Me and Detroit
I’d passed through Detroit when I took to the Greyhound and Amtrak trail back in the 90s. At that time Ford Field did not exist, and the Lions still played at the old Pontiac Silverdome. In October 2022, I was arriving in town for my first experience of Ford Field.
In the Uber from the airport, I chatted to the driver, and he was telling me how if I walked half an hour in the wrong direction bad things can happen to me. I don’t know what the guy knows about Detroit. I don’t know if he was an expert on crime in Detroit or not. I don’t know if hearing my English accent made him think I’d be easy to identify as a tourist and an obvious target. I know that later, when talking to one of the doormen at my hotel and telling him about my Uber ride, he coolly replied “That’s a guy who isn’t from Detroit then.”
So, there I was, in Detroit, the most unlikely Lions fan. English accent. Never learned to drive. Not the biggest fan of Motown either. But I could tell you a lot about the Lions. It’s all Barry Sanders’ fault that I was there. It’s all because of Barry that I became a Lions fan back in 1991.
I’d been watching football since 1987. The game got hold of me as a teenager. I didn’t really feel a connection to any one team for the first three years of watching the sport. Miami was the first team I saw play. The Bengals found a place in my life because of their amazing and heartbreaking 1988 season. But in 1989 I started watching more and more highlights of Lions games because I wanted to see what Barry Sanders had done that week. By 1990 I was following Detroit, but I didn’t really consider myself a full-on fan until the next season. There are a couple of things that pushed me over the edge.
It was a Monday night game in the 1990 season. It was billed as Barry Sanders v Bo Jackson. The Raiders might have also been involved. There might have been other players on the field, but to me it will always be the Barry v Bo game. That game marked something special, and both Barry and Bo put on a show. There’s Bo, a legend already at this time, and after the game no one wants to talk to him about the game that the Raiders just won. They want to talk about Barry. Bo doesn’t miss a beat and says “Barry Sanders is my new idol. I love the way the guy runs. When I grow up, I want to be just like him.”
There's a part of it that's, 'Hey, anyone notice we won the game?' and a part of it that's, 'But seriously, this kid is amazing to watch. And I seriously am a fan now. Me too from that point on. I’m still a fan.
This part of the story is where it gets a bit embarrassing and I often leave it out. I was reading the Superbowl program for the 1990 NFL season and there was an article in it about the idea of NFL Dynasties and there were some pages dedicated to a story about the 70s Steelers and the 80s 49ers. And there was a small section, just a panel, about who could possibly be the team of the 90s. The team they picked was the Detroit Lions. The article mentioned that Detroit had a strong fanbase, good owners and a bright young quarterback around whom the offense would be built. I guess they meant Rodney Peete. That never really panned out. They drafted Andre Ware too. That really didn’t work out. Wayne Fontes was quoted as saying "We do have a very young quarterback, and that's a start, and we have a great young running back, and that's maybe even a better start.” I think that spells out who was going to be carrying the team.
The Lions weren’t the team of the decade throughout the 90s. They were up and down a lot through those years. The team of the 90s was the Dallas Cowboys (although after 95 not so much) But there are links between the Cowboys and Lions that are fascinating. Emmitt v Barry for one. And that's a great story. Emmitt Smith really did have all the accolades, all the records all the titles. But I’d argue that Barry gets more love. And if you talk about greatest backs ever, it’s always, Jim Brown, Walter Payton and Barry and an argument about which order they go in.
On the one hand that Superbowl article seems crazy. On the other hand, the links between the two teams seem impossible to ignore. I wonder if the writer thought he was football’s Nostradamus when the Lions, a year after that article came out, got to the Championship game, only to get flattened by Washington. In the Divisional round they had wiped the floor with the Cowboys. That then becomes a point of divergence. It would have been easy to think at that point that the Lions would be back. We certainly weren’t thinking that people would be talking about 1991 as our last playoff win, right up to 2023.
Dallas would go on to win three Superbowl titles. The Lions would go on to draft a Wide-Receiver with their first-round pick three years in a row. Thanks Matt Millen. And yes. For me that is the low point. Not the 0-16. Not sticking with Joey Harrington when he clearly wasn’t the QB we needed but trying to build a team around the Receiver position and not recognising that it’s not working – THREE YEARS IN A ROW! It’s as though Millen’s time in San Francisco with the 49ers led him to believe that the answer to all life’s problems was to find the next Jerry Rice. Albeit, he eventually hit paydirt with Calvin Johnson and drafted arguably the best receiver ever. Fourth time lucky.
Millen drafts Charles Rogers from Michigan State second overall in 2003. He takes Roy Williams from Texas seventh overall the next year and completes the hattrick the next year with Mike Williams out of USC, selected 10th overall. What happened in 2006? Were there just no receivers available that year? I guess not even Millen would take Santonio Holmes, Marques Colston, Brandon Marshall or Greg Jennings in the first round. Lions fans missed an opportunity when playing Green Bay. They could have held up signs saying, “Not even Matt Millen would draft you Greg Jennings and he’s addicted to drafting receivers!”
That was a low. Barry said at one point, years after his retirement, that he saw the Cowboys getting everything that the Lions should have had and would have had if they didn't let so many good players go. Lomas Brown was like family to him. The Lions let him go. Kevin Glover was a great centre. All the talk about having no O-Line to run behind was just plain wrong. Those two guys were Lions legends. Lomas Brown was All-Pro. He may one day be in the Hall of Fame. Herman Moore was an absolute legend. People forget he set the single season record for receptions in one season. 123. At the time that was a ridiculous number. Chris Spielman. I don't have to say anything. He is Detroit through and through. Bennie Blades may not be so well known outside of Detroit, but he was the last line in the middle of that D that started with Jerry Ball, ran through Spielman and was cleaned up by Blades. All those players, all of them were traded away. The frustration that Barry felt was felt by every Lions fan.
I remember where I was at the time when Barry retired. Not the exact time. But I remember it was when I was living in North London. I remember thinking. “Shit. Fuck. What do I do now?” Not that I had any choice. I always say, at that point, I was too far gone, too invested. I didn’t just support Barry. By that point I was a Lions fan.
I do always find it a strange coincidence that after retiring Barry took a trip to London. If I’d known that at the time I’d have been saying, “Yeah. That’s right. You come over here and explain to me what just happened.”
Years later, I was working as a porter and concierge in a Marriott hotel in Northwest London. There was a strange convergence of people, celebrities, sports people, musicians, but mostly there were a lot of Americans and a lot of American sports fans. I think they liked the interaction, hearing this English accent talking their language. You start talking sports and you’re in. So, when a group of guys asked if I watched baseball, and at the time I did, it went down well that one of them said “I haven’t watched baseball since the Dodgers left Brooklyn.” I quickly got in, “Oh. So not since 1957?” That went down so well. I’ve been told that it’s nice to be away from home and find someone who talks your language.
One such concierge desk interaction led to a conversation about football and my team being Detroit and my hero being Barry and the guy excitedly exclaimed “I’m from Oklahoma. He’s a legend back home.” A few weeks later, I received a DVD in the post of Barry highlights. And this is stuff you couldn’t find so easily. The internet wasn’t what it is now. I’m sure some of the footage I have is actually still not easy to find. There’s even clips of Barry from high school days.
It’s funny how I went from picking a team because I love the running-back position and wanted to follow the best back in the league, to somehow having a love for the team. But for years I felt no connection to the city itself. I feel that decades of inherited frustration, leaves me feeling like I’ve never lived there but I know the mentality. There’s no sense of being a victim with the Detroit vs everybody mindset. I might have inherited the frustration and heartbreak, but the feeling is more one of “You can’t bend me into anything else. You can say what you want to say but we know how it is and this is just the way it's going to be."
Just recently, when I told someone that I was a Lions fan, they said “That’s not a nice place though.” I said I could only speak for the downtown area and I liked it.” When I was at Ford Field for the first time, people were nothing but good to me. I easily felt like part of the family. Again, if you speak the language in a strange accent people take notice.
The narrative of “Same old Lions” is bullshit. That kind of thing fuels the vs Everybody mentality. And not in an angry way. More defiant than angry. Detroit has never won a Superbowl. So what? There are twelve other teams that haven’t. And then there’s a handful more that have only won one. The Jets, bless 'em, get a lot of stick for not winning anything since Superbowl III. But the Bears, a team with a storied history, have won exactly one and you don’t hear much about it. They’re not cursed but we are. “Same old Lions?” It’s way more complicated than that!
Even last year is a case in point. 2025 was a disappointing year? Of course it was. But the narrative being told is about how we were fourth in the division. There are three teams in the division who ended the season with nine wins. Chicago, the division winners, had eleven wins. But people are acting like the Lions were 3-14 and the season was a wash out. Quite frankly, the schedule has been absolute murder over the last couple of seasons and yet we’ve been competitive in almost every game. Same old Lions? I feel pretty good about 2026 and that isn’t me being a blinkered fan thinking that. There’s lots to be excited about. Whatever is in the Brad Holmes-Dan Campbell Kool-Aid I’m guzzling it down because it seems to be working.
The idiom, and maybe it’s a very British one, “It’s the hope that kills you” fits perfectly for the Lions. Or, as a friend of the family, a lifelong sports fan from San Francisco once told me, “Detroit’s one of those teams that’s just good enough to lose.” If we were hopeless then it would be a different story. But, discounting the Matt Millen years, in the time I’ve followed them the Lions have had peaks and troughs.
Detroit vs Everybody is not Everybody is against us. Although there has been some hideous officiating, even last year, that might make you think otherwise. I feel it’s more about; there’s a narrative that other people have and it isn’t necessarily right. I’ve spent a lot of my life in London. It’s a town where only crazy people and taxi drivers drive and most times you can’t tell them apart. The idea of London is a million miles removed from the idea of Detroit. I’m biased. I think London is the centre of the Universe. Always have and always will. I’ve lived in Tottenham. I’ve lived in South End Green at the bottom of Hampstead Heath. I’ve spent a lot of nights in Camden and Soho, and I work a minute away from Oxford Circus. It’s all London, but those are all very different kinds of London.
I can’t say I know Detroit, but I don’t think of it as a tourist town. Probably nobody does. It’s a great sports town and the Lions are a unifying part of the city. London has so many football clubs (I mean of the round ball version), and you won’t find any crystalised character that is definitively London in Arsenal or Tottenham or Chelsea or West Ham or Fulham or Charlton or Millwall or Crystal Palace… it’s a long list of very different ideas of London. In contrast, I’d say that Detroit is not the centre of the Universe. But the Lions are at the centre of Detroit.
Back to 2022. My Uber driver’s advice was not needed. My jetlagged early morning walks worked out OK. I walked around taking in the city. I walked down to the riverfront where I remember sitting all those years ago watching freighters go by. I instantly recognised Dodge Fountain and the Spirit of Detroit statue, even if I couldn’t put a name to them. I’ve always loved the Joe Louis Fist. Surely, we need a T-Shirt with The Fist and the Detroit vs Everybody slogan. I caught a Pistons game and had real Detroit style pizza at Little Caesars Arena. I’d been to Ann Arbor on the bus and went to a game in The Big House and then got stranded at midnight, having missed the last train back. I ended up with a three-hundred-dollar Uber ride back to Detroit. I would have just stayed out and got the first train in the morning, but I wanted to make sure I got some sort of sleep because I had the game at Ford Field the next day.
My Uber driver was from Detroit. We got on. I got an invite to a “lingerie model’s party.” Which was just as easily declinable as the invite to the Swingers party that I’d got on the bus ride over earlier in the day. I don’t need that kind of trouble at this stage of my life.
I got talking to a woman in Starbucks who was a comedian and she said to come along and see her do her thing at a comedy club. I didn’t go. I was there for the sport only. I was heading out the next day for the Cleveland Cincinnati Monday night game and then on to Canton after that. Somehow, I feel I only scratched the surface. Somehow, I felt that my first Uber driver had bought into the myth of Detroit a little too much. It’s actually a good city to be a tourist in.
Gameday. Week eight 2022 NFL season. Dolphins are in town to play the Lions. I really don’t know what I was expecting or how I was feeling. It was just a Lions game. We were 1-5 at that point and we were supposed to be getting better. On that day, after that close loss to Miami, I doubted Brad Holmes, Dan Campbell, and Jared Goff. Maybe we got it wrong. Maybe these weren’t the people to take us in the right direction. I mean, anything is better than the Millen days and the mood seemed much better than the Matt Patricia era. Matt Patricia? The Matt Patricia way? Alienate fans and players to the point where they even hate that stupid pencil behind your ear.
It was good to be around people who felt the same way after the loss. One family I’d talked to, one of the sons walked by me on the way out of the stadium and told me it had been a pleasure meeting me. Like I said, it felt very welcoming and it felt like we were all pulling in the same direction. Also, from that point on things were different. We went on an absolute tear for the rest of the season and narrowly missed out on the playoffs. We’d have been the first team ever to start a season 1-6 and make the playoffs. If only a few things had gone our way in the last couple of weeks… Then of course 2023 and 2024 we looked like world beaters.
I don't come from Detroit. I've spent most of my life in and around London. I don't even drive and my team is from the Motor City. I don't know all the neighbourhoods. I don't know the city the way Detroiters know it. But I know the Lions. And one thing that sticks out for me whilst at the game was that the halftime activities included Barry Sanders on the field. They were announcing that the team was having a statue of Barry made to immortalise him for all to see when they visit. Twenty-four years after he’d hung it up and I still get to chant “Barry! Barry! Barry!” It’s all his fault.