Detroit Lions Weblog

Farcical Lions Embody “Emperor’s New Clothes” Business Model

I have finally figured out the true intrinsic meaning of the farcical manner in which William Clay Ford has  chosen to construct his front office team.   Ford, a huge fan of Danish author Hans Christian Anderson,  believes that the Anderson story of the “The Emperor’s New Clothes” was intended to serve as an innovative model of how to build a franchise. Unfortunately, William Clay Ford has completely missed the point of the story.

By choosing to surround himself with incompetent lackeys, he will continue to be regaled about his finery, with statements like Tom Lewand’s recent comments stating that “this is not the product that this city deserves. It deserves better. And there’s nobody who wants it be right more than Mr. Ford does. And I think he will do everything in his power to get it right.”

Don’t doubt for a second that Martin Mayhew and Lewand have actually spent less time preparing to fix the organization moving forward than they have spent finding ways in which to convince “Mr. Ford” that his “clothes” look great and doing everything within their power to earn his good graces. They do understand the lay of the land around the Lions Allen Park headquarters.

That is what I find so troubling, people who read blogs, listen to talk radio, etc. can see the sham of the situation. We are all crying out at the top of our lungs that the emperor “hasn’t got anything on” and it is seemingly falling upon deaf ears.

I applaud an established sports journalist like Yahoo Sport’s Dan Wetzel crying out in the wilderness, like he did in his December 22nd article. Wetzel believes that William Clay Ford’s actions and poor decisions are just as detrimental to the future health of league as the off-the-field snafu’s of players like Michael Vick, “Tank” Johnson, Plaxico Burress, Travis Henry and co.

Wetzel says:
“It’s time for the league’s image protecting commissioner, Roger Goodell, to get as tough with an increasingly incompetent owner as he would with a misbehaving player. If the hard line approach is about protecting the NFL, then what’s worse for the league right now than the chaos and carnage of the winless, hopeless, helpless Detroit Lions” Amen.

In a recent Nicholas J. Cotsonika article in Sunday’s Detroit Free Press, Cotsonika speaks with NFL Films’ Steve Sabol, someone who is both an intellectual and someone who is truly capable of putting the awful ‘08 Lions season into perspective, with his vast first-hand knowledge of the NFL. At any rate, Sabols summons Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s fruitless “Charge of the Light Brigade” poem as an apt description of the fateful ‘08 Lions season.

Tennyson:” Forward, the Light Brigade! Was there a man dismayed? Not tho’ the soldiers knew Someone had blundered: Theirs was not to make reply, Theirs was not to reason why, Theirs was but to do and die: Into the Valley of Death…

The failure of the British Army in the Crimean War, where soldiers bravely followed orders even though they were over-matched and were being lead by incompetent leadership, well, I guess you are right Mr. Sabol, that is a pretty damn good analogy!

The Lions 0-16, 1-23, and 31-97 march towards infamy will forever stand as memorable. Literary analogies aside, the Lions possess a die hard fan base who deserves a hell of a lot more than what they have been given in return for the fandom. While the Ford’s boorishly, bumble and stumble about with their ill-informed drunkard’s walk, the true question will remain, everybody enjoys a good story, but how long can a tragedy retain it’s relevance?