Despondency in Detroit

You can taste the misery. In a Midwestern city, they are mourning this morning. In pain. Despondency, thoughts of why us? Why not us?

So close, yet turned away at the door, as always. Detroit is a city with plenty of problems. Crime, and joblessness, are a lot to be concerned about and often, it seems, irreversible bad trends.

A rough downtown world of despair for so long. What they need is hope, a distraction from their troubles, and an opportunity to focus on something positive like, say, advancing to the Super Bowl for the first time.

Almost every other city in the NFL has reveled in this joy. But not this city. Not Detroit. Never Detroit. Yesterday they edged to the brink thirty minutes away leading 24-7 at half. All the Lions had to do was hold on and the 60 years or 160 years or however many years of disappointment would end on a bright note.

Not to be.

The 49ers came back and won.

No Super Bowl, again, for Detroit. Never a Super Bowl, ever, for Detroit.

Some things about life seem unfair. San Fran has won plenty of Super Bowls. Those fans have had plenty of glorious celebrations and don’t need any more surely not as much as people in Detroit. Ditto the Chiefs.

Enough of the same teams getting all the glory and fun. Sameness needs to be stayed away from.

Give me Detroit going to the Super Bowl. Please give us a fresh story that makes us all care and root for those people to enjoy something special.

Life is so beguiling. How often have you just missed achieving a goal and lived the rest of your life wondering why it happened to you and why you couldn’t have won instead?

I was all Metro Conference in high school basketball. Wasn’t All-Met. Wanted to be All-Met. Worked hard but missed. Irks me to this day. In baseball, a sport I didn’t have to practice much, I was All-Met. But Second Team. Wish I had been first team. So often we only focus on what we didn’t achieve and don’t appreciate what we did. We fall short in what we work hardest at and shine in something we don’t have to put much effort into. It’s kind of maddening.

We miss all the time, often by a little.

The Detroit Lions missed yesterday – by three points. A nation of football fans feels sorry for them. We don’t like to see people get their hopes up only to have them ripped away.

As futile and far away as it seems now, of course, there’s only one thing for the Lions to do. Start now preparing to make it to next year’s Super Bowl. Quitting won’t cut it. Trying again is all they have and all we have, every day, including right now.