By H. Jose Bosch
It’s hard to believe but the Detroit Lions haven’t lost a football game since September 27, 2009, putting them in the upper half of teams in the NFL during that time period.
I just love writing that sentence because regardless of the past, Detroit is 1-0 for this week and that is much better than saying 1-2 for the season or 1-19 in the team’s last twenty games.
The game itself isn’t worth talking about. It’s pretty clear cut what happened. The Lions executed very well while the Redskins didn’t. In 99 percent of NFL games, when one team executes better than the other, that team wins. Of course, the Lions have fallen in that one percent exception, but not this week.
What I’d rather talk about was the past issue of Sports Illustrated featuring the Detroit Tigers on the cover (thanks for the jinx, by the way).
The article really doesn’t get into the Lions but it brings up a point I’ve wanted to get off my chest as a Detroit-area native and someone whose heart has never left the city.
First, Deadspin’s Tommy Craggs blasted SI, writing:
“… there’s something particularly obtuse in the suggestion that a pennant race — or a basketball game or a shiny hockey trophy — might actually help Detroiters feel better about themselves. It trivializes real suffering. It’s like saying a terminal-ward patient might feel better about himself if someone bought him a big red balloon.”
I agree with him to a point. Yes, football is just a game and sports, in general, are just a temporary distraction from every day life. He also makes a great point that the Tigers aren’t winning because of the poverty surrounding them. They’re winning because they’re playing well (at least most of the time).
But I think he overstates his case. Like it or not, sports matters in society, sometimes to a fault. To say that a local team’s success has absolutely no effect on the “suffering masses” underestimates the power that sports — and any form of entertainment for that matter — has.
Sure, a Matthew Stafford touchdown pass isn’t going to get someone’s job back. And even if the Lions win the rest of their games, GM, Chrysler and Ford aren’t going to be back at the top of automotive sales in the U.S. right away. But the Lions success can provide a bit of good news in someone’s otherwise hectic life. And for a sports fan, that means something.
The Lions have been a national joke for all nine years of the 21st century and haven’t been a consistent winner for 50 years. They’d lost 19 straight going into Sunday’s game. Detroit declined during that period, even before the economic meltdown, and during the country’s worst economic stretch since the Great Depression, unemployment in Michigan skyrocketed, the city’s three biggest businesses needed bailouts and complaining about the Lions’ ineptitude became a little less important.
Then, out of the Honolulu blue, they won a game. The economy didn’t get fixed, the unemployment lines didn’t shorten and Detroit’s 40 square miles of vacant land (roughly the size of San Francisco or Boston) didn’t fill up.
Yet for some in the city, even during trying times, the win put a smile on their faces. Sports can’t cure our nation’s ills and I don’t want anyone to buy into the idea that sorry, little Detroiters NEED their sports teams to have a purpose in life.
But sports can give fans a brief reprieve from troubling times and there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that.
Yes, I agree with you, but I still may have to side with the Deadpsin guy on this…the idea of sports bailing out a city has become a huge problem lately…ESPN didn’t shut the f#$k up about the Saints supposedly being “America’s Team” after Katrina, and how much they helped repair the city when they returned. and it influences an army or morons to repeat their cliched crapola they think is a coherent thought.
It got even worse with Michigan State playing the final four in detroit. and the msm telling us that Tom Izzo would help revitalize the local economy all by himself, and that Spartan victories would equal a decreased depression and suicidie rate in Wayne County.
I don;t blame the fans or people of any troubled city or state, i blame the media