The Fine Art of Losing: Redux

Lions Edition

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Greetings Lions fans. On this winter morning when your heart is cold and heavy, I can only say: Welcome to the club. We’ve been waiting for you. We’ve reviewed your application and are proud to have you among us.

The gang is all here: You know the names. The people who look like they’ve been hit by a bus are, of course, Bills fans. The people with the blankets over their heads: Browns fans. The Jets fans are focusing on the Knicks so they’re at the Garden. I’m here representing Vikings fandom. Pull up a chair, Detroiters, you’ve made it, you are now officially tragic.

It wasn’t easy. It never is. I tried to warn you. Oh I tried! At the beginning of the season I told you to be careful. For years you were bad, pure and simple. Your awfulness ruined the Thanksgiving game for decades. You wasted Barry Sanders’ career with Wayne Fontes. You gave us the horrors of the Silverdome, of Matt Millen and a winning percentage of .277 over seven years. Stone cold garbàggio.

You thought that was hard but that was just dreary. And right now I’m sure you’d rather go back to unrelieved wretchedness. But that’s not how this works. Because for an hour there you believed. You might have secretly thought about going to Las Vegas for the Super Bowl. You might have checked hotel prices on the Strip (I would clear your search history so you don’t accidentally call up the Caesar’s Palace website in the coming days). You may not admit it, but for a while there you had designs of grandeur. Once that happens it’s too late. Truly tragic teams must approach greatness then contrive to lose in a specifically painful way. The interception that bounced off the defender’s face mask into the arms of the receiver will now be etched in your collective memory. That was a new one. Even the Bills were impressed.

It gives me no pleasure to repeat my words from before the season, except this is one time where my foresight was unvarnished in absolute correctness. I warned Lions fans to be careful what you wished for, because “I have no doubt, none, not one bit, that if the Lions make it anywhere near the promised land then they will lose in a ludicrous way. Then let’s talk tragic.”

Well now it’s time to talk. They say when your heart’s been broken three times you become a man. We don’t have to get technical here but you definitely grew up last night. That feeling, incidentally—the heavy heart, the revisitation of dropped passes, coaching decisions, all of that—will not go away. That’s with you forever. You already know on some level. It will diminish. It might mellow. You might win the Super Bowl one day and this will all be a mere speed bump to glory. But those of us in this select club will tell you: Don’t count on it.

So what do we do? Well I don’t want to say we, in the club, embrace the pain. The pain is a drag. You want next season to start right in the NFC Championship—everything else feels insignificant—but there’s no short cut back, no guru, no hack. There’s only one path and it’s a long one. The dream may never happen, for most of us it never does. Hopefully there’s a lesson in there somewhere but it’s hard to find that in the moment. But those of us in the club can tell you, we’ll all endure. There’s no other way.