The Bodhisattva

Being a Detroit Lions fan is really something unique as I don’t know if we can even be considered NFL fans as we haven’t really played in the league (though we have played at the league) for some time now.  I mean if you consider our recent Golden Years were helmed by people named Scott Mitchell and Erik Kramer and you just begin to fully feel our pain.

That we wasted the career of perhaps the second greatest runner in history (I believe to the first to be Bo Jackson - all things equal  O-line, system, etc - , healthy, the guy is better than anybody who has ever played the game) is just the icing. I remember sitting there watch Barry just throw up 1200+ yard seasons for most years without a damn tight end of a damn full back, a system where he put together the most ridiculous year in College Football history (go look at the numbers his Heisman year - it’s almost looks like Fantasy). The Run and Shoot, remember that? Atlanta called it the Red Gun, Houston used to run it get like 4 1000 yard receivers (or damn near it) with Moon, Duncan, Jeffries, Hill, Givens, Lo White and company and what it amounted to was entertaining but it’s kind of like watching MLS - they aren’t really playing Football.

So Matt Millen finally gets canned. Let me say this he was a great play-by-play commentator for the NFL, which kind of makes his ascension as the President of an NFL team a bit like somebody like Tor handing over their publishing operations to me - not smart, because all we would do is announce our new Robotech line to be followed by our announcement of acquiring DC Comics so I can put Darwyn Cooke on Phantom Stranger, China Mieville and Skottie Young on Batman, and convince Allan Moore I want to see his Twilight, that will feature a spin-off  Warren Ellis run in Checkmate (which I’d be bringing back). We’d leave Geoff Johns where the hell he is because that guy is a force already.

So, back to Football…(Tor get at me - Robotech is sweet!)

You know it’s bad when the first sign of progress is the canning of the president of your damn team of the last 8 years and it almost feels like we don’t have a schedule, we  just happen to be on other teams’ schedules and in a league where parity is the catch phrase we seem to be exception. I mean even as bad as the Rams and Raiders have looked recently, these are teams that have won the Superbowl in recent memory.

Let me tell you how far I go with this squad - when Bennie Blades, Jerry Ball and Chris Spielman were our heart and soul. When I used to read Becket Magazine in 1990 and there was an article about the future of our Heismaned-out backfield with the addition of Andre Ware as our first round pick to go along with Barry.

Back then we were losing but their was excitement, some sense of hope, and I hope that is restored with a new regime. There is a lot of nostalgia for me being a Lion fan as two of my best friends from my childhood had favorite teams in the division, the Bears and Tampa (when they were in that division). We are the Berman’s pronounced NFC Norse, and win or lose, we need to be leaving the field black and blue as signs of effort.

We need to be on a schedule.

_{*As it is this may work in both ways, as to be honest sport play-by-play has taken a severe turn for the worse over the last few years , so somebody give Millen a job.}