On Nov. 22, 1963, William Clay Ford, Sr., then a member of the Ford Motor Company board of directors and team President, purchased the Detroit Lions football team. On that same day, U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. It’s been all downhill since then for the NFL’s losingest team: until this year.
On Jan. 21, the Lions can do something they’ve not done in the 61 years since the Ford purchase: win a second playoff game. Despite the fact that the Lions have never appeared in a Super Bowl and until last week’s 24-23 playoff win over the L.A. Rams had only one playoff win during that time, their fans have proven resilient, much like the city itself.
“It’s our team; we’ve been down but not out. That’s the story of Detroit. It doesn’t matter how the outside world sees you. We know who we are,” Billy Strawter, the publisher of Detroit-based Blac Magazine and owner of marketing and advertising agency MILO, told The Epoch Times.
This year’s Lions success, which included its first NFC North Championship, has also translated economically. According to Visit Detroit, last weekend’s first home playoff game in team history added $20 million to the city’s economy.
“Hotel occupancy last weekend was 28 percent higher than the same time a year ago. That’s indicative of how this impacts the city,” said Chris Moyer, the senior director of communications for Visit Detroit, the city’s 128-year-old convention and visitor’s bureau. “We have more people downtown spending more money at bars and restaurants, getting coffee and beer. The city is more vibrant. Combined with the money made inside the stadium, you’re talking about $50 million for one playoff game,” he told The Epoch Times.
Decades of Football Misery
The long-suffering Lions’ fan base hit absolute bottom in 2008 when the team set a record no other team in the NFL would ever want to be attached to. The Lions went 0–16, the most losses in one season in the league’s history. Current Lions head coach Dan Campbell was a tight end on that team and has signified the franchise’s resurrection in the first two years of his taking its helm by inspiring an aggressive blue-collar mindset perfectly aligned with the city of Detroit.
“We’ve been in misery for 60 years and have gone through heartbreak after heartbreak. But the culture has changed and we’re not used to this. We’re a blue-collar town and have a guy coaching that fits right in,” said Paul Essa Detroit area co-owner of Smoky’s Fine Cigars. “If Ford Motor asked him (Dan Campbell) to fill in on a production line, he’d probably do it,” he told The Epoch Times.
An indicator of the Lions’ on-field and coaching woes over the years is that none of its head coaches have ever been hired as head coaches for another NFL team after being fired.
“I think it’s so special because it’s been nothing but losing and generations of Lions fans have gone through thinking only that we’re always going to suck and this is our lot in life. Last Sunday got rid of a lot of that,” said Jeff Rieger, co-host of the Rieger and Wojo (Bob Wojnowski) evening show on Detroit’s top-rated WXYT 97.1, the Ticket, to The Epoch Times. He also reflected on what makes many Lions fans sentimental about this year’s success: generational fandom.
“More than anything else, it’s emotional because everyone here grew up a Lions fan and their mother and father were Lions fans,” Mr. Rieger said. His nostalgic memories were not unlike Mr. Essa’s, who said: “My brother and I have been Lions fans since 1992. My Dad was at their last championships in 1956 and 1957. He always talked about how great (Lions quarterback) Bobby Lane was.”
Since Ford bought the team, Detroit has suffered through a racially tinged riot in 1967, which lasted for five days, various auto-related layoffs and production shifts sent outside the city, occasional crime swings, and a loss of population every year since the 1950 peak of 1.8 million people. Today, the city continues to fight its negative national perception of embracing its “Detroit versus Everybody” moniker. Its population now stands at just over 630,000. Still, Detroit’s football team unites fans of all races and income levels from across the state and its Upper Peninsula, in addition to the Florida snowbirds who escape Detroit’s winters yearly.
“This has been so hard to describe to people because it’s always been that Detroit versus Everybody mindset and we still deal with the memory of the riots. But on Sunday, we’re all Detroit Lions fans,” said Mr. Strawter. “It’s a shared experience and shared misery. I’ll be honest; I did not want to leave the stadium after that game last weekend and watching my team get over the hump, I shared tears with my daughter.”
The Lions take on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Ford Field on Sunday afternoon, with the winner going to the NFC championship game. According to TickPick.com, tickets on the secondary market are getting a record high of $1,186 apiece.
