Hope is Absurd, But Then Again, So Am I

Ever since he was hired to be the next head man of the world's largest garbage dump that is the Detroit Lions, Jim Schwartz has done the nearly unthinkable. Without the team having played so much as a single measly game, he has managed to cover that garbage dump with a new rosy smell. Sure, the garbage is still there, Rod the Terrible's diapers are in a towering heap in the corner and the refuse of fifty years of tears and anguish are both terrible and awesome in their immensity, but somehow Schwartz has managed to convince Lions fans that it will all be okay. We'll never get rid of all this shit just piled up here, but we don't have to add to it, and one day perhaps it can serve as a monument to our collective toughness as fans that we actually put up with this monstrosity for so long without completely cracking.

Schwartz's pedigree is pretty impressive, as is his approach to the game, and his understanding of the Lions downtrodden fanbase. These are things that have been well documented at places like thelionsinwinter.blogspot.com (which, incidentally, happens to be the best Lions blog out there in case anyone's interested and in case I can get Ty some traffic from my six readers besides him. I kid, I kid, there are probably eight or nine of you.) The question is, is whether or not this optimism is really warranted. I mean, certainly, everything that has come out has made at least a degree of that optimism reasonable, but collectively, as a fan base, we seem to be falling in love with this dude in a way that makes me believe that we are only days away from him coming home only to find fans hanging out in his trees serenading him with, like, lutes and shit. That is a weird image, but these are weird times, and there is no place weirder in the football world than a city and a state coming off of the first ever 0-16 season.

There is a mania at work here which is understandable and perhaps a little sad. We were so abused by our old boyfriend that now that we have a dude who smiles at us and tells us he loves us and that we are pretty, we're ready to start shopping for wedding dresses and if anybody says anything bad about our man we will cut the fuck out of those other bitches and . . . and perhaps I have gone too far with this analogy, but fuck it, as I said, these are strange times. Look, there is every possibility that we have gone completely overboard with the outpourings of affection for our new head football coach. Christ, I feel like I am about to start seeing sonnets written about the guy soon. The poor man is probably terrified, huddled inside of Ford Field, afraid that people will start mailing him locks of their hair and shit, but fuck it, this is the sick and deranged world he has entered into. We are an irrational people, haunted by the past and terrified of the future, and we are clinging desperately to this one man because he represents a last gasp of hope.

It's a strange thing, but there is more hope after 0-16 than there ever was during The Troubles(some call it the Matt Millen era, but fuck them for uttering such a filthy name). I suppose it's a little like a small town after a tornado or a hurricane has just annihilated it. There is much sadness and despair, but there's also the feeling underneath all of that madness and chaos that there's a chance to rebuild. Completely and totally. This is not some half assed attempt to salvage a fucked up and broken foundation but an honest attempt for the first time to build a whole new foundation and then build on top of that. And leading the charge is Jim Schwartz and everyone is cooing and baking him cookies while he pounds the first nails. It's all incredibly ridiculous but fuck it, we have suffered entirely too much and if we are clinging to an irrational hope, stupid and naive, then so what? The future will be what it will be and for now, we just want to believe that someday - hopefully relatively soon - our new town will be beautiful and happy and thriving and that garbage dump just outside of town will be nothing more than a reminder that we have come far and that damn it, we deserve to be happy.

That's a whole lot of gibberish about tornadoes and wrecked towns and garbage dumps and ex-boyfriends and a lot of other weird bullshit, but that is what 0-16 does to a man and I will not apologize for any of it, including this odd little tangent. But you probably all know what to expect by now and so to hell with it, I'll just gibber on.

Anyway, as wonderful as all this new hope stuff is, there is still the shambling and bumbling presence of that wraith Old Man Ford shuffling around, getting in everybody's way. It's like the whole town got destroyed except for the crazy old mayor who has been fucking up everybody's lives for years, or if you want to get exceedingly dorky about it, and why the hell not since this is the internet and all, it's kinda like Darth Vader was finally murdered and here's Luke Skywalker ready to set shit straight only the goddamn emperor is still hanging around and won't get the fucking hint that it's time for him to step aside. And he's a rich old powerful son of a bitch who can still shoot some of that freaky lightning at you if you try to fuck with him.

And lately, that rich old dude has been rambling about how the decision to hire Schwartz was all his and about how this is his team and all that bullshit in between spoonfuls of applesauce. It's all very disconcerting, maddening really, when you start to feel hope, think that maybe there's a chance and then some old goober who you've been desperately trying not to think about gets off of his golf cart and reminds you that his dusty old bones are still running shit. Terrible, just terrible.

And yet, it's a testament to how much Lions fans want to believe - in how much they need to believe - that much of this has been swept aside with an annoyed shrug. As a fan base, we love Jim Schwartz and we love what he's been doing since he was hired to be our football coach. And for now anyway, we're determined not to let that old man rise from the center of that giant trash pile and ruin our fun. There's a lot of heartache ahead, terrible and without mercy for our beaten souls, but for right now, Jim Schwartz - and with him the Detroit Lions - hasn't lost a single game and fuck everyone, we're Lions fans and we need this.