Confession: I’m a Lions fan. I use “fan” in all its implications and connotations, including “I can’t stop loving the Honolulu Blue, but I might vomit if they blow it in the fourth quarter again, oh please let me forget about them.”
So when this little YouTube gem came my way, I was enthralled.
Matt Millen, he of the motorcycles and inability to hire a coach whose last name did not begin with an M, was nothing short of an epic disaster in Detroit. You might remember he was the President and CEO of the Lions, and he quite simply ruined the franchise in a way that even the bumbling ownership couldn’t.
When Millen left the charred franchise, still smoldering after being burned by his terrible draft picks (Joey Harrington, Charles Rogers, etc etc etc) and immediately landed with NBC as an in-house football expert, some intrepid and ballsy fan made sure to point out the hypocrisy by way of the television scroll.
As Millen talks about how X team won X game (which is dubious, given the Lions’ record under his leadership was an NFL record worst 31-97, this appears at the bottom of the screen:
Matt Millen was President of the Lions for the worst 8 year run in the history of the NFL. Knowing his history with the team, is there a credibility issue as he now serves as an analyst for NBC Sports? Will Detroit fans ever forgive him for turning the Lions into the worst team in football?
Confession: I’m also a Michigan fan – meaning a fan of this incredible state, not that school down the road. And in that same way, I often find myself oscillating between abject horror at what has happened to it, and the kind of red-hot desire to hold those who made it happen accountable for it in the same way that producer did with Matt Millen.
So now that Andy Dillon has announced his plans to form a “turnaround team” to fix school districts running a huge deficit, might I suggest that Dillon be followed for the next few years by a sign reminding Michiganders that this is the same man who was the architect of the failed budget that led to the disabling cuts to school funding, which is the reason we have so many districts in the red?