Football Fans Raised in Detroit

The most watched show on TV is Set!

The Detroit Lions raise some very strange football fans. The first rule of being a football fan in Detroit is learn how to have hope and realize that being a Lions fan builds character. Being a Lions fan also messes your head up for going into the adult world!

Smart Lions fans grow up, get married to someone from another state and adopt their team! But that has a whole new set of complications!

Take my brother and me. Dave and I grew up in metro Detroit, raised as good little homers, cheering for the Lions as long as the Red Wings or Tigers weren’t playing. Mom was a baseball fan and Dad is hockey first, other sports next! Dad scored tickets to a Lions game when we were about 11 and 12 and the four of us went. They were 50-yard line tickets at the Pontiac Silverdome, 3 rows away from the dome! They played the Dolphins and I recall the blue ants and blue and orange ants fighting over a chocolate chip. I remember the guy on the shuttle bus from parking to the arena, decked out in Lions gear and cheering loudly, “Rah rah ree, kick ‘em in the knee, rah rah rass, kick ‘em in the other knee!” He was cheering looking at us with a fun smile, glancing up at our Mom and Dad who had mildly concerned looks. I don’t remember who won, but dollars to donuts, it was probably Miami.

So now, a year after the team we grew up with was the first team in NFL history to finish the season 16-0, we have both married into new teams. I’m a Patriots fan by marriage and Dave is a married Colts fan.

Both teams were in the playoffs this year. Just a couple years ago, the Pats were on the verge of a better kind of history, they almost had a perfect all the way season, missing that with a Super Bowl loss, but what a ride that was. The Colts are going to be IN the Super Bowl this year. We’ve made significant gains with our football marriage bonuses!

Ah, but there are new rules to learn that we haven’t managed to get past. I was talking to Dave tonight and he told me he still wishes the Lions could manage a winning season. Well, actually, me too. I think it would be totally cool to see Detroit’s Hawaii blue jerseys on the field in the biggest American TV event of the year.

But the rules that are hard are not marrying into a new team forsaking all others. The Colts and Patriots are rivals! Like a couple of Lions kids understand football rivals, no one wants to make a big deal about playing the Lions! NFL rivalries are something new! Here’s where the problem is with the rivalry. I am happy that the Saints made it and I’ll be cheering for them on Super Bowl Sunday. You see, I’m an alumna of Siena Heights University, we’re the Saints too! My school is a small private college and while we have a great basketball and soccer teams, we don’t have a football team. I like the idea of being able to cheer “Go Saints” at a football game. But if the Saints had not won tonight, I’d be cheering for the Colts. I have family in Indy now, ya know? Besides, I’m a big-time Brett Favre NOT fan!

Dave is also a University of Michigan football fan. So, he finds himself with a natural leaning to support the Patriots because our QB, Tom Brady is a UofM grad. EEKS! If Laura would tolerate that, I’m sure his new son, Robert, would have something to say about it!

David says he’s okay with the fact that I’d support the Colts if the Saints hadn’t won because he understands the Favre thing, but that's easy to say now because he won’t be seeing his wife sheering for the Patriots’ arch rivals in the Super Bowl this year!

Now I just have to figure out how to crash a certain Super Bowl party if I should find myself in Indianapolis in two weeks…

GO SAINTS!!