I remember as a third grader loving everything about football.  I loved playing tackle football with my schoolmates on the snow packed parking lot at St. Mary's Catholic School, our thick winter layers acting as effective as real padding.  I was lucky, then.  Lucky that I had tree trunk legs that made it very difficult for any kid to tackle me.  I remember quite often I would have length of the field runs that usually involved several broken tackles and carrying a couple bodies with me.  This sounds like bragging, but it is not.  It was my experience.  I loved the game so much, I would clip color pictures from the Monday morning Detroit Free Press of Billy Sims or the star of the game and mount them on school paper to show off at school.  As life continued to move forward, I did not play high school football, but rather golf.  My dreams of being an NFL halfback never subsided, however, and I remember a couple years ago joyfully announcing if I could burn a little fat off and bulk up, maybe I could be the first 40 year old rookie in the NFL.  Dreams.  Ya, if you're a dreamer, you get it.

Somewhere around age 11-14, I really liked the WWF and either rooted for or against every wrestler.  It was fun.  I even had the WWF music tape, in which the wrestlers recorded songs, including The Iron Sheik singing Cara Mia, Hillbilly Jim singing Don't Go Messin' with a Country Boy, amongst others.  I could appreciate the athleticism of the wrestlers and even though the matches were scripted, they were also entertaining.  If was fun to see how the matches were scripted.  You never knew who was gonna win or how but a good writer behind the scenes seemed to know how to spin things.
I watched the Lions right through college and was lucky enough to see Barry Sanders grace the gridiron for our team.  Now Barry was about as exciting a player, as we know, that there may ever be.  I felt a connection to Barry that was so personal...inside, I was the running back that couldn't be tackled.  When the Lions finally came one game away from the Super Bowl, they faced the Redskins and lost 45-0.  Heartache.  I guess we really were that bad.  It stung, but it did not surprise us Lions fans.  You see, we are used to losing.  Shake it off.  Always next year.

In 2003, I moved out of state.   To Georgia, where a Sunday in the fall means perfect golf weather and the Lions only being televised a couple times a season.  Well, I kept up with the results as a fan but was not overly zealous as the Lions managed to go 0-16 one of these years.  Fellow Michiganders wondered if I had become a Falcons fan, but no way.  Be true to your school.  I was encouraged when the Lions were in the playoffs against the Saints, only to be left heartbroken when two very controversial calls at very critical points of the game seemed to contribute to a "no way can Detroit pull this one off" situation.  During that game, it was obvious to me that the Saints defense was attempting to hurt Stafford.  The Saints players hit Stafford as many times and seemingly as hard as they could and eventually succeeded in hobbling him.  A couple years later "Bountygate" was discovered, my conspiracy theory was confirmed and Coach Payton was banned for a year.  So, how did my mind process this scenario:  It was the culture of one team.  The league punished them and I suppose like most situations in life, we just move on.  Time seems to dwindle the magnitude of just about anything.  I still believed that the Lions had a shot.  Now we have Megatron, Suh and the list goes on.  We got a shot, baby.

Sunday night.  Well, I am not going to go over the disgusting turn of events.  Instead, I want to tell you why I love sports.  Sports embodies the best of the human spirit.  I love competitive sports because it challenges the mind, body, and soul of a person if they have the desire to be the best THEY can be.  I ran college track for Aquinas College, and to this day, I don't jog a mile without falling into my perfect sprint form even for just 20 yards.  Other days, when I jog, in my mind I'm Rocky Balboa, Eye of the Tiger, who provided a great one liner, "It's not how hard you can hit, it's how hard you can get hit and still get up."  In sports, we are taught from our youth that if you work hard, stay focused, continue to learn and apply yourself you will get better at the sport you're playing. Winning is the goal, but how we play the game is priority.  It's a concept that has helped me to be successful in many other facets of life.
 
What a joy and privilege it is to witness the best athletes in the entire world working their trade for us.  How exciting to see how the talent and will of some become the cornerstone of a victory.  In football, we get to be a part of the team in the sense that we share the ups and downs of the players. Someday, we think, the Lions will get over the hump and make a run for the Super Bowl.  As long as you knew this to be possible, it was fun to be a fan.

Sunday, the dream was smashed.  I wish we had lost another game on a dumb play, or a stupid hold, maybe a dropped pass.  This way, I could patiently wait another off season considering the positive possibilities in the next season to be.  But no, that's not how it went down.  The referee(s) cheated us. And that's not all they cheated.  They cheated the game.  They cheated every fan out being a part of the purity of the pursuit of excellence and victory.  Time, I'm afraid, won't heal this wound for me. Someday, the league may decide Detroit is worthy, but I will not care.  The league has shown me that they hold the strings, not the heart and soul of the athletes.

Some Cowboy fans say I can't accept the loss.  They are sadly missing the point.  Lord knows I can bear a Lions loss.  Been doing it my whole life.  Losing builds character.  A graceful loser is in fact a wise soul.  This game eventually had nothing to do with winning and losing.  It became a spectacle of deception and cheating.  In America, we expect a fair shake.  At least the  appearance of one.  We know you can't win 'em all and life ultimately isn't fair, but we also know that blatant disregard for fairness and justice is unacceptable and must be challenged.  The NFL not only betrayed the Lions and their fans on Sunday, but all fans of the NFL.  Until Sunday, I still held to the notion that this was a true sport.  No fixes, not a wrestling match.  Now, I'm convinced that it is nothing more than a contrived event.  All of this being said, I cannot accept the NFL's apology.  They took my hopes, dreams, and spirit and dissolved it into their bottom line.  Shame on them.

Most have seen the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  This situation reminds me of the line Grandpa Joe said to Mr. Wonka near the end, "He's a crook!  He's a crook, Charlie! (turns to Wonka) You're a monster!  Build up a boy's dreams and smash 'em all to pieces.  Let's go Charlie!"
The only difference between the NFL and Willy Wonka is that Willy was bluffing.