The "Ford's should sell the team" days are over for the Lions
I've been around the Detroit Lions for a long time. 37 years to be exact. There's obviously people who have followed this team a lot longer than I have, but 37 years is nothing to shake a stick at. Plus, I was present for the worst years of this franchises existence. Once constant that always […]
I've been around the Detroit Lions for a long time. 37 years to be exact. There's obviously people who have followed this team a lot longer than I have, but 37 years is nothing to shake a stick at. Plus, I was present for the worst years of this franchises existence.
Once constant that always seemed to rear it's head was "The Ford's should sell the team." I get it. The Ford's have made a lot of mistakes with this team over the years. The hiring of Matt Millen was big one. The hiring of Bob Quinn and Matt Patricia was another one. It's easy to see why fans of this team wanted the Ford's to sell.
I'm not sure it was all the Ford's fault though. I think there's some bad luck involved as well. Don't forget the league actually helped the Ford's hire Bob Quinn. It was just bad luck that he turned out to be bad at being a GM. He did build a nice offensive line though. That's it. No more nice things will be said about Quinn.
Today my opinions of the Ford family are so much different. It turns out that the biggest thing the family had done wrong for so long was that they had the wrong family member running the team. Sheila Hamp has been very good at this since taking over ownership 2020.
She immediately got to work on this team when she fired Bob Quinn and Matt Patricia after a very bad 41-25 loss to the Houston Texans on Thanksgiving. That loss produced this much remembered image.
This image is really changed everything. It's the first time that you could see the owner of this team share the same frustrations that the fans were feeling. It was embarrassing.
Since then, it's been all uphill for this franchise and a lot of it has to do with Hamp. She has changed the entire direction of this franchise. Something her parents couldn't do. The biggest reason for this change has been involvement on multiple ends.
Starting with Hamp's decision to hire football people to run the football end of this business. It's something the Lions just haven't done for a very long time and it hurt them because of it. Even the hire of rod Wood that Martha Ford made was an instant in which the team had hired someone with no football background to be the president of the team. Aside for the Calvin Johnsons stuff. that's mostly gone well because he stays to the business side of things now.
By the way, Sheila Hamp helped bring Calvin Johnson back home. That shouldn't go ignored.
Bringing in Chris Spielman to be a part of the front office was a great move. Having him, along with Barry Sanders and members of the Fritz Pollard Alliance help with finding a GM and coach for this team helped a lot. It's what led this team to hiring both Dan Campbell and Brad Holmes.
Her involvement has been big too. She has an office right by Holmes and Campbell and has been sitting in on just about everything to learn as much as she can.
In just a few short years, the Lions have gone form arguably the worst time period in their history, to a team that's expected to win their division for the first time since 1993. Ownership has a lot to do with that.
Now, there still is a lot that remains to be seen. I can fully understand some Lions fans taking a cautious approach to this. They've been burned before. The Lions need to go out and do the things they're expected to do before we can really say take this whole "sell the team" narrative and bury it forever, but it's safe to say that it's in the hole right now. The Lions just need to put the dirt on it.
Featured image by NorthJersey.com-USA TODAY NETWORK
