Detroit Lions: Is it more about the players or the uniform?
By Robert Jones
The Detroit Lions will be well represented today in the Super Bowl, but isn’t it more about the uniforms participating than who’s wearing them?
The Detroit Lions are in the Super Bowl. Or perhaps I should say that players who had previously worn the Honolulu Blue and Silver are now wearing the colors of a winner with a chance to become world champions.
Imagine that, after playing in the NFL purgatory of Detroit, some former Lions now have a chance to perform on the biggest stage of all and win the Super Bowl. It has happened before so it’s not an anomaly, but you get the idea.
Players like Laken Tomlinson, Anthony Zettel, Levine Toilolo and even Teez Tabor, one of the favorite whipping boys of Lions fans everywhere, now get to play for a winner. Possibly a champion.
But whether they win or lose today, they all are able to participate in something no player has ever experienced while wearing the Honolulu Blue and Silver, the Super Bowl. That foreign land that the Lions avoid like the plague.
Now to be fair the Lions have won world championships before. They dominated the 1950s as they were crowned king of the NFL jungle three times during that decade and there is a list of Hall of Fame players that helped make Detroit the city of champions.
However, after the dust settled from their 1957 championship, the Lions fell into a tailspin that they still haven’t been able to overcome. Mismanagement and poor play became the state of Lions football.
When the NFL and AFL agreed to a merger on June 8, 1966, part of the agreement was to hold a championship contest between the winners of both leagues, until the actual merger in 1970 when the NFL would then have the NFC and AFC champions square off as they will today.
That championship game was later named the Super Bowl with the first-ever contest being played on January 15, 1967. The Green Bay Packers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10 and the Detroit Lions watched from their homes just like they have every season since. Talk about your horrible traditions.