Detroit Lions: 50 Year QB Curse

Fast Fact: As a franchise, the Detroit Lions have 4 NFL championships to their credit, ranking 8th in the league for most total championships [Green Bay (12), Chicago (9), New York Giants (7), Pittsburgh (6), Dallas, Washington, & San Francisco (5), Detroit and Baltimore/Indy Colts (4)]. Since winning their last championship in 1957, they traded their star quarterback and have not been back to the championship game since, winning only one playoff game in 1991.

I'm used to the Lions being bad. Outside of Barry Sanders, this team has given me no reason to hope they could turn their bad fortunes around. That's OK though, since as any Buffalo sports fan will tell you, "losing builds loyalty in a fan base."

But the one thing that really disappointed me about the Lions is that they lacked the mystique of a "curse" like other historic losing franchises. Take the Boston Red Sox (who have completely lost their appeal to me since winning not one but TWO World Series in the 00s) who had the Curse of the Bambino. Or the Chicago Cubs who had that crazy old man's hex he allegedly put on the team when they wouldn't let his Billy Goat into the stadium in 1945. And the Philadelphia Phillies only recently returned to World Series success after lifting the Curse of William Penn before this season started.

I always wanted the Lions to have their own curse. I kicked around the idea of a Barry Sanders Curse since he immediately retired prior to the 1999 season after Detroit refused to trade him a season shy of breaking the all-time NFL rushing record. But that doesn't answer the problem of why they have never been to a Superbowl since its inception in 1967.

Now, I have an answer, if Wikipedia is to be trusted, that is. The Curse of Bobby Layne:

Detroit enjoyed its greatest success in the 1950s. Led by quarterback Bobby Layne, and wide receiver [Jim Doran] they won the league championship in 1952, 1953, and 1957. They defeated the Cleveland Browns in each of those NFL Championship Games, but also lost to the Browns in the 1954 Championship Game.

In 1958, after leading the Lions to 3 NFL Championships and providing Detroit nearly a decade of Hall of Fame play, the Lions traded Bobby Layne. Bobby was injured during the last championship season and the Lions thought he was through and wanted to get what they could for him. According to legend, as he was leaving for Pittsburgh, Bobby said that Detroit "would not win for 50 years". Since this time, the Lions have not won another championship and have only a single playoff game win. Some have attributed the Lion's subsequent 49 years of futility to the "Curse of Bobby Layne.

Notably, the Lions succeeded in one of the greatest comeback victories in NFL post-season history. Trailing the San Francisco 49ers 27-7 in the 3rd quarter of the 1957 Western Conference Playoff game, Lions quarterback Tobin Rote rallied the team back with 24 unanswered points to beat the 49ers 31-27 at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco. The Lions have experienced only one post-season win since.

Appropriately, it seems Detroit has been cursed at the quarterback position. Detroit has an obsession with drafting talented wide receivers with no one to throw to them on a consistent basis. They've tried the likes of Scott Mitchell (I knew it was bad when Sports Illustrated felt the need to commend him for actually throwing spiral passes in training camp), Charlie "I liked to run until I got injured" Batch, Joey "I'm gonna bring back the winning culture" Harrington, John "I like to dress up as my naked coach who went to Wendy's" Kitna, and now a whole slew of has-beens and never-wills in 2008.

But remember, the Curse of Bobby Layne stipulated that Detroit would not win for 50 years. That hex was established in 1958. Perhaps it is fitting that the Lions look like a shoe-in for an 0-16 season in 2008. Their quarterback situation is so epically bad that some people honestly believe Allen Iverson is the best potential quarterback living in Detroit.

It has been 50 years since this Curse was issued. Come 2009, it will officially expire. Granted, there may still be a Barry Sanders Curse in effect, but don't be surprised if we see the Lions near the top of the NFL pile come next season. Remember, you heard it here first. (Too bad Tim Tebow and Colt McCoy aren't due to enter the draft until after next year, but you never know.)

Detroit Lions: The Pursuit of Perfection

My Lions are the last perfect team in 2008 and their schedule favors their chances of making history!


Also, here is a great link to the history of Lions logos and uniforms, like this 1953 World Championship commemorative logo.




Lions Logos through History

People like to play up the fact that the Lions haven't won a Superbowl, but how easily they forget about the 1953 season!

And check out this never used Barry Sanders "Run for the Record" logo from 1999! The second greatest moment in Lions history sadly never came to pass since Barry suddenly retired after Detroit refused to trade him.

USA Yesterday

Here is a scan of that frontpage I mentioned earlier. Sure brings back memories. Look, the DOW was up... big! Seems like so long ago...

The (un)Natural

On September 8, ten years ago, I witnessed what I believed to be the greatest accomplishment in the history of sports. Mark McGwire broke Major League Baseball's single season home-run record. I still have the USA Today newspaper published the following morning. The headline reads: "62: Unbelievable!" (The unbelievability aspect now stings me as sadly ironic.)

1998 was arguably the best single year in sports. It had Jordan's climactic game winner vs. the Utah Jazz in the finals, John Elway winning his fist Super Bowl and then leading his team through the playoffs on the way to a second, Dale Earnhardt's overdue Daytona 500 win and Jeff Gordon's record setting 13-win championship season, the Detroit Red Wings' emotional Stanley Cup victory in honor of former teammate Vladimir Konstantinov (crippled for life in a car accident the previous summer), 125 victories by the late great New York Yankees, the Peyton Manning vs. Ryan Leaf NFL draft debate (ha!), the incredible Lady Vols, and the record setting Minnesota Vikings offense (the second best team never to win a Super Bowl, IMO).

But one single story trumped all of these notable stories at the time. The Great Home Run Chase of '98, staring Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. They were chasing Roger Maris' 37-year-old single season home-run record. They not only broke it, but they did so with such ease that it made us believe that we were witnessing the best hitters that there ever were and there ever would be. When McGwire hit 62, Sosa ran out from the outfield to embrace him. It was a beautiful moment. But when Barry Bonds came along in 2001 and broke McGwire's record, we knew something was amiss. When Sosa, McGwire, and others were summoned to Capital Hill to testify about the problem of steroids in the game, we learned just how deep the scandal went. Our heroes became all too human.

Ten years ago, Big Mac was the King of the World:


But a few years later, he wasn't prepared to talk about the past:


In retrospect, it is evident that Big Mac and Slammin' Sammy were not gods. But they weren't devils either. They were human beings, desperately depraved, and finding ways to justify and rationalize their selfish ambition to be the best hitters the game had ever seen no matter what the cost.

We want our heroes to be like the film version of Roy Hobbs who never let the fans down, when in reality they often end up turning into the Roy Hobbs of the novel (who took the bribe and threw the game) instead. We want to see a supremely gifted player win the big game by playing the right way. We want to see them refusing to have an unfair advantage in the name of integrity and sportsmanship. But all too often, the allure of fame and the almighty dollar corrupts the ideals of purity and fair play. McGwire and Sosa remain two infamous poster boys of that reality.

Knowing what we know now about the state of baseball since at least the 1990s, I can no longer respect what McGwire and Sosa accomplished. I still have fond memories of the thrill of that summer, but I cannot look back with admiration. It was a grand scandal, and we the fans were the true victims, along with every other player who has played the game the right way. In my opinion, justice demands that we wipe clean every statistic from the careers of any player who is proven guilty of steroid use (so I guess McGwire and Sosa might get off the hook under those standards).

This summer gave us a new hero to embrace, Michael Phelps. His 0.01 of a second victory to win his 7th gold medal of the 2008 Olympics is the greatest sporting feat I have ever seen. Phelps is no god either, but I at least hope that he has set his records through nothing but development of his God-given talent and unmatched determination. Perhaps in another ten years, we will know whether or not we can admire him in the way we all wanted admire McGwire and Sosa.

It's How You Play the Game

I found this to be a fascinating story. Imagine, you're a player on a softball team in playoff contention, playing a team that's in the same boat as you. You give up a homerun to potentially lose the game, but just when you thought it was over, the baserunner injures her knee running the bases. The ump rules that unless the player comes around to touch home plate, the home run doesn't count. You think, "her teammates will carry her home." But, no, that's against the rules. So that means your team is suddenly in a great position to win and advance.

Now, the only thing that can keep you from victory is if you decide that some things in life are more important than wins and loses.
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?cl=7635680

An amazing act of charity to say the least.

I wonder if the Red Sox would help out a Yankees player in a similar situation?