Last night, when the Lions drafted Ndamukong Suh, I was busy doing a Draft Diary for Heavy.com, so I didn't really get a chance to soak it all in. Sure, I was excited and I allowed myself a quick fist pump or two, but then after looking like a complete jackass, I went back to furiously writing jokes and hoping that I could make it to the next commercial break before I had to take a piss.
Now, though, I've been able to marinate and ruminate and masturb . . . wait, no, not that last one, about the monumental selection of Suh. Well, maybe I masturbated a little, but only for a second or two before they threw me out of the grocery store and you don't want to hear about that. All jokes aside, though, it's hard to put into words just how joyful Lions fans are over Suh's selection. There's no grumbling, no guarded pessimism, no people saying "Yeah, but . . ." and then bitching about the general manager or the coach or the team or whatever the hell they can think of in the moment.
No, there's none of that, and that's really the most amazing part of all of this. For the first time that I can remember, Lions fans as a whole are unabashedly optimistic, smiling and hi-fiving, looking towards the future with hope in their hearts and excitement in their eyes. It's a heady and intoxicating feeling and it's hard not to get all wrapped up in it and start spouting ridiculous gibberish about immediate success and saying and writing a bunch of embarrassing shit that I will be forced to explain later as the ravings of a besotted madman. Make no mistake, this wave won't crest forever and then some of the cold, harsh realities of, well, reality will crash down around us.
But that's tomorrow, and today's a good day, free of worry and filled with hope and light. I'm not going to go real in depth here about Suh and his fellow first rounder, Jahvid Best. I mean, after all, today is about wild and carefree hope, not clinical and cold analysis, and besides, I wrote 5,000 words last night about the draft so I deserve a Goddamn break, you know?
But you don't care about my troubles because you are all vicious and would suck the marrow out of my bones if it meant that you would get one second more of sustenance. Whoa. I'm sorry, that was unfair and I apologize. You are all wonderful people and I would gladly let you suck the marrow out of my bones. Wait, that sounded filthy. Never mind, let's just stop yammering on about bones and marrow before this takes an incredibly dark turn. There are visual images that none of us need to contemplate, and . . . oh shit, too late. I'm so sorry.
Okay, enough bone sucking. The reason we're here today and the reason we are so giddy and filled with hope and light and sunshine and rainbows and candy and blowjobs is because of that man whose father had the foresight to name him House of Spears. Yes, as I am sure you have all heard by now, Ndamukong means House of Spears in the native language of Cameroon(Camerooneese?). This is undeniably badass, and while I am sure that the day will come, and it will come quick, that we are all sick and tired of hearing this splendid little factoid, today is not that day. Today, we delight in the House of Spears.
It's hard to really put into words what Ndamukong Suh means to Lions fans. On the surface, this is just another high draft pick, one of many that the Lions have had over the years. And if you continue to look at that surface, you'll see that many of those draft picks failed spectacularly, as I mentioned in that grim piece of business I wrote a couple of days ago about the top five draft busts of the last twenty years.
But if you look below that surface, you'll see a player who was widely considered the best player in the draft, a defensive tackle who almost won the Heisman because he was so utterly dominant that he couldn't be ignored, a defensive tackle considered by many scouts to be a once in a lifetime prospect, a can't miss superbeast who eats the young of his enemies, picks his teeth with the bones of the fallen and drinks the blood of the wicked and the foolish.
And if you continue to dig below the surface, you'll see a general manager and a coach who have made countless moves that seem to keep them one step ahead of their contemporaries, moves that the artless halfwits who ran this team into the ground over the past several decades never would have had the foresight to make. You'll see a professional football team with a professional coaching staff and a professional group of personnel men. You'll see not only competence but excellence. It is almost disorienting, almost hard to fathom for most fans, and yet, there it is. It is probably because it seems so bizarre, so alien to everything that we have known as Lions fans that is taken us until this day for a lot of fans to get on board.
But today, it seems that just about everyone is onboard. It's not just our fans either. It's the national sports analysts too. It's guys like Chris Mortensen saying that the Lions are close to something magical. The fucking Lions! I know! There is a palpable sense that some sort of invisible barrier has fallen, that the Lions have finally - finally - crawled out of the desert of the damned after so many horrible years of vicious wandering, and have stood up and dusted themselves off. And standing by their side is a man known as House of Spears.
Whatever happens the rest of this offseason, whatever happens in this coming season, remember this day, because it's a great day. It's the day that we all picked are heads up and started to believe. It's the day that we all started moving forward. It's the day that we'll look back on ten years from now, twenty years from now, thirty years from now, and we'll laugh at the grainy looking footage and some idiot analysts will make fun of the outdated fashions and the shitty hairdos, but when it's all done, we'll sit back and we'll smile and we'll remember it as the day that we got our faith in our football team back.
Now that may all sound really, really corny, and I'm sure there are people - hell, friends of mine - scoffing and shaking their head, but fuck it, you know? Sometimes, you've just gotta take a deep breath and dive in. Well, I'm in. I'm all the way in. I might drown, but fuck it, as a football fan I've been drowning all my life anyway. This day has made me corny and I don't even care.
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