In the summer of 1999, Dan Campbell climbed into a beat-up truck and drove it more than 1,500 miles to New York for his first
NFL job. He was madly in love with football.
In the summer of 1988, Chris Spielman packed all the laundry he could carry into a beat-up truck that was filled with old fast-food wrappers, per
legendary Detroit News sports writer Jerry Green, and drove to metro Detroit for his first NFL job. And he was madly in love with football.
In the summer of 1973, Sheila Ford Hamp — who has likely never owned a bad-looking truck — graduated from Yale, just five years after the school began accepting women. She wanted nothing more than to work in the NFL, only to be told females needn’t apply. She, too, was madly in love with football.
What, exactly, does it take to fix the unfixable?
For the first time in modern history, the principal owner of the
Detroit Lions — this city’s most beloved sports asset (apologies to the Red Wings) — is building the franchise around the only thing that has ever mattered: honesty. In football, honesty equals trust and trust equals love. The unconditional kind.
Detroit is second only to the
Arizona Cardinals for the most losses in NFL history, with 702. Yet in August, the
Lions announced they had sold out their Ford Field season-ticket allotment for the first time in the building’s 21-year existence. Detroit is a popular bet to win its
first division title in 30 years. Fans locally have fallen for the club in ways not seen by an entire generation.
There are many reasons for that. None, however, is bigger than the promise that Hamp, the second-oldest daughter of William Clay Ford Sr., made to her hometown three summers ago.
In August 1957, the greatest head football coach in Detroit Lions history told a room of wealthy supporters expecting a pep talk that he was done with them.
“Tonight, I’m getting out of the Detroit Lions organization,” coach Buddy Parker announced, per the Detroit News. “I’ve had enough.”
Parker’s decision was stunning. He’d guided the Lions within one game of an NFL championship three-peat in 1954, and after a down year in 1955, Parker rebuilt his defense around Joe Schmidt and had Detroit looking like a contender again. Then, just like that, he was gone. Not from football, though. Later in the month, Parker signed a five-year contract to coach the
Pittsburgh Steelers. To this day, he is one of only two former Lions head coaches to get another head coaching job in the NFL (his ex-assistant George Wilson being the other).
If anyone brought a curse on the Lions,
it’s not Bobby Layne — it’s Buddy Parker, the Hall of Famer who couldn’t take another minute.
Barry Sanders and Calvin Johnson may find that familiar.
William Clay Ford Sr. — the 31-year-old grandson of
the Henry Ford — joined the Lions’ board of directors in 1956. By January 1961, he found himself in position to take control of the now aimless franchise by way of an American staple: a proxy war. It was a fight he won with ease.
By 1963, with the franchise still struggling to do anything (including sign its top three picks the year prior), Ford bought out the board for a reported $6 million and became sole owner of the Lions. Ford was a self-admitted crazed football fan, but he also never claimed to be an expert. Those he’d need to hire. One of his first moves was to name Russ Thomas, a former Lions lineman who played less than three years before working as a team scout/radio commentator, as de facto general manager.
Thomas would keep that spot for 25 years until he retired in 1989 and was replaced by Chuck Schmidt, who had no actual football experience.
The Lions lost roughly 55 percent of the 338 games presided over by Thomas. Perhaps no one outside of Ford (who died in 2014) has had a larger historical impact on the fortunes of the Lions, during and after their tenure, than Thomas. His reputation as a football negotiator more interested in financial savings than wins and losses followed him, and the Lions, like a shadow.
For years, Thomas was allowed to handle the team’s draft and contract negotiations more or less unchecked, leading to constant squabbles with coaches and personnel. Even after Ford removed draft responsibilities from Thomas’ job (handing them to the head coach instead), the GM — who once lost eventual Hall of Famer Fred Biletnikoff on a draft contract after trying to force him to work an offseason job as part of his deal — was still allowed to negotiate every contract. And that’s where the true control lived.
The Matt Millen era, from 2001 to 2008, is also notable. Millen — who was not unlike Thomas in terms of work ethic and style — had the title of president/CEO, but he was also the de facto GM. The Lions went 31-84 under his watch, the worst eight-year record in the modern NFL.
Since 1967, the Lions have employed just two general managers with both real football playing and scouting experience. Ford picked the first two: Thomas and Martin Mayhew.
His daughter picked No. 3:
Brad Holmes.
On June 23, 2020, nearly a lifetime after being told “no” by the game she loved, Sheila Hamp became
principal owner of the Lions, taking over for her 94-year-old mother, Martha.
Then, she made a promise.
“I don’t plan to meddle,” she said that day, before getting to the truly important matter. “But I plan to be informed.”
