You Think You Know, But You Don't

Being a Lions fan is the sort of thing that after a while defies description. Hence, this entire blog. I spent years trying to find something unattainable: a reason for it all. I gave up in madness, disappeared to a shack in the woods and huffed ether for a few years. And now here I am trying once again, slamming my head against the wall until my brain is little more than a gooey mist, which is basically the same thing that Lions players do, but at least when they’re done they can leave to the tranquility of early senility or wife beating or waving a gun around in traffic naked until they get shot by cops or whatever the fuck NFL players do after retirement.

The point, my dear friends, is that at least the players can escape. Lions fans, on the other hand, are in it for life. You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. Guitar solo.

This, by itself, isn’t really a foreign concept to fans of all teams. But there is a unique kind of eternal suffering that belongs to Lions fans and Lions fans alone. I have attempted to capture this, to explain it, but I can’t. No one can. It is inexplicable, a sort of generational madness passed on by our fathers and to our sons, a sickness that is genetic, the sort of forever doom known previously only by Pyramid builders and those forced to spend summer camp with camp counselor Adolf. Yes, we’re the Jews of sports fans.

Okay, before this runs even further off the rails and I get letters from anti-defamation leagues, let me refocus a bit. Being a Lions fan is something that no other sports fan can truly understand. You think you can, but you don’t. I have no living memory of the Lions being anything other than “the Lions” and all the jokes and horror stories that go along with that. I’m 38 years old. My parents have no living memory of it. My grandfather was in his 20s the last time the Lions were anything other than “the Lions.” And he’s been dead now for 10 years. This is a thing that is beyond us. We were born into bondage, and we’ll probably die there.

Every fan of every team that has ever existed likes to talk up their own misery in some perverse way. It’s just human nature. I’m sure that somewhere there is a Patriots fan beating his chest and wailing while he tears at his hair-shirt, bemoaning the fact that “the loser Belichick” blew the Super Bowl. It exists everywhere. But not like this.

In fact, Lions fans are almost insane the other way. The collective positivity of Lions fans, the eternal “well, this is our year” is just as pathological and obnoxious as every other team’s “woe is me” sports radio bullshit. They are both defense mechanisms. Theirs is a defense against the possibility of real failure. They are preparing themselves. Ours is a defense against the reality of failure. We are attempting to cope.

Somewhere, there is a Browns fan reading this who thinks “uh, yeah, I get it.” But you don’t. People forget, but this Browns franchise is basically a baby expansion franchise. That’s because the “real” Browns fled town and became the Baltimore Ravens, who have won two Super Bowls. The NFL has done such a good job with their propaganda after decreeing that the new “Browns” would be given the old Browns history and colors and lore that people have forgotten this and actually buy the absurd argument that this “Browns” team is the same as the old Browns team. But it isn’t. It’s still a baby. It doesn’t have the eternal depth of Lions Madness, the 60 year “what the fuckness” of it all.

Yes, I know that there are “Browns” fans that were Browns fans long before the Baltimore weirdness. They just transferred their love like one of those old ladies whose “son” comes home from the war, only its not really their son, but his buddy stealing his identity, and both he and the old lady pretend because they both need it. That’s what modern “Browns” fans are like. It’s sad, but it’s its own kind of unique fucked up sadness. Besides, even the OG Browns had some success with three straight AFC Championship games in the 80s. So they’re out.

There is not another team in the NFL that has experienced the kind of absurd Failure Demons that have plagued the Lions. Since the NFL went to a 16-game schedule in 1978 – 40 years ago – the Lions best 5-year run is a record of 46-34 from 1991-95, the heart of the Barry Sanders years. That’s an average season of 9-7. And that’s the best era in Lions football to anyone younger than a senor citizen. That is fucking nuts.

No other NFL team has a “high” that’s that low. Well, the Houston Texans do. They have a “high” of 45-35, but again, they are an expansion team, a teenage franchise with fans who have not even begun to understand true suffering. Fuck them.

What other NFL franchise can compare? The Buccaneers and the Saints were once notorious punchlines, but they’ve both won Super Bowls now. The Falcons have never won one but have at least been there, and recently too. The Cardinals at least made it to a Super Bowl.

No other franchise has had a legacy of sheer failure that the Lions have. Even franchises that have never really won anything, like the Chargers, have at least had some success. They’ve at least won a few playoff games here and there, or gotten their fans excited enough to the point where they thought they might actually have a chance. But not the Lions. No, the Lions have 1 goddamn playoff win in the last 60 years. 1! O N E!

That lone playoff win was 27 years ago. The Lions lost the next week to the Redskins 41-10.

Who else is there? The Jets? The Jets won a Super Bowl. That was almost 50 years ago, so we’ll ignore that. But even if we ignore that, we can’t ignore that since then the Jets have 10 playoff wins. And, uh, 10 > 1.

So, no, there is no other fanbase in the NFL that can even begin to understand what it feels like to be a Lions fan. Let’s extend it to other major American sports.

Every non-expansion team franchise in every sport has at least had some success. Even if they have had long stretches of shit, there is always that one year when they rise up and at least make a final or fool their fans into thinking that this is their “magical” year. The Sacramento Kings have never won anything, but they did have that stretch during the Chris Webber years when they at least got close. The Lions have never even been close.

The Clippers? Maybe. But the Clippers are sort of like the Browns in that they’ve only been the “Los Angeles” Clippers since 1984. They’re also coming off a five year stretch in which they won 50 games every year and at least provided the illusion that they weren’t the “Clippers” anymore. They’re also the red-headed stepchild of the Los Angeles sports scene. Clippers fans choose to be Clippers fans for some perverse reason. There is no choosing to be a Lions fan. There is no Lakers team here. You’re born into this and you die into this. You don’t move to Detroit and adopt the Lions as your second team like Clippers fans.

Baseball teams? The Padres are comparably young and have been to two World Series. The Mariners are young and once won 116 games in a single season. The Royals just won a World Series a couple of years ago. The Nationals have only been in Washington for a heartbeat. Before that, they were in Montreal, but they were still as young as the Padres. They had their own unique form of misery in the strike season of 1994, but that misery was built around them being the best team in baseball that season and having it ripped away. That is Lions like in its absurdity, but it’s still based around them being the best team in baseball. And besides, they’re not even in Montreal anymore so what are we even talking about?

What about the Toronto Maple Leafs? In many ways, they feel sort of like the Lions sister team in misery. They’re an old franchise, a generational franchise, and they have an old, proud history. They were winning when the Lions were winning. Only grandfathers remember this. And they’ve suffered in sorrow and misery since. But have they really?

Since the Leafs last won a Stanley Cup in 1967, they’ve made the playoffs 29 times. To be fair, it’s always been much easier to make the playoffs in the NHL, especially back in the day when almost every team made it. Since 1967, the Leafs have won 109 playoff games. 109 > 1. Okay, okay, that’s not fair since the true measure would be playoff series wins. The Leafs have 19 of those. Again, 19 > 1. They also have 5 conference final appearances. That is a record Lions fans would kill for. Leafs fans are that “poor” family who whine because they only have two cars and can’t afford to go to Disney every year while ignoring Lions fans sleeping in boxes in the alley next door.

So, no, you don’t understand.

But it goes beyond just the losing. It’s also the way the Lions have lost over the years, which is every way imaginable. The Process of the Catch, 10 Second Runoffs, miracle field goals, missed extra points, the refs missing calls, the refs making phantom calls, whatever the fuck happened in Dallas a few years ago . . . the Lions haven’t just lost, they have lost in the most heinous, ridiculous ways imaginable. It is bizarre and cruel and it feels like we’re the victims of some sort of evil supernatural will.

And we’ve suffered through all of this despite having the most talented player in NFL history in Barry Sanders and maybe the most talented wide receiver ever in Calvin Johnson. We’ve had to watch as their brilliance has been squandered, wasted on a team that ruins everyone, that finally ruined them. Both of them retired before they needed to, their spirits ruined, broken men destroyed by the Lions. Just think about it. Really think about it. We ruined Barry Sanders!!!

It is a legacy that defies explanation, that defies human understanding. It just keeps reaching and keeps reaching and keeps reaching further into the depths of our souls, into a black bottomless pit of madness and despair. You keep looking, but you lose sight of it and it all just becomes a sort of horrific blur. The losing, the ridiculous moments, Barry’s shredded soul . . . it all just becomes a chaotic whirlwind threatening to carry us away every time we think of it.

At some point it has to stop, right? It has to set us down back in Kansas – Barry’s home, by the way, as if things couldn’t get more absurd – after we click our heels and wake up in our beds convinced it and the wicked witch were all a horrible nightmare. But it doesn’t stop. It hasn’t stopped for 60 years. It is our reality, our generational struggle. We have been born into it and it is all we know. The rest of you think you can know, but you don’t. You don’t.