This isn’t a column about Matthew Stafford. You have my word.
But the former Detroit Lions quarterback must be mentioned in this space once again, if only for a bit of context.
Before we get to Stafford (I promise it will be brief) and before we get to black holes and anti-matter and psychological brain freeze — wait, what? — before we get to plate tectonics and the shifting of earth’s core, before we get to any of that, let’s consider that science has finally spoken:
And it ain’t pretty.
It is, however, a kind of affirmation or, rather, confirmation.
For if you’ve lived in southeastern Michigan — or most other places in Michigan — for any length of time, and you’ve loved the Lions during that span, and you’ve known someone, somewhere, who pondered what might happen if the Lions won the Super Bowl, or if you’ve considered that possibility yourself, well Sunday’s Super Bowl gave you a partial answer, thanks to some not so surprising numbers.
NBC released its ratings chart Tuesday and guess which city had the highest percentage of viewers? Cincinnati, of course, because that town’s team actually played in the Super Bowl.
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Yet right behind the Bengals’ home, by a miniscule two-tenths of a percentage point, was Detroit, followed by Pittsburgh (hey, they love football), Columbus (the capital of Ohio), Kansas City (once home to a thriving jazz scene but football is all that’s left, aside from barbecue), and Milwaukee (they’re on the wrong side of Lake Michigan, angry about the Packers and hate-watching can be cathartic).
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Perhaps plenty of Lions fans probably tuned in to the Rams-Bengals game hoping to see Stafford fail. Folks don’t like the sun, either. Or clouds. Or anything, really, and why are we talking about them?
Plenty more Lions fans likely tuned in because they think it’s the closest they will ever get to a Super Bowl. In that way, Stafford served as a proxy for 60 years of frustration.
But we know that. Have dissected that. Have highlighted the pro-and anti-factions within the fan base. Have written dissertations.
What matters is that Lions fans had a complicated yet emotionally compelling reason to watch the Super Bowl. And whether propelled by longing or frustration, watched in near record numbers.
So, let’s ask again: What would happen if the Lions — the entire team, not a former quarterback — were to win a Super Bowl?
Because you’ve seen the Pistons win it all and the Red Wings win it all and the Tigers get close to winning it all a couple of times (if you’re old enough, you’ve seen the Tigers win it all, too.) You’ve seen the reaction, felt the joy, watched the parades, reveled in the buzz.
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What kind of market share would Detroit get?
More critically, what would happen to our region?
I’m not sure we could handle it. The earth might rearrange itself. Time might stop. The meaning of life might be revealed. Matter and anti-matter might collide, which, as physicists theorize, would annihilate everything, leaving nothing but energy behind.
Like the kind of dense energy found in a black hole, from which no one would ever escape, but at least the Lions would have a Super Bowl.
Cognitive dissonance suggests that we can only handle so much psychological tension before we burst, and our behavior loses its alignment to our thoughts and beliefs. Those who love the Lions carry a similar dissonance.
The idea of the Lions winning a Super Bowl is so fantastical, so unfathomable, so unknowable, it’s hard to imagine what life might feel like if this were to happen. Which is probably why we turned toward the Super Bowl in such high percentages.
As for the folks who didn’t? Who were busy grocery shopping during Sunday’s Super Bowl? They’d watch if it were the Lions.
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So, too, would the folks who don’t care about football. Mostly to see if the world was about to end.
Or to see their father weep, their uncle faint, their brothers and sisters take to the streets and … question everything?
Because if we just watched more than all but one city in America, and all we had was a player who used to wear a Lions jersey, what would happen if every player were wearing a Lions jersey?
In Boston, when the Red Sox finally won the World Series, some said they would be fine if their lives ended, so that they could die in peace. And while that town and fan base waited longer than Lions’ fans have, they didn’t have to endure the misery in relative obscurity — the Curse of the Bambino and all that.
Besides, the Red Sox got close a few times during the wait, and folks in that great sports town knew it was possible.
Here?
Resignation, the kind the great philosopher Buddy Dieker expressed as he lay dying in a basement somewhere in the Ozarks.
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“It is what it is,” he said of accepting death, “it’s like watching the Detroit Lions sucking.”
Dieker was a fictional character in Netflix’s “Ozark,” a retired union representative from Flint who settled in the Missouri woods to live out the rest of his life. He found salvation burning poppy fields owned by rival criminals of the family that cared for him.
Presumably, he never stopped watching the Lions. Of course, he didn’t. And neither can you.
The Super Bowl ratings metrics are proof of what happens when someone who used to be one of us wins the game, and a glimpse of what might happen if a team of our own actually did.
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.