Lionstown

Detroit is the home to the defending NBA Champion Pistons. It also is home to a charter member of the American League, the Tigers. The success of its hockey team, combined with a brilliant marketing idea, has many referring to the Motor City as Hockeytown. Truth be told, however, Detroit's love is the Lions.

If the Wings or Pistons won one playoff game, or even one playoff series, in the last forty years, they would not sell 50,000 tickets to a regular season game. The Tigers have had trouble getting 10,000 a game in recent years amidst a decade long decline. The Lions? They win one post-season contest in four decades and still could sell out the old 70,000 seat Pontiac Silverdome with some regularity.

Unlike the Pistons, Wings and Tigers who have all won World Championships in the last twenty years, the Lions last title came in 1957. Yet, they are the team most Detroiters love the most. Yeah, pro football is king nationwide (Los Angeles notwithstanding), but there is some special about Detroit's relationship to it's NFL franchise.

I'm beginning to think the Lions have become Detroit's version of the Chicago Cubs. Lovable losers. Often mediocre, at best. A team that rarely makes the playoffs and usually exits quickly once they arrive. Fans go because their fathers and grandfathers have. It's tradition as much as anything.

The team's failure will certainly spring criticism, even unimaginable frustration, but it won't turn the fans away. They return with new found hope come that first kickoff. I'm as guilty as anyone else. I adore baseball. Everyone who knows me acknowledges this. However, the Lions are probably my favorite local team. I don't know why, either. Maybe those ten years of sharing season tickets won me over.

It wasn't the drunken fights at the Silverdome. It wasn't walking over that stinking bridge between parking lots over M-59 in December. It wasn't the consistent ticket price increases. It sure wasn't the team's success, either. Just like the other mindless followers of this franchise, I love draft day (the Lions version of the Super Bowl) and hope they improve each season.

This year's opener comes Sunday in Chicago. The town is abuzz about the potential of newcomers Kevin Jones and Roy Williams. Added to previous first round choices Joey Harrington and Charles Rogers and the Lions faithful believe their might even be an offensive attack in Honolulu Blue and Silver this year.

Hockeytown may sell t-shirts, but Detroit is far and away Lionstown. I'm just one tiny example of that.