No Antidote Yet For Detroit’s Millen Plague » Brats & Beer

November 17, 2006
posted under: Lions suck, Matt Millen sucks

If you’ve been reading Brats & Beer for any length of time, it should be clear — and I’ve stated as much — that I’m not a particularly good person, especially when it comes to football. I utterly despise Vikings fans and hope one day the Humpty Dumpty Dome collapses in upon itself. Bears fans are doubly annoying — triply so when the Staleys are actually winning. But Lions fans? I just feel sad for them.

Detroit fans are a pathetic bunch. They get mistreated each and every year by a couple brain-addled millionaires who seem to not care one bit what happens to that football team. They don’t even have any sort of recent glory to fall back on: The last NFL championship Detroit won was in the leather helmet era and they have been winless in the playoffs for about 50 years. At least the Brewers won a pennant within my lifetime.

Well now Tom Kowalski, the Lions beat writer for Booth Newspapers, has even more bad news for Lions fans: Matt Millen probably isn’t going to get fired any time soon. His argument is that new head coach Rod Marinelli needs the former Penn State linebacker to draft the players he wants to rebuild the team, because apparently Millen is so smitten with the one-time Buccaneers defensive line coach that he’ll move heaven and Earth to get any players Marinelli likes.

Sadly, that thesis seems to hold some water. Saddling a new head coach with a new GM could potentially make a bad situation worse, though in the case of the Lions, I’m hard pressed to see how much more miserable it could possibly get. But considering William Clay Ford is barely in touch with his own faculties, let alone the intricacies of running a professional football franchise, my personal hunch is that Millen will keep his job simply out of inertia no matter how dreadful this season turns out to be.

(Thanks to the NFL Fanhouse for spotting this item. Kowalski’s column is on MLive.com, though you have to register to read it.)