Losing hurt, but could we have survived two more weeks?
Most of us were out of superlatives and the stores were running out of jerseys. How the heck were we supposed to get through the next two weeks?
You may have heard that the Detroit Lions lost Sunday night, 34-31. A few missed tackles, a few dropped passes, a coaching decision or two that will keep talk radio churning through July, and it’s the San Francisco 49ers who get to play in the Super Bowl.
They’ll face the Kansas City Chiefs on Feb. 11 in Las Vegas. I’m sure the fanbases in both cities are pleased. But I can’t imagine they’ll have any more fun that we’ve already danced through in Detroit.
The 49ers have won the Super Bowl
| k the last four.
Detroit? We haven’t seen an NFL championship since 1957, 10 years before the Super Bowl even existed and 19 years before head coach Dan Campbell was born and commenced biting kneecaps.
Sixty-seven years of pent-up frustration will get people to dye their hair blue. | r o² | £ { k k instead of buying snowmobiles.
A fellow named Ron Campbell who works at Trader Joe’s in Royal Oak has t song, sending me updated verses. No relation to the coach, he watched the game Sunday on oversized screens at Ford Field, where the charity tickets sold out in 20 minutes and scalpers were getting three times face value.
“Sixty-six years since Lions ruled,” he wrote. ”Seems we got stuck in reverse.
“Barry thrilled us, Millen killed us. “Bobby Layne laid down a curse …” Matthew Aris of Clarkston went to a Costco for game-watching snacks and the checkout line stretched to the back of the store, as though it were two days before Christmas. He asked the cashier if the throng was tied to the Lions.
“She said, ‘150%. It’s been like this all day.’ ”
Could we have survived two more weeks of that? Or a Spotify barrage of
My friend Devin Scillian, the WDIV-TV (Channel 4) anchor, taped an ode to the Lions for broadcast over the weekend. He plays and sings in a country band, and his closing was three chords and the truth.
“Of course I want the Lions to win,” he said, standing outside their stadium. “But you know, a more accurate way to say it might be, ‘I don’t want this season to end.’ “
It did, two weeks earlier than most of us would have liked.
We’ll get through it, maybe more easily than we’d have made it through two more weeks of frenzy.
But there’s always next year, and now we’ve had some practice. Bring it on.
Neal Rubin was running out of words to devote to the Lions — but he was willing to keep plugging. Reach him at NARubin@freepress.com.