The New York Post Called The Detroit Lions "The Real America's Team" And I Couldn't Agree More
I could live to be 1,000, and I might not see a month of football like what we've seen so far in 2024. The Michigan Wolverines won the national championship, and now we can definitively say that the 2023-2024 Detroit Lions are the best Detroit Lions team of the Super Bowl era. It's pretty remarkable stuff. What makes it even more fun is that the nation is behind them. I've written about this many times in blogs, but even The "Good" Detroit Lions teams of the Matthew Stafford era weren't always likable. Whether it was their ability to pull stupid shit out of their ass or the Ndamukong Suh factor, they seemed to find a way to put an unnecessary target on their backs. That is not the case here, and the New York Post agrees.
I've been wrong at many different points about this era of Lions football. For the record, I'm happy to be wrong. I'm not one of those weirdos who would rather have his opinion validated than see his teams be successful. I had doubts about whether the Dan Campbell era would work. If there's one organization that hasn't earned the benefit of the doubt, it's probably the Detroit Lions. It took me a long time to buy in, but I'm glad I have. I've had many bad takes, but the one thing I did say from the beginning is that given Dan Campbell's personality and the not-so-storied history of the Detroit Lions, if a Dan Campbell-led Lions team were to become successful, they could be a phenomenon. That's what we're seeing right now. There are fan bases with other allegiances, but I don't know many people who are actively rooting against the Detroit Lions right now. It's a cool story.
This is just something that's always stuck in my head, but is there a statute of limitations for how long a team can be "America's team?" I understand the Cowboys have a ton of history, and that moniker began in the days of Tom Landry and Roger Staubach, but you can't tell me in the 21st century that there aren't teams more deserving of that label. It's time for the torch to be passed. Unless calling the Cowboys "America's team" is kind of like those guys in the mafia that they call Fat Tony. If it's meant to be ironic, I'm all for it, but we currently live in an age in which I've seen the Lions play for more NFC championships than the Cowboys. I'm not a Cowboys hater, but that's hilarious.
We'll see how long Detroit can ride this way. Dan Campbell made a great point the other day when he said in a few years, the Lions are probably going to be the team that gets booed. You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. That's just the way it's done. But for the time being, Detroit is America's hero, and their America's team. Enjoy the ride.