It's Detroit SuperBowl Day!

And, frankly, I'm surprised I could sleep last night. Maybe, it was because I was so tired from the previous night and the whole is "The Kong" a racial slur bit.

I'm not sure, but I know I'm having problems concentrating today. It's like I've taken 7 5-hour energies in the last 10 minutes--I'm almost vibrating.

Which, as I try to calm down and take deep breaths, is really very sad.

Even after this weekend's football fest, there won't be a meaningful football game played for another four and a half months.

So why? Why am I following this draft like a crack addict follows his dealer when he's out of cash?
I have a theory, but first let me explain something to you. I've been following the draft since 1989, when the Lions drafted a little dude named Barry Sanders...and then a John Ford, then Mike Utley, Ray Crockett, and eventually Rodney Peete...(Holy crap, what an awesome draft that was!) I mean Ford was the only bust in the bunch...sorry. You see, this is part of the problem.

This was my first draft and it was the primary draft that led to a decade of pretty good Lions football. They pretty much made the playoffs every other year. The highest point came in 1991 when the Lions made it to the NFC Championship game...60 minutes from a SuperBowl...and were totally destroyed by the Washington Redskins. It came after the abysmal Daryl Rogers pretty much dared the Ford's to fire him by putting one of the worst and most boring teams on the field that perhaps has ever played the game...and then followed that up by asking, "What do you have to do to get fired around here?"

The major issue with me and the draft and football in general is simple, history.

I think that Lions fans share a commiseration of long term continued failure and embarrassment with other fans like Browns fans and Cubs fans, places where the chosen darlings of the city have been downright awful for so long that it's impossible to remember when they were good. Oh, all of these teams have flirted with greatness, but we're always left against the wall at the prom without a dance partner. There are no championship games and no championships.

And we've lived through all these years, starting out every year with the hope "that it's going to be different this season!" And we're always wrong. People jump off the bandwagon every year because they can't take the losing and the disappointment anymore, or maybe they just get properly diagnosed and are prescribed the proper medications....I'm not sure.

Some of us, the sick twisted, misguided few stay on because...it's going to be different this season! And if it actually ends up being different this year and we missed it....well, there are ropes for that kind of thing.

For me the draft has so many memories.

First it was Barry and Rodney Peete, who were going to be the centerpieces of a whole new generation of football.

And then Peete got hurt and it was Andre Ware (huge bust!) and Dan Owens and Marc Spindler, two defensive ends who showed up at the Silverdome the day after the draft, Owens in an expensive suite and Spindler in a leather jacket and torn jeans, both in the same limo. Owens and Spindler lasted a hell of a lot longer than Ware. And there was also Willie Green, "The Touchdown Machine."

In '91 it was Herman Moore and Reggie Barrett, a couple of bookend 6'4 wide recievers that were going to rewrite the record books...only Barett was never good enough to get on the field.

In '92 came Robert Porcher and Tracy Scroggins and Jason Hanson and "Big Play" Willie Clay!

'93 began a long infatuation with really short corners and Ryan McNeil and pretty much nobody else.

'94 Jonnie Morton, the original MetroSexual and a man named "Beer".

'95 Luther Ellis, David Sloan, Stephen Boyd, Corey Schlesinger...the same year Scott Mitchell threw 5 interceptions in a playoff catastrophe at Philadelphia and then argued with Wayne Fontes about being pulled!

'96 Reggie Brown, poor Reggie Brown and Jeff Hartings, who was smart enough to leave because Millen was a complete moron.

And then it all started going south from there with the poor drafts of Bobby Ross and the epic failures of Matt Millen...but my point is made, there is history. A train running through the NFL timeline that will eventually pass through a super bowl for Detroit...I hope...and I don't want to miss it. I want to remember drafting "The Kong!" and the next great CB -- so that passing on the Detroit defense isn't easier than taking a knee.

I love the draft.



And I still love cheerleaders.



And I'm kind of warming up to hockey....