Baumgardner: These are not the Same Old Lions. Their owner made sure of it (2024)

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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 thatwas 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.”

When Ford bought the team, the NFL and AFL were still three years away from their historic merger. The NFL was hardly a mom-and-pop shop, but it was not the global behemoth it is now. Back then, Ford was also leading Ford Motor Company’s design team while serving on its board of directors, not fully retiring from the auto business until 1995. For most of Ford’s run, the Lions were an expensive side hustle.

His personal investment was more or less in ceremony, until a decision needed to be made. That resulted in frantic, reactionary moves that only served to keep the cycle of heartbreak spinning. If an owner has more investment in the business of a team than its competitive health, everything’s doomed.

The Lions are not a hobby or a side project for Hamp, who became one of the team’s vice chairs when her mother took ownership in 2014. Based solely on her actions since becoming principal owner, it’s fair to suggest that, for Hamp, the Lions are closer to family.

When the Lions hired ex-GM Bob Quinn (who personally hired coach Matt Patricia) in 2016, the process was a mess. Martha Ford, approaching 90, had been team owner less than two years, and the lack of a concrete plan was obvious. That led to the NFL appointing a third party, Ernie Accorsi, to help. The vision for Detroit’s future wasn’t really concocted in Detroit, but in a sterile office someplace else.

The result was a disaster. And by the time she fired both on Nov. 28, 2020, Hamp told team president Rod Wood the new search had to be different. This search, they felt, had to transcend usual business. Hamp wanted it to stay in the family. But not the Ford family. The Lions family.

A short time later, Wood called Chris Spielman, one of the greatest Lions to ever wear a helmet. One of the family’s proudest members.

Spielman was a young star on the 1991 Lions team that went 12-4 and beat Jimmy Johnson’s Cowboys in the playoffs. A year later, Spielman’s Lions watched the playoffs at home as Dallas — which took care of its young talent — took its first step toward becoming the team of the ’90s.

Detroit’s ’91 team followed an inspired run to the NFC Championship Game with heartache. Eight months after Mike Utley was paralyzed during a game, fellow starting guard Eric Andolsek died after being hit by a truck in Louisiana. A month earlier, ace defensive backs coach Len Fontes, brother of Lions head coach Wayne Fontes, died of a heart attack.

And there was also resentment. A data dump in 1992 stemming from an NFL antitrust lawsuit revealed Wayne Fontes was one of the lowest-paid head coaches in the NFL. Nearly every key player from the 1991 team eventually left because the Lions wouldn’t pay them.

Thus, the 1991 Lions are known as a singular entity in Detroit, rather than the start of something bigger. The last Lions team to win a playoff game.

Spielman himself, a fan favorite who epitomized literally everything the area stood for during that run, was eventually allowed to leave for the Buffalo Bills after the 1995 season for a deal worth $2 million annually. The Lions replaced him with an older player for less money. Ford raised ticket prices in 1996, and the Lions went 5-11. For the 1997 regular-season finale at the Pontiac Silverdome, the Lions still managed to sell more than 80,000 tickets — 18,000 in three days to avoid a local TV blackout — to see Barry Sanders break the 2,000-yard season rushing mark.

If you’ve ever asked yourself why Detroit Lions fans still exist after all this, why anyone bothers to scrounge an ounce of hope after being kicked in the teeth more times than they can count — the answer is simple: This place and the people that make it are just tougher than you.

“Don’t be surprised if you see me back here someday in some capacity or other,” Spielman told the Free Press the day he left in 1996.

A week after Wood’s initial call to Spielman, the two spoke again. Spielman was in Cincinnati set to call a Cowboys-Bengals game for Fox. At some point, Wood asked if Spielman would talk with Hamp. Already excited about the possibility of rejoining his favorite franchise, Spielman said absolutely. Along the way, Hamp and Wood told Spielman things would be different this time. They talked of their plan to listen, to collaborate and to be invested. Hamp told Spielman this mission — the fixing of the unfixable — had become personal for her. She asked him for help and told him that, with trust and communication, they could give Detroit its football team back for the first time in 75 years.

When Spielman hung up the phone inside his Cincinnati hotel room that Saturday, he had enough energy to run through a padlocked door. His first move after the call was to find his Fox producer.

“Hey,” Spielman said. “This is my last game. I’m going to the Lions.”

Four days later, just as he had more than 30 years ago, Spielman put some stuff in a car and drove it to Detroit without so much as a blink.

“I have zero regrets,” Spielman toldThe Athletic’s Colton Pouncy. “It’s been an amazing journey and it’s been amazing because we’re at a point where we’re, I believe, legitimate contenders.”

However, Spielman did not hire Campbell or Holmes. Hamp did, bringing both on board in January 2021. She insisted she wanted to “do right by” the Lions and set the franchise up for an honest shot at success for the first time in forever. That was enough for Spielman, who worked his contacts and assisted Hamp and Wood throughout both searches. The culture they’ve created revolves around simple things: collaboration, telling the truth, being yourself and loving football. Detroit things.

In 2021, after being saddled with a salary cap in hell, a quarterback (Matthew Stafford) who wanted out, another (Jared Goff) nobody else wanted and a roster gutted to the studs, the new group Hamp assembled started its first season 0-10-1. At 1-5 in year two, a frustrated Hamp called an impromptu news conference only to let reporters know — in case they were wondering — she was still all-in on Campbell, Holmes and every person in her building.

The Lions went on to win eight of their final 11 games, beating Aaron Rodgers in his Lambeau Field swan song and missing the playoffs by a hair. In the visiting locker room after the finale, Campbell — nose red from the cold, snow cap still atop his 6-foot-6 frame — told a young locker room suddenly oozing confidence that “this is just the beginning.” Standing to his right, more than a foot shorter with an even bigger grin, was Hamp.

We didn't doubt it at all pic.twitter.com/5HOArqwOfm

— Detroit Lions (@Lions) January 9, 2023

“I’m just telling you, I’m just freakin’ telling you — I’ve been around as a player and a coach in this league,” Campbell shouted as he pulled Hamp in for a hug. “We’ve got the best owner. Everything you could possibly need, every resource — she thinks about you guys all the time, man, she knows everything about you, she’s rock solid and as good as they come.

“She’s competitive. And, boy, she loves to win.”

What does it take to fix the unfixable? Tough people. True believers.

A coach who eats kneecaps. A general manager who lives to scout talent. A selfless assistant who just wants to help. And an owner who wants nothing more than to make her family and city proud as she gets to live a dream.

Win or lose in 2023, these are not the Same Old Lions. And that’s pretty easy to fall in love with.

(Top photo of Sheila Hamp: Rey Del Rio / Getty Images)

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