Stories indexed with the term ‘Detroit Lions’

Editor’s note: A shorter version of this column was published in the March 12, 2014 edition of the Wall Street Journal.

In the course of his 88 years, William Clay Ford, who died Sunday, captained Yale’s tennis team, earned an engineering degree and chaired Ford Motor Co.’s finance committee, which is enough for any lifetime.

But he will likely be remembered mainly as the owner of the Detroit Lions, during five woefully unsuccessful decades. Since he took over the franchise in 1964, the Lions have won exactly one playoff game, and remain the only NFL team to miss out on all 48 Super Bowls.

Ford’s critics claim he was a snob who didn’t care about the average fan, a fat cat who was more focused on profits than the playoffs.

False, and false. [Full Story]

Because my last 700-word commentary completely covered every subject in the sports world that occurred in 2013, my editor thought, “Hey, why not preview the year in sports in January?!”

Why not? Because I have no idea what’s going to happen, that’s why. Nobody does. That’s why we watch sports: We don’t know how it’s going to end. It’s also why we shouldn’t watch pregame shows: everybody is just guessing.

Nonetheless, if The Chronicle wants to pay me to make wild, unsupported guesses – then doggonnit, that’s what I’ll do. Just one of the many duties that come with being a hard-hitting investigative journalist.

Let’s start at the bottom. That means, of course, the Detroit Lions. [Full Story]

Ann Arbor public art commission meeting (Oct. 26, 2011): Commissioners were briefed on two possible public art projects at their monthly meeting: a partnership with the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the potential for incorporating public art into a rain garden on property the city is buying at First & Kingsley.

But most of their 2.5-hour meeting was spent prepping for a Nov. 14 working session with Ann Arbor city council, focusing on the city’s Percent for Art program.

The council working session was prompted in large part by a resolution proposed by councilmember Sabra Briere, which she brought forward at the council’s Sept. 19 meeting. The resolution would revise the city’s public art ordinance explicitly to exclude sidewalk and street repair from projects that could be tapped to fund public art. It would also require that any money allocated for public art under the program be spent within three years, or be returned to its fund of origin. The council ultimately postponed action on the resolution until its Nov. 21 meeting, with a working session scheduled in the interim to focus on the Percent for Art ordinance.

The timing of the proposed ordinance change is related to two proposals on the Nov. 8 ballot: (1) renewal of a 2.0 mill tax to fund street repair; and (2) imposing a 0.125 mill tax to fund the repair of sidewalks – which is currently the responsibility of adjacent property owners.

At AAPAC’s Wednesday meeting, Connie Pulcipher of the city’s systems planning unit led commissioners in a discussion to organize their thoughts before the council work session. She asked them to identify the program’s biggest challenges, from the community’s perspective, as well as the primary causes and possible solutions to those challenges.

Commissioners cited a range of issues, including: (1) a lack of public awareness about the program, its constraints, funding sources, and AAPAC’s role; (2) the perception that not enough art is coming out of the program, and that the process is too slow; (3) the complaint that local artists aren’t given preference; and (4) the sense that in this difficult economy, city funds shouldn’t be spent on public art.

In addition to offering ways to address these challenges, commissioners also discussed their own workload. They noted that AAPAC is still relatively new and is one of the few city commissions that hasn’t enjoyed consistent staff support over the years. Although a new part-time public art administrator was hired this summer, the program had no dedicated staff person for about a year.

Wednesday’s meeting began with two presentations. Larry Baranski of the DIA talked about how Ann Arbor might participate in the museum’s Inside|Out project, which involves installing framed reproductions from the DIA’s collection at outdoor locations on building facades or in parks. Also, Patrick Judd of Conservation Design Forum and Jerry Hancock, Ann Arbor’s stormwater and floodplain programs coordinator, floated ideas for possible public art in a rain garden that’s being designed for property at the corner of Kingsley and First, located in a floodplain. Commissioners were generally receptive to both ideas, but plan to discuss them in more depth at their monthly meeting in November. [Full Story]

Once in a while something happens that is so unusual, even those who don’t normally pay attention have to stop and take notice.

Halley’s Comet, for example, only comes along once every 75 years. Man has landed on the moon just six times in the entire history of the universe. And Lindsay Lohan goes to jail – no, wait, that happens almost every week.

Well, this week, Detroit sports fans got Halley’s Comet, a moon landing, and a clean and sober Lindsay Lohan all wrapped up into one: The Tigers clinched the American League Central Division, and even more shockingly, the Lions won their first three games.

That’s right: It’s September 30, and both the Tigers and the Lions are in first place. Go find a newspaper – if your town still has one – pull out the standings, and get them laminated. This might not happen again in our lifetimes. [Full Story]

If it seems like the Detroit Lions have played on Thanksgiving since it became a national holiday, it’s because they actually started seven years earlier.

True, the Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving in October of 1621, but the custom faded, resurfacing only when George Washington, Abe Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt promoted the idea as a national tonic in troubled times. FDR tried to move the unofficial holiday back a week to expand the shopping season, but Congress put an end to all the feast-fiddling in 1941, when it fixed Thanksgiving’s date forever and declared it a national holiday.

George Richards was way ahead of them. In 1934 Richards bought the Portsmouth, Ohio, Spartans, for $7,952.08, moved them to Detroit, and renamed them the Lions. Incredibly, they won their first 10 contests to tie the Chicago Bears for first place with three games left. The bad news: only about 12,000 people seemed to care. If the Lions couldn’t catch on at 10-0, Richards knew, their days in Detroit were numbered. [Full Story]

By now sports writers across the nation will have collectively written a flurry of columns, each heaping scorn by the shovelful upon the Detroit Lions – a football team that yesterday completed the first 0-16 winless season in National Football League history.

If only a bit of that shoveling could be harnessed in service of clearing the snow from Ann Arbor’s sidewalks and roads. The headline to this piece reflects the fact that according to National Weather Service statistics through Dec. 28, the date of the Lions’ historic loss, 16 inches of snow have fallen on the city of Ann Arbor this season. The headline also reflects the opinion that we, as a city, are losing the battle against the snow. [Full Story]