By KAREN CROUSE
DETROIT — Making fun of the Lions is too easy, like an ice fisherman casting his line into a drink cooler.
In a city that is home to auto executives who traveled in private jets to Washington to plead poverty, the Lions still provide the biggest laughs. Derek Richards, a stand-up comedian who grew up here, said: “You can make a Lions joke anywhere in the country and people get it. Everybody across the United States knows how miserable this team is.”
The Lions (0-12) looked like a vaudeville act masquerading as a National Football League team Thursday in a 47-10 loss to the Tennessee Titans at Ford Field. They turned the ball over three times, were 0 for 11 on third downs and allowed the Titans’ offense to roll for 456 yards on the way to their worst margin of defeat in a Thanksgiving Day game.
The loss to the 11-1 Titans represented another obstacle overcome in the Lions’ bid to become the first team in league history to finish 0-16. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers finished 0-14 in 1976.
“In Detroit,” Richards said, borrowing a line from his act, “the only thing worse than the economy is the Lions.”
Nobody was laughing in the Lions’ locker room. “I think everybody feels embarrassed that we did that on national TV,” kicker Jason Hanson said.
In the television buffet served up to America on Thanksgiving, the Lions are the mincemeat pie. They are included as a nod to tradition — this was their 69th Thanksgiving Day game — even though the general population finds them wholly unappealing.
That is not to say that on a day given over for gratitude, the Lions have no place at the table. One way to look at them is as comfort food. Richards likened them to guests on “The Jerry Springer Show.” “No matter how bad your life is,” he said in a telephone interview, “you can look at the Lions and see something worse.”
Richards was in town the first weekend of October, when the Lions hosted their hated division rivals from Chicago. A friend offered an extra ticket to Richards, who looked at the game, a 27-point Lions loss, as a research outing. After all, he is always looking for new material.
“I can’t work them into the act enough,” Richards said.
The Lions have turned into a parody of a football team. They have one playoff victory to show for the last 51 years and have lost 19 of their last 20 and 34 of their last 44. The Buccaneers have won a Super Bowl since Detroit’s last postseason appearance, in the 1999 season. The expansion Carolina Panthers have risen, fallen and risen again in that time.
During the descent, the Lions have passed the Quebec Nordiques, the Los Angeles Clippers and the Tampa Bay Rays as pro sports’ symbol of ineptitude. Some fans have grown tired of the franchise’s being a punch line, good for an easy laugh. After the team lost its first four games by an average margin of 22.8 points, Gregg Daniels, a lifelong Lions fan, was commiserating with friends.
“I wish we could stop rooting for them and start rooting for another team,” Daniels remembered saying. But to be from, in or around Detroit is to be fiercely loyal, as evidenced by how few foreign-made cars or Bears jerseys are seen within city limits.
Daniels was stuck with the Lions for bitter and for worse. Or was he? Daniels got to thinking: what if the Lions left? His musings led him to create, with a little help from his friends, the Web site latakethelions.com.
“Our big joke,” Daniels said in a telephone interview, “is that L.A. hasn’t had football in 14 years and they have the same number of playoff wins in that time as Detroit.”
There are still a few optimists left in the Motor City: Lions fans who are as excited about New England quarterback Matt Cassel’s impending free agency as Knicks fans are about the availability of LeBron James in 2010.
But mostly there is despair, the defeats wearing on even the most die-hard fans. Jason Hochstein, who has had season tickets dating to when the Lions played in the Silverdome, is leaning toward not renewing his tickets in 2009.
“You keep thinking it can’t get any worse,” he said. “You keep thinking it’s got to get better. But there’s been no progress at all.”
Hochstein, who owns a boutique store in Royal Oak that sells jeans, was in the stands with his twin, Justin, when the Lions endured a 23-point loss at home to Green Bay. Early in the third quarter, Hochstein said, his brother abruptly rose and said: “I’m done. I don’t want tickets next year.” And then he left.
The other day at his store, Hochstein was talking with one of his customers. Inevitably, the conversation turned to the Lions. The customer told Hochstein she was a 30-year season-ticket holder but did not plan to renew. As she explained to him, “I can take that money we’ve been spending on tickets and go to Aruba every year.”
The game against Tennessee sold out Tuesday, after the N.F.L. delayed by one day its deadline for imposing a local blackout. It unfolded like a rerun. The Lions lost a fumble on the second snap from scrimmage and the Titans scored two plays later, on a 6-yard run by Chris Johnson, who was untouched.
As far as losses go, this one was pretty bloodless, with the Titans’ nine scoring drives averaging 5.6 plays. Daniels said, “0-16 needs to happen to the franchise, because the franchise has earned it with complete and utter mismanagement.”
Richards has a professional stake in the Lions’ futility. If they ever reach respectability, he joked, his gig might be up.
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