Would the Detroit Lions lose fans to a successful local XFL team?

It shouldn’t take a rival to get it right

The thrill of having a championship ball club in Detroit didn’t last. The Panthers played one more season which ended with a playoff loss to the Los Angeles Express 27-21. When the league voted to move their season to the fall and directly compete with the NFL, the Panthers merged with the Oakland Invaders leaving the city of Detroit without a championship contender.

The Lions didn’t come close to making the playoffs again until 1991, which ended with their lopsided loss to the Redskins.

This weekend the new XFL is making their debut. There is no team currently in Detroit, but what if one expanded here and had the same type of success the Panthers did back in 83′ and 84′?

Would it cause long-suffering Lions fans to jump ship again? Now I understand that the XFL plays in the spring and fans can follow both leagues as they like instead of direct competition, but many fans have already decided to find a new favorite team rather than continue to put up with the ineptitude of the Lions.

So while a winning Detroit XFL team wouldn’t have to cause fans to decide between one or the other, it makes it easier for fans to say, ‘well our spring team is really good and worth buying tickets to watch, so maybe I won’t pay the exorbitant prices to watch the Lions find a new way to lose this weekend.’

in other words, it could very well hit Martha Firestone Ford and her family where it hurts the most; in the wallet. It could also provide some much-needed pressure to finally find a way to win. Consider this; the Lions playoff appearances in 82′ and 83′ were only their second and third trips to the playoffs since their victory in the 1957 championship game.

When all is said and done the Detroit Lions are the only game in town and they know it. The inability to not only build a legitimate contender but play like an outtake from a Marx’s Brothers movie has caused fans more frustration than any human should have to endure.

If another version of the Michigan Panthers were to come on the scene, consistently winning games and playing for championships, the Lions would feel it. It wouldn’t cause them to have to fold up operations or move to another city, but they would once again become Motown’s second class football team.

Maybe the Lions response would be to make three playoff appearances in 30 years while continuing to frustrate and depress their fans.

Or maybe it would cause some actual urgency for the Lions to finally get it right. Maybe losing some fans in the seats and playing second fiddle to an in-city winning football rival would be the final straw that pushes this organization to use every resource in their power to finally assemble a front office and roster that can carry the Lions franchise and its fans to places that they have never reached before like the Super Bowl.

One way or another it shouldn’t take a cross-town rival for the Lions to finally figure out how to create a winner. But even without one, as long as the Lions continue to be the only major Detroit sports franchise that hasn’t won a world championship in the last 40 years or even in contention for one in the last 20, they will continue to be second-class citizens.