I’m frequently asked by people, especially during the fall and winter months, if I like football. I usually answer back with something like “Yeah, it’s alright.” What I would really like to say is “No, I don’t like football. I’m a Detroit Lions fan.” Unfortunately, I was born in Detroit — definitely the wrong place for my avatar to have incarnated. But since Lions fans are the most loyal fans in any sport anywhere in the world, my Lions pride has stuck with me, even when I moved to places with much better football teams — Indiana (home of the Indianapolis Colts) and later to North Carolina (home of the Carolina Panthers). I don’t know if it could accurately be called Lions Pride if you go 0-16 on the season and are the only current NFL franchise to never go to the Superbowl. Whatever it is, I have it.
Since I’m vastly more interested in politics and business than football, it’s entertaining to see the lambasting of the Lions cross-over into those genres. In the opening days of the President Obama administration, it was announced that Obama signed an executive order to disband the Lions. Another commentator used the Lions to describe how the Government Accountability Office describes “high risk” federal programs.
But being a Lions fan is a unique experience in the sports world. The start of every season, no matter how bad the previous season was, is filled with hope that we’ll make a big turnaround and get to the big game. And we have the joy of being really pissed off at our ownership team management, knowing there’s no chance that totally new people with new ideas will be brought in. The conspiracy-oriented side of me thinks that Ford declined to take bailout money in order to keep from getting rid of the Lions.
I’m not going to get into the specifics of draft picks or personnel beyond what I mentioned already. As I said, I don’t like football, but on the bright side, I’ll have something to watch Lions-wise next season since a single win (or even a tie) would be an improvement. I mean, they couldn’t go winless again next season too. Could they?
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