Speaking Lies To Propriety

Gone, Finally

So Detroit Lions owner William Clay Ford died at home this weekend, ending a 50-year run in which the Lions won a single -- yes, one -- playoff game, and the white washers are out in force to do what they can. You see, it's good that Detroit kept the team all these years, that they have a new indoor yard, and how much Ford loved the city. After all, Detroit could have gone the way of Baltimore and Cleveland, similar towns where franchises got moved, and it's not nice to say mean things about the dead, let alone those who were worth a lot when they died.

Um, folks? This is a great load of bullsquat.

Ford's own obituary doesn't mention the Lions until paragraph number eight. Think about that; you own a pro football team for half a century, and it doesn't show up until well past the average reader's eyes have glazed over. Detroit's fans would have been better off without a team for the majority of Ford's stewardship, because at least then they wouldn't have had to watch the Lions and gotten the national feed. Ford hired clowns, buffoons, men who drove through fast food drive-throughs while naked, and Matt Millen. He spent the entirety of the career of Barry Sanders on .500 seasons, and the tail end of it did the same thing to Calvin Johnson. His teams lost every game in a season once, and were close to it on other occasions. In a league where it's damned near impossible not to just luck into the occasional 10-win team from pure top of the draft talent, the Lions were consistently awful under Ford.

To praise him for anything regarding the Lions is to follow his life's work for Lion fans: to tell a man that is being showered with urine that it is, in fact, rain. To celebrate his life for the big damned building that the Lions play in is to praise the worst boat in the harbor for, just like the other, rising with the tide. To say he loved Detroit is to equate abuse with affection, neglect with commitment, and sadism with tenderness.

Ford was one of the worst owners in NFL history. He got to be in that position because he was born into incredible wealth. He might have done some good in charity works, and he might not have been as big of a reprobate as many of the Darwinian chase to rank that is NFL franchise ownership... but money in other matters does not buy success in sports. The only reason that most people in America knew anything about Ford is because he owned the Lions.

And he absolutely and truly sucked at it.