Detroit will not win for 50 years.
~ The curse of Bobby Layne (1958)
Detroit, you done set me up for a comeback!
~ Kwame Kilpatrick's last words as mayor of Detroit (Sept. 4, 2008)
This column is for all my football fans out there. However, for my political junkies, of course I will make a few political points in my analysis.
Here I want to discuss the hapless, hopeless Detroit Lions football team and why they are so pathetic in relation to other football teams. Also, I will theorize how the Lions are related to the terrible leadership of ex-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, a politically connected rogue elected to high office twice in an 88 percent black city.
Let's start with the Detroit Lions. With the exception of the Arizona Cardinals' one championship victory (1947), there is no current NFL football team that has had such a drought since winning the national title (1957). Presently at 0-2, despite a 4-0 preseason record, why do the Lions play more like pussy cats? The reason is quite simple, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars it takes to buy and run an NFL franchise today.
Admittedly, the irrationalism of human nature often prevents us from acting in our own best interests.
There are four basic reasons why the Detroit Lions are such a bad sports franchise: 1) poor leadership, 2) bad decision making, 3) toleration of a defeatist philosophy and culture, and 4) cynicism – the public will come to the games anyway.
Let's compare the Detroit Lions with the city of Detroit, which ironically has been steadily devolving since about the same time – 1957 – the last year Motown had a Republican mayor in office (Albert E. Cobo).
Is this just a coincidence? No, competence breeds liberty. Incompetence and corruption breed tyranny and despair.
Poor Leadership: The top leadership of the Detroit Lions is William Clay Ford (owner/chairman), William Clay Ford Jr.(vice chairman) and Matt Millen (president/CEO). This trinity of incompetence is at the root why the Lions are so bad. It's not that they get bad players, but these men don't seem to understand the game and thus how to hire good coaches to bring out the best potential of each player.
Similarly, in the 1950s, when Detroit had a population of 2 million, the city was an economic juggernaut known for good-paying auto industry jobs, manageable crime and a high quality of life. After several bungling white liberal Democrat mayors beginning in the late '50s leading to Detroit's first black mayor in 1974 (Coleman A. Young) and continuing through Dennis Archer and Kwame Kilpatrick, Detroit has had had terrible leadership, losing over 60 percent of its population over the past 50 years.
Admittedly, Dennis Archer was a good mayor, but ironically the people tried to impeach him.
Bad decision making: The twin demons – apathy and ignorance – have doomed many good organizations and once-great cities of the past, leading to bad decision making. Think Arizona Cardinals late 1940s, the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1980s and the San Francisco 49ers since 1995. All of these teams forgot what made them great and the people (the fans) didn't revolt, but settled for mediocrity decade after decade.
The apotheosis of "the first black mayor" in the '70s has plunged this majority black city into a hellish nightmare of endemic crime, corrupt leadership, dwindling tax base, drug abuse, AIDS epidemic, a 78 percent high school dropout rate and, according to Forbes magazine, "The most miserable city in America." These were all bad decisions made by Detroiters against their own vested interests.
Toleration of a defeatist philosophy and culture: The Detroit Lions are perennial losers, and even though they are supposed to be professionals, they often promote a culture of defeat, incompetence and poor sportsmanship. This inimical culture of defeat frequently allows the Lions to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, like the first two games they lost of the 2008 season where late in the game they were winning before self-destructing.
Likewise, Detroiters, blinded for over 50 years by liberal philosophy and black racism, have a high tolerance for incompetent black leadership. Detroit is a liberal town, a city where virtually everyone votes for the Democrat Party and pledges unquestioned allegiance to the socialism of FDR/LBJ big government programs. Higher taxes to support an increasing welfare state are treated as a religious sacrament in Michigan.
Cynicism – the public will come to the games anyway: Detroit Lions fans are truly "fanatics" to a fault. They pack out Ford Field regardless of whether the Lions win or lose.
Similarly, Detroiters seem to vote for any crazy, corrupt, incompetent, psychopathic leader as long as he's black, eloquent, a Democrat, has a famous name and blames the all of Detroit's problems on the white man or Republicans.
In the final analysis, what lessons can Detroit's black majority learn from the Detroit Lions? First, if you want to be a great city, you must first have a responsible, intelligent, teachable citizenry. Without that the republic will devolve downward to a democracy (mob rule), socialism, totalitarianism and eventually anarchy and nihilism.
Second, you must demand from yourselves and your leadership honesty, competence, morality. When any of these three pillars of good leadership are missing in a politician, then "We the People" must act decisively and remove the offending leader from office, lest his evil ways spread like a cancer throughout all city government.
My advice to the NFL – To foster competition at the highest level, the league should give each team five to 10 years to make the playoffs or force that team into receivership for someone else to make it competitive.
Similarly, for the next 10 years the city of Detroit and its public schools should be taken over by the state and run by a city manager appointed by Michigan's governor (like neighboring Highland Park) until Detroiters can prove that they are indeed rational, responsible citizens able to elect competent, bipartisan leadership (liberals and conservatives) to govern all city affairs.
Yes, race merchants and poverty pimps like John Conyers, John Lewis, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, the ACLU, the NAACP and Kwame Kilpatrick (from jail) will squeal "RACISM!" – but I believe Detroiters would understand these austere measures are for the good of the city and therefore will reject activist demagoguery.
It is self-evident that neither the Detroit Lions nor the citizens of Detroit can proficiently run their respective organization and city affairs. Should "We the People" continue to waste hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars until their learning curve rises? I think not.
Sell the Detroit Lions to another owner and appoint a city manager to run Detroit for 10 years while the governor appoints members to Detroit's school board from a neighboring city with excellent schools (Grosse Pointe, Bloomfield, Southfield) to reform our corrupt, violent and Stalinist public schools.