What Detroit Lions Fans Can Learn From Being Detroit Tigers Fans

I was listening to the radio the other day, checking on baseball scores. The Detroit Tigers game—the one I'd been waiting for—came up, and I found out that the Tigers had blown a late lead to the Kansas City Royals, dampening their already slim chances of making the playoffs.

I shook my head with a lamenting smile, and said to my fiancee, who was sitting next to me, "They're just not built to win this year. Too much young, inconsistent talent, too many holes, too much that needed to be perfect."

I shrugged it off and decided to look at the bright side. Hey, at least the team is around .500.

If it were 10 years ago, I would have committed a felony to see the Tigers scratch a winning record. In 2003, the Tigers spent the summer compiling a new AL record for losses.

Three years later? New GM, new coach, World Series. And they've been mostly respectable ever since.

That's when it dawned on me how familiar all of this was.

More than a decade of constant futility with only a pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel (which did, indeed, turn out to be an oncoming train several times)? Organization gets wiped out after a bad season of epic proportions? New management seems to be turning things around in short time?

This is the story currently being written about the Detroit Lions, isn't it? Well, Detroit hopes it is, anyway.

Assuming that, due to regional influences, most Detroit Lions fans are also Detroit Tigers fans to some degree (and if you're not, just go with it), there is something to be learned from past experiences as we wait for the big 8-8 season that launches the Lions back to respectability.

If you're reading this, it means you still care about the Lions, and therefore have mastered lesson one: patience.

Granted, while the Tigers were busy posting a string of losing records in the 90's and early 2000's, they could at least look back and remember winning a couple of championships since 1960, a luxury the Lions do not have.

But fans of both teams are familiar with waiting though tough times in hopes of a better day, with no guarantee that the team will ever stop circling the drain (and for anyone who thinks the law of averages will eventually kick in and save a team, talk to a Chicago Cubs fan).

If you're still around to enjoy those good times when they happen, good for you. Feels that much sweeter, doesn't it?

So kick forward to the present. The 2010 Tigers are a team that is fairly talented and capable of winning some games, but extremely young and lacking any semblance of depth.

Therefore, another lesson: A young team with little depth does not equal a consistent winner. Even if some of those rookies and second-year guys have breakout seasons (and they inevitably will), you can't fill your first string with them and hope to get consistent production. There's a learning curve involved.

The Tigers found that out this season, and it's likely the Lions are about to. It is a near impossibility for a professional sports team to get through an entire season without a significant injury or three, especially in a high-octane contact sport like football.

So just as the Tigers have Will Rhymes batting second in the lineup, the Lions could find themselves under similar circumstances if Shaun Hill ends up taking snaps, or Nate Burleson becomes the top receiver.

Which leads me to my next point: That's okay.

Yeah, the Tigers are going nowhere this year, and the Lions likely are, too. No big deal. If both the teams were full of 30-somethings signing on for a last-ditch title run, I'd be worried.

But they're actually full of guys in their early to mid-20's, learning the professional game for the first time.

In other words, guys who get better every time they step on the field.

All the greats were rookies at one point. But nobody expected them to be greats in their rookie years. It takes time, as it will for the cores of these teams.

The Lions may end up with an Austin Jackson in Ndamukong Suh or Jahvid Best (someone who can step in and be a star right off the bat), or at least a Brennan Boesch (someone who comes in and lights the team on fire for about a month before opposing teams figure him out and he quiets down), but most of those young Lions are going to be more like a Scott Sizemore (young player with huge potential who just needs more time to learn).

This is another exercise in patience. Lots of those young players have high expectations on them, but they can't meet them all at once. But as long as they're playing, and getting better every week, they're okay. The team will get better as they do.

And when they do, there's another lesson to be learned. Don't throw the guys who got you there under the bus.

There is some outrage in Detroit that Jim Leyland and Dave Dombrowski are still running the Detroit Tigers. I can understand the sentiment, given the lackluster years they've had since 2006, but 2006 wasn't so very long ago. Dombrowski is the guy who pulled the Tigers out of the cellar, and Leyland is the guy who took a sub .500 club to the World Series in one year's time.

Fluke? Maybe. But that was a three-year turnaround from the AL-record holder for losses in a season (2003) to AL Pennant winner (2006).

If Martin Mayhew and Jim Schwartz of the Lions took the 2011 Lions to the Super Bowl and got beat 52-3, Detroit would build 50-foot platinum statues of them. And it would take more than a couple of 8-8 and 9-7 seasons, narrowly missing the playoffs, to turn fan sentiments against them.

Of course, maybe I'm way off base here. Maybe the Lions and Tigers really don't have that much in common, other than stadium location.

But I'm guessing Lions fans hope they do.