The Detroit Lions problems are a pitiful excuse for a NFL origination, and their problems go far deeper than their problems on draft day. In large regards the team’s ownership is working with a broken business model. The NFL is unlike the NBA where one star player can bring in large audiences despite the team’s overall record, but in the NFL a team must win to draw in fans, and it really doesn’t matter how the team wins, or with whom it wins.
The owner of the Lions, William Clay Ford, has owned the team since 1964 and in the past the fans attended games because the Lions have had star players, having Hall of Fame careers. However this team has been so bad, for so long, that is no longer the case.
Think about that the Lions had one of the Best Running back of the 1990’s and they had one really good year (1991), and a bunch of underachieving years. Yet the attendance stayed strong, as the Lions teams got worse in the second half of the 1990’s, the fans still ventured to the stadium to see Barry Sanders play.
Now, after a decade of losing, that formula no longer applies. Lions fans want to see a winning team, not a star player. The Lions rank 30th of the 32 NFL teams in attendance for 2009. They are averaging 49,651 fans in a stadium that sits 65 thousand. This seems to be the proof that the Lions way of doing things is not the way to run a successful business.
Let us forget the Lions as a team, and just focus in one them like a business. Every April the team gets a chance to add players that one can improve them as a team, and two can improve them as a business. In the past the Lions have focused on big time offensive players, in the hopes that they will bring in the fans.
They have tried to build a NFL caliber team around the Wide receiver, and Quarter Back positions. While having an elite NFL QB is an essential part of being a successful team that cannot be said about the WR position.
In the NFL of today, wining is what sells. Winning is what puts butts in the seats, and since the Baltimore Ravens are 7th in NFL attendance with a 6-7 record, and their success (on the field) is due in large part to their defense, drafting offensive weapons in the hope that they will sell tickets, is a strategy that is destined to fail.
This team has failed to build a defense; in fact they have spent 11 of their last 12 first round draft picks on offensive players. It seems kind of funny that when guys of my generation think of great Lions players at least two of them come from the defensive side of the ball, LB Chris Speilman, and DE Robert Porcher.
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