Download | Duration: 00:03:11

Against all odds – and despite the NFL’s best efforts – the Detroit Lions have managed to do the impossible: Lose every single game on their schedule.

Now, even casual fans know the Lions stink. But I don’t think even hard-core football fans fully appreciate the magnitude of this truly historic achievement.  If you think you can just throw a team together, send em out on the field and they’ll somehow, magically, lose every game – well, brother, you’ve got another thing coming.  This takes a village.  A village of idiots, perhaps, but a village just the same.   

True, in 1976, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers once lost all of their games.  But they played only 14 games, not 16, as they do today.  And the Buccaneers were an expansion team, in their first season, with a roster filled with left-overs.  

The Lions are one of the NFL’s oldest organizations, founded in 1934. And they now play in an era when the NFL does everything it possibly can to make every team finish with a perfectly mediocre 8-8 record. 

They do this through the draft, when the worst teams get to pick the best college players.  They also have something called “parity scheduling,” which requires the best teams to play the best teams more often.  They’ve also established salary caps, so Green Bay can compete on equal footing with Chicago.  And finally, the NFL has revenue sharing, so the rich don’t get richer.  

Yes, that’s right: that most red-blooded of American sports is actually our most socialistic.  You want Marxism?  Don’t look to the Workers Party – look to the National Football League.  From each according to his abilities – and to each according to his failure to make the playoffs the year before.

Despite all these safety nets designed to make sure no team loses too many games for too long – the Lions have lost more than anyone, ever.  

How have they defied the league’s every effort to give them a pity playoff bid?

You have to go back to 1958, when the Lions won the last of three straight NFL titles. How did they reward their star quarterback, Bobby Layne?  They sent him to Pittsburgh.  The heavy drinking native of Lubbock, Texas responded by placing a curse on the Lions, saying they “would not win another title for 50 years.”   Why?  Well, because that’s what heavy drinking quarterbacks from Lubbock Texas do.

The good news? This was the last year of the Curse of Bobby Layne.  Bad news?  It won’t matter.  The Lions will lose for years to come. 

The head coach this season, Rod Marinelli, is a good man who did his best, and kept his dignity, through loss after loss.  He also hired his son-in-law to coach the defense.  At Marinelli’s season-ending press conference, Detroit News columnist Rob Parker asked Marinelli, "Do you wish your daughter would have married a better defensive coordinator?"

Marinelli, as usual, didn’t take the bait.  He lost his job – but so did Parker, who resigned last week. 

In a season we should not soon forget, that might be the only highlight.

Copyright © 2009, Michigan Radio