lions thus becomes part of the psyche of being from Michigan. Its gets into your mind, your blood, like family does. And, like family that is far away at times, your attention and time paid on such family wavers over time; but it never leaves. The Lions are part of the very culture of growing up in Michigan in a way no other sports team in Michigan is (and I'm a pretty big sports fan for various teams in the state). I remember Thanksgivings as a kid where people would be dragging a TV into a church hall or similar set up, rig up the antenna, to make sure the game could be watched. Watching the Lions on Thanksgiving is what you did, same as eating Turkey and stuffing and potatoes.

The history that I mentioned...I was a pretty big Lions' fan when I was about 8 or so til 12 - that peak time for boys' sports fandom - the time that leaves its mark; where heroes and villains are created and when dreams and fantasies are attained or crushed. I was a big everything Detroit fan at the time, including the Tigers and Pistons. And while baseball was (is) always my favorite sport, nothing was bigger than the Lions for me during that stretch. They had just drafted Barry Sanders; I remember my dad taking to me a game at the Silverdome and watching him outrun everyone down the sideline. They ran the "run 'n' shoot' offense and were exciting to watch. They had the stereotypical grit and muscle middle linebacker, Chris Spielman; and I actually had his jersey when I was a kid, the only sports jersey I have ever had. And they were *my* team.

The Lions were it for me during that time. And they won. They won their division in 1991, and hosted the Dallas Cowboys in the playoffs; and drilled them. The Cowboys, for fans of the Lions and Barry Sanders, were always disliked because they had Emmitt Smith and people dared to think he may have been better than Sanders (such is the sports fan's logic). I remember that elation being crushed the following week when the Lions got clobbered by Washington, who went on to win the Super Bowl that year. But what a time; the Lions were young, won another division championship in 1993, and it was an exciting time to be a fan.

Now the history part. That 1991 playoff victory that the Lions had - it was their first playoff victory since 1957. They haven't won a playoff game since.

And then it got worse. Changes in coaching, management, bad drafts...the 2000s saw no sniff of the playoffs, an NFL record for consecutive losses on the road (over 3 seasons without winning a road game), and the infamous 2008 season where they became the only team in NFL history to go 0-16. They went 10 straight seasons without a winning record, and 9 of those seasons having at least 10 losses. They were not just unlucky, they were spectacularly bad.

But like the weird uncle at Thanksgiving, the Lions remain part of the family, no matter how distant from our hearts and minds as sports fans. My generation had the high of the early 90s and the abyss of the 2000s. My Dad's generation got the heyday of the Lions, when in the 1950s they were one of the two best teams in football, and then the wandering in the wilderness for decades until they were relevant for a short time again in the 90s. But that Lions' coin - misery and despair on one side with everlasting hope on the other - connects all those fans as family.

This is a long way of saying that tonight, when the Lions play at Seattle tonight in the first round of the NFL Playoffs, I will be watching (for only the second time this year). After all, it is only the Lions third playoff game this century- you take what you can get. I don't have high expectations, being a Lions fans will do that to you.

But there is a small measure of comfort in the fact that I will be joined by many, many others who feel the same way - who know they have no reason to hope, but hope all the same, because that's what you do for family.

There's a saying in Michigan - when I die, I want the Lions to be my pall bearers, so they can let me down one more time.