After every bad Turkey Day blowout, there seems to be a sentiment nationally that the Detroit Lions do not deserve to have a Thanksgiving Day game televised on National TV. To be fair I must inform all of you that I lie in Detroit, have followed the Lions since I was a kid, and have attended several Thanksgiving Day games at the Pontiac Silverdome, and at Ford Field.
National NFL fans seem to be sick of watching the Detroit Lions stink it up on National TV every Thanksgiving Day. To be perfectly honest they have a point, the Lions are not good, have not been good for sometime, and are unlikely to be good for several more seasons, but taking away their Thanksgiving Day tradition is not he answer.
Think about it like this, if so many people complain, than at least that many people are watching. The Fox network doesn’t care how good the game is, they just want people to watch. While the ratings for this game are not out yet, it seems that many and watched this game, since so many are complaining about it.
It seems a tad unfair for the NFL to take away this game from the Lions for two separate reasons. The first being, this is their only chance each season to be on National TV. ESPN, and NBC do not schedule the Lions for their nationally televised games, and rightfully so, but isn’t everyone out there just a little curios to see the Lions once a year and see how their rebuilding is going?
The Oakland Raiders are just as bad, so are the Kansas City Chiefs, and Cleveland Browns, but I am willing to bet most football fans have seen them all play this year. In fact we could argue that last week’s match up between these Detroit Lions and the Cleveland Browns was one of the best NFL games of the year.
The more important point here is this is not a tradition that the NFL started and gave to the Lions; it is in fact a tradition started by the Lions and given to the NFL. In fact the Thanksgiving Day game goes all the way back to the Lions’ first year in Detroit.
In 1934 Local Radio Executive George Richards bought the Portsmouth Spartans, from Ohio and moved them to Detroit. Tired of seeing his team play backseat to the Detroit Tigers Richards decided he needed a gimmick to get the sports fans of Detroit out to see his team. His gimmick was the Thanksgiving Day game and it has been a part of Detroit Tradition ever since.
Now if the game were to do bad in the TV ratings and Fox were to go to the NFL and say we don’t want to carry this game anymore some kind of compromise would have to be worked out.
Since one of the Thanksgiving games must feature an AFC team to insure CBS can broadcast a game, the logical compromise would be to air the Lions Thanksgiving game on the NFL network. Since most of metro Detroit cable provider is Comcast and the NFL network is now available through their most basic cable package, it seems that the NFL would have a way to placate Fox, and save a long standing tradition.
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Comments
Agreed! Great article!
When this topic surfaced last year, my thoughts were, The Lions brought this tradition to the NFL... I thought everyone knew that. I will say, I hadn't thought about it being a right to be aired on TV, but definitely a right to be played. Now Green Bay has in the past refused to play Detroit on Thanksgiving day after previous losses, so maybe they agreed to play this year knowing the state of affairs in Lion country and tradition being rebuilt? I do look forward to seeing future games in which the Lions are competitive again and they will be, Millan is gone.
Totally agree, thanks for the great points. As a Lions fan living in Maine, the T-day game is almost always the only Lions game I get to watch. Win or lose it's always great to see them in action...and winning will come again!
Being a nor cal Lions fan it was thanksgiving and that was it. It's a travesty to try to take that away from Lions fans when it is an established fact that this is their day and their game. Heck,under the new regime they'll have their powerhouse in no time at all.Always the optimist,go Lions
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