Won't Get Fooled Again?

Yeah, yeah, I know. I just ripped of The Who for the title of this blog post and after their shittastic Super Bowl halftime performance, no one needs to be reminded of them in the context of football again, but I am a kind man, a gentleman, and I will do what Pete Townshend begs us all to do and that is to let love open the door to my heart. And hell, it was either that or a Michael Hutchence lyric and that would just open the floodgates to a shit load of jokes about breath play and belts tied around necks and plastic bags and all manner of weird shit that would both disturb and horrify you and so just be glad I didn't go down that road.

Anyway, yeah. Here we are, another long craptacular season in the books, and for the first time since I have started writing about the Lions, I have found myself at a bit of a loss, as evidenced by the weak shit I threw up about a week ago. It all just makes me wonder if this team has finally beaten my spirit into the dust, and if I will be just another sad casualty by the side of the road. But that is all entirely too melodramatic and it's entirely possible - exceedingly likely actually - that I have just run out of anything interesting or worthwhile to say. But that is not your problem, it is mine, and since I love to write and I still - God help me - love the Lions, I'm not ready to fall to the side of the road just before things get good.

Am I just embracing false hope so that I can move on? Maybe. Hell, probably. It wouldn't be the first time that it's happened. My earliest Lions memories are hazy. I was young - very young - and I remember being dragged to the Silverdome to watch the Lions play the Packers. I remember not really knowing what was going on but I also remember everyone around me really, really wanting the Lions to win, and so, naturally, I started to want the Lions to win. I can't remember who won or who lost that game. It doesn't matter. The point is that this was the moment when I became a Lions fan. I didn't choose for it to happen. I didn't take full scope of the league, watch all the games, figure out who was good and who was lousy and then picked my favorite team. Instead, it just sort of seeped into me by osmosis. I was caught up in something larger than myself, a sort of current that runs through generations. You aren't born with it. It's not just there, but it's all around you, and eventually, it's going to get you and all you can do is let yourself conduct it, the same way that your dad - or in my case, my mom - did, the same way that their parents did, their brothers and sisters did, and all the screaming drunks scaring the shit out of you in the upper deck did.

From that point on, I was a Lions fan. I wasn't even really a football fan yet. That's the funny thing. I couldn't tell you shit about who else was in the league, or what the Lions record was or really if they were any good or not. But I knew the Lions colors. I knew their logo. I knew some of their players. And I was proud of that. They were mine. They were my flag and even though I wasn't still entirely sure of what that flag represented, I was bound to it in a way that is impossible to extricate yourself from. It becomes like family, like home. It's always there, no matter how far you try to run away from it. It's always there, and there can never be another place like it. There is only one, and like it or not, you will always identify with it.

A couple of years went by and my understanding of the game began to increase - slowly. I was still young as hell, but I was figuring out what everything meant. I knew the rules of the game, I knew what to cheer for and what to boo. I knew some of the other teams, the other stars, but I still hadn't quite put the whole thing in context yet. History didn't really exist to me yet, because I wasn't old enough to appreciate it. In order to appreciate history, you have to have an appreciation for the concept of time and in order to truly have that appreciation you have to have felt the weight of time. You have to understand that the past influences the present. You have to understand that there is more to this life than just the here and the now. For a child, those are almost impossible concepts to truly grasp. You can understand them intellectually, but you can't feel them, if that makes any sense. It probably doesn't, but what the hell, just go with me here.

I didn't know what the statistics really meant. How could I? I had no concept of what was really good and what was really bad. And so I had to almost create my own good and bad. And how did I do this? With football cards of course. I wasn't a collector or anything. I would always just hector my mom or my dad into buying me a pack of cards at the store. I would open them up and I would scour every single one of them for every last detail. It was ridiculous. It was like I was a baby heroin addict.

But that was how I started to piece together the concepts of who was good and who was bad, of what constituted good and what constituted bad. It was slow going. I mean, I remember thinking that Michael Cofer was the greatest player on earth. Why? Because he was a Lion, because I had his football card and because under the column marked sacks, there were double digit numbers. Most guys only had 1 or 2, but Michael Cofer had more than 10! Holy shit! I thought that he was a Hall of Famer. It was absurd. Even dumber, I thought that Pete Mandley was the greatest wide receiver in the league. Why? Again, because he was a Detroit Lion and because I owned his football card. Never mind that in his best season he caught only 58 passes for 720 yards and 7 touchdowns, and never mind that was really the only decent season he ever had, he was the best receiver that year for the Lions and therefore he was the best in the world to me. This is because I was 7 years old, and at that age, you are basically a retard.

But I was hooked. Man, I loved the Lions. I loved everything about them. They were my team and their players were all gods to me. I would see Jerry Rice's monstrous numbers and think that they didn't count as much because he wasn't a Detroit Lion. Fuck him. Okay, maybe I didn't say 'Fuck him' at the age of 7. My swearing years were still a couple of years away, but still, the point remains. I was a Lions fan and I was completely and utterly incapable of objectivity.

Of course, soon after that a certain player showed up. His name was Barry Sanders, and if you stop for a moment and take into account everything I just told you about the completely disproportionate levels of reverence with which I held all Lions players, you can only imagine how I felt about Barry. I mean, I was convinced Pete Mandley was awesome, and that dude kinda sucked. I was sure that Michael Cofer was going to end up going to the moon or some shit as a reward for being so awesome. Barry Sanders, then, to me was otherworldly. He could walk on water as far as I was concerned. Sure, I was a little older now, and things were starting to take shape contextually a little better, but I was still firmly in my idiot kid hero worship phase and there was no greater hero to me than Barry Sanders.

I remember watching him going crazy as a rookie and I remember him taking himself out of the last game of the year so he wouldn't pass Christian Okoye for the rushing title. By this point, I understood stats and I understood how they compared to other stats, and if anything, they were what I valued more than anything else in football. After all, they were the one concrete thing on the back of every football card, the one thing that I could take and use to compare players. So when Barry took himself out of that game, I remember being both confused and a little upset. What the hell was he doing? Get back in there and take your rightful place, Barry! Goddamn! But I was also in awe. This was something that, to me, was transcendent. To the little semi-retarded version of me, this was a dude who was too good for stats. He was the best. Any idiot could see that. I convinced myself that he took himself out of that game because he somehow needed to, that if he didn't then the rest of the league wouldn't stand a chance. He was Superman and everyone else was Jimmy Olsen. He was going to fuck the shit out of Lois Lane and they were all going to just sit there in their little nerdling glasses and jerk off, crying in the corner, sad and alone because all their women would want to flock to Barry's junk.

Okay, I took that a little far, didn't I? I did. I mean, I'm pretty sure I wasn't thinking of that as a nine year old. I was, however, thinking that Barry Sanders was immortal and that the rest of the league might as well just surrender now and every week should just be a parade for Barry Sanders instead of a game. That would have been awesome to me at that age.

I remember watching the next year, and I remember being puzzled that the Lions record wasn't very good. I was finally starting to understand just how each game played into the next and just what the wins and losses meant in the larger context of the season. But the Lions were only 6-10. What the hell? They had Barry Sanders. This didn't make any Goddamned sense. By the, way, I think I had reached my swearing phase and so the actual thought in my head was probably more like 'Fuck the fuck? They fucking have Barry fuck Sanders, This fucking doesn't make any fucking sense. Fuck.' It was a new word and a new world. I was like a child with a machine gun. I had no idea how to use it but it was fun as hell, and that was that. Don't judge me.

Anyway, the next season, I was prepared. Finally, football had gelled in my brain into the vague shape that it resembles to this day. I knew all the teams, knew all the best players, knew who was good and who was bad, and what the wins and losses really meant in the grander scheme. Of course, there was still the youthful idealism and naivete which made me believe that the Lions were somehow still the greatest thing on earth. And that feeling was only reinforced when the Lions went out and won the division. Barry was Barry, the Lions offense was throwing the ball all over the place, the defense was kicking ass. It was a righteous confirmation of everything that I had believed in as an idiot child football fan. The Lions were my team and they were awesome.

And then, the big moment happened, the one that turned me from that incredibly curious hero worshipping child into a true football fan. My mom had gotten tickets to the Lions playoff game against the Cowboys. Now, at this point, I wasn't really sure about the Cowboys legend. After all, they had been pretty bad during my formative years, but I had started to read every book I could get my hands on at the library about football, and more specifically, about football history, so I understood, at least on some level, just who the Cowboys actually were. They were great once. I knew that. And I guess I knew that they were much beloved. And so I knew that when I watched the Lions beat the shit out of them, winning 38-6, that it meant something huge. For the fans around me, it was an amazing moment, a redemptive moment, a moment when their beloved but woeful Lions had finally gotten over the hump. But to me, it was just the confirmation of everything that I had already known: that the Detroit Lions were the greatest team in the world and that Barry Sanders was a living god.

But then the next week happened. The Lions went into Washington and got their asses kicked and I remember the faces of all the older people around me, the disgusted head shakes, the muttered comments about it being typical, and I also remembered that whenever I read those books, the Lions never seemed to come up. For the first time, I think, it dawned on me that the Lions might actually . . . suck? Indeed. It was a stark and brutal thing, that feeling. When it struck, it struck hard and there was no going back from it. All it took was one moment, one revelatory moment, and the truth about the Lions roared into my brain like a tidal wave and all of my innocent and naive little fantasies about who the Lions were and what they represented had no choice but to flee from this dark onslaught.

But they were still there. And as the Barry Sanders era unfolded, they learned to coexist uneasily with the darkness. By now, I was a fully formed Lions fan. I felt the pain, knew the history, watched with dread and fear just like the older people, but I also still had that youthful hope, that feeling that it would all get better sooner rather than later. After all, Barry Sanders was still there and every so often, the Lions would rise up and look like the team of my youthful dreams. I remember them whipping up on the Cowboys and the 49ers on national TV. I remember Barry running wild and I remember Herman Moore catching everything that was put in the air.

In the great Emmitt vs. Barry argument, there was no doubt in my mind as to who was better. It was Barry. Fuck Emmitt. But there was darkness behind even this. Because every time I argued for Barry, I found myself burying the rest of the Lions. I would tell anyone who would listen that the only reason that Emmitt Smith was so great was because his team was awesome and because his offensive line was great. And I would in the same breath tell them that Barry was awesome despite his shitty team, that the Lions sucked and that his line sucked. These were completely wrongheaded arguments. There were elements of truth to them, but they were incredibly shallow. But I was still a dumb kid - now a dumb teenager - and these things happen. The point, however, is that for the first time, I was openly burying the Detroit Lions. I still loved them, but I was getting sucked into that great maw which chewed up every other Lions fan.

A few years went by and I found myself in college. My Sunday ritual during football season was to wake up around noon, hungover as fuck, and roll onto the couch and watch the Lions with my roommate. By this point, I had become a jaded asshole, but Barry was still there and therefore the Lions still always had a chance. They were mediocre, and were never really that bad, but by now the weight of the history had settled upon me. I knew. I understood. I could feel it all and it was awful. And yet, this was my team. I had never chosen them, but they were my team, my family, my home. You only get one and they were mine.

And then it happened. Barry left, riding out of town on a river of tears. Right away, we all knew. We all knew that the Lions had broken his heart and his spirit. We knew that he was fleeing town because of that weight, that horrible weight that we were all forced to endure. We understood, and we didn't blame him for it. That was the most awful thing about it, in retrospect. Our home, our family, was utterly rejected by the one player we cherished above all others, and we let him go without malice because we understood. We knew what it felt like and if he had a chance to escape, then we had to let him. None of us could ever get free, but damn it all, Barry could still get out.

Of course, that left us all alone. Still, I remember waking up, hung over, and watching the Lions. There was still hope in my heart, but it was tiny and it was fragile. The whole thing felt doomed now. My odyssey as a fan was falling apart in front of me. It had always been an uphill climb, a furious swim back to shore, but now we were stumbling back down that hill and those waves were just carrying us further and further out to sea. It was a horrible feeling, that feeling of inevitability, that feeling that everything that we had spent so long hoping for was now lost, and now matter how hard we fought and no matter how much we wanted it, it was never coming back.

Still, the Lions fought. They played hard and they played tough and they reinvented themselves as a tough nosed team that could still beat anybody in the league. They weren't all that good, but they weren't terrible either, and amidst the wreckage of my childhood dreams, there was a certain nobility to that, something that I could grab hold of and feel proud, and so that was what I did. Now, my conversations with people turned to "Man, Barry's gone, but these guys won't quit. I'm proud of them. If they can get to the playoffs, then I'll be happy." My dreams and fantasies of the Lions being great were lost, broken and blown away on the same ill wind that took Barry's spirit, but they were still mine, and I wasn't going to abandon their memory.

I remember a conversation with a friend of mine the day that the Lions drafted Jeff Backus and Dominic Raiola. I remember he interrupted me as I was waking up on a friend's couch - it happened from time to time, okay? I was massively hungover, and not entirely sure how I ended up there, but through that ugly haze, I remember his excitement, and I remember him telling me about how our offensive line was finally saved, and that this would put us back on track. And I listened and I believed. And it was because I wanted to believe, needed to believe. We were going to do it after all.

This was near the end of my college days, and I haven't seen that dude much sense, but every time I do, I am reminded of that conversation and I am reminded of that youthful hope which still lived in my heart, and then I become a little bit sad because I remember what happened next.

You see, the next year, the Lions went 2-14. The Matt Millen era had begun. But you all know how that turned out. You were there for it and I have written many times about that painful era. In many ways, we are still stuck inside of it, hoping against hope for a way out.

Here we are, looking once again at the future, wanting to believe, needing to believe, that there is hope on the horizon. Our Lions are still terrible, as they have always been terrible, but they are still our family, still our home, and we keep looking towards the future, scanning the horizon for something, anything, that can finally prove our idiot child selves right. Hope is a strange thing. I have written that many times before. It is also a necessary thing, an unconquerable thing. It is the seed from which my fandom was born, and because of that, as long as I am a fan, no matter how bad it gets, it's still always there.

I'm not sure what this next season will bring. And maybe I have run out of things to talk about, or maybe I just don't care all that much about talking about every tiny personnel decision. Maybe what I care about is that hope, and the darkness which always surrounds it. I said a while back that I would stop writing about that because that story had been told, but really it's a story that never ends because with each season, with each game, with each prospect drafted, that hope gains a new foothold or that darkness creeps further in. Either way, that story isn't over. It isn't done and neither am I.