Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving Day: What this game means to me

Detroit Lions. Football. Thanksgiving. Tradition. Family. Did I say football? This is what this game means and why it is important to me.

The Detroit Lions will take the field today for the 78th time since 1934. With the exception of 1939-1944 during World War II, the tradition has been uninterrupted since 1934.

This is not a post about the Lions Thanksgiving history. You can find that information on the Detroit Lions website here. Nor is this a post about today’s game, who I think will win and why.

Instead, this is my story about why I love this game on this day and what it has meant to me over the years.

I remember a Thanksgiving Day in the late 1960’s that we spent at my Grandma and Grandpa’s in Pontiac. I could not tell you who the Lions played that year but I remember that it snowed a lot and the Lions lost badly. It would not surprise me if it was in 1968 against the Philadelphia Eagles. That would make me seven years old at the time.

I do remember that we watched the game on the tiny television in their finished basement but had to wait to eat until my dad and grandpa got back from the game at Tiger Stadium. I seem to recall that it took longer than normal for them to get back (due to the weather). As kids, we just let my mother and grandma know that we were in danger of starving to death!

At sixteen, in the middle of my junior year of high school, my parents moved us from Chesaning to western Wisconsin. That was a huge culture shock for me at the time. I went from a school of 1,200 to a graduating class of 62. We had moved to a town where the kindergarten was in the same physical building as the high school. It seemed to me that all of those students had been together since they were embryos and I did not fit in at all.

My touchstone was my love for the Detroit Lions.

Unfortunately, the Green Bay Packers were on the radio and TV every week, not the Lions. I could always count on being able to watch them during the two divisional games where they played each other. As you all know by now, the Lions were more often worse than better so it was extremely rare for them to be televised apart from those Packer contests. Monday Night Football games were non-existent. Even Lions clips during MNF’s halftime highlights were a rarity.

I took to driving west of town in my 1969 Olds Delta 88 (yes, it had the 455 Rocket Engine but only a two-barrel carb) to where the Coulees start. There, with the elevation gained, I could usually scratchily, pick up some of the game on WJR. I couldn’t clearly hear what was going on but rather tried to piece together what was happening through the static.

Except for Thanksgiving.

Then, I was guaranteed an ability to watch the Lions play.

Don’t get me wrong, I love turkey and dressing. Food however, was often my third favorite thing about that day. Most years, first place was a tie. Either being able to watch the Lions or going outside afterward and playing football. Even as an adult, after the early afternoon feast, the scenario was predictable. The women would be in the kitchen, the men asleep in the living room and I would be in the backyard playing football with the kids.

I spent most of the decade of the 80’s living in Oklahoma City. Early on, without a television of my own, I would go to the mall and troll Sears or JCPennys and watch the games in their electronics section to see the occasional scores that would scroll across the bottom of the screens.

I lost the luxury of watching the Packers play twice per year when I moved. Everything in the Daily Oklahoman was all about the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys or to a lesser extent, the (hated) Dallas Cowboys. During these years, having a week-old Detroit Free Press or Detroit News was like having gold.

The Daily Oklahoman would run a paragraph, sometimes two about the game the previous day. Transactions were in the back of the sports page.

Except for Thanksgiving.

Then, there would actually be an article about the upcoming Lions game!  (Although, it was still less important than the later, Dallas Cowboys game). The Friday paper would have a much more extensive game summary. It was heaven!

While single, I always had plenty of invites for Thanksgiving. My only criteria for choosing was that the Lions game would be on TV. I did not think at the time that was inappropriate and people seemed to understand. Now I wonder if I was somehow ungrateful.

Then, I moved back to Wisconsin in 1989. I would pick up a Chicago Tribune every day because I thought that the sports section there was better than the Wisconsin State Journal. It seemed to have a higher likelihood of containing scraps of information on the Lions. That, along with more comprehensive coverage of the game each week made it more worthwhile.

For a time, I even subscribed to the Lions magazine that was put out by the team. That contained a comprehensive preview of that week’s contest. But even that got frustrating as I regularly got it in the mail on Tuesday following a Sunday game.

I would drive to Wisconsin Dells where a bar called Brother’s in Law (long since closed) would play several games on multiple televisions at the same time. They had one of those big satellite dishes. I doubt that they had any formal arrangement with the NFL at the time, either. I just know that I sometimes had to ask them to find the Lions feed. They would put it on at least one TV for me. Then I had a place to see them play.

And I still had Thanksgiving.

In 1995, I was one of the first 20 subscribers to our local little telephone company’s internet service, qualifying me to have the $25.00 hook-up fee waived! Then I could connect my 14,400 baud modem to the world and use Netscape Navigator to find some Lions coverage.

Then came DIRECTV and NFL Sunday Ticket, flat screen TV’s and Game Pass and Twitter (yes, please follow me if you’d like). The internet is saturated with so much information that I laugh sometimes to think of what it once was.

Next: TJ Jones quietly having great season for the Lions

I am self-employed and as such, work a lot of hours but every game day, my wife knows where to find me. I am typically pacing in front of the TV, watching my Detroit Lions. Especially on Thanksgiving.