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The Detroit Lions play a road game against the Green Bay Packers every single season. And yet, improbable as it may seem, the road-weary Lions have not emerged victorious in this clash since 1991.
Twenty four trips to Wisconsin since, and 24 losses for the Honolulu blue and silver.
To put into perspective just how long that’s been, let’s take a look at what was all the rage in December ’91. Maybe this flashback to a better time for our Lions will lead to a miracle this Sunday at Lambeau Field.
The last time the Lions beat the Packers on the road:
• Top-rated TV sitcoms were "Cheers," :"Roseanne" and "Murphy Brown." "Seinfeld" was still this underground thing that only a few people watched.
• The Pistons were coached by Chuck Daly and on PASS Sports.
• Nick Lidstrom was playing the first of his 20 seasons as a Detroit Red Wing.
• Barack Obama just graduated from Harvard and was starting work as a visiting Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School.
• The Tigers were managed by Sparky Anderson and boasted an impressive infield of Cecil Fielder, Lou Whitaker, Alan Trammell, and Travis Fryman.
• an international peace conference had just been held in Madrid to try and create momentum in talks between Israel and its neighboring countries. I guess not everything has changed.
• Leading movies at the box office were "Hook," "The Last Boy Scout," "Beauty and the Beast" and "My Girl." We weren’t creeped out by Macaulay Culkin yet, and still considered Damon Wayans a viable action film star.
• Quarterback Matthew Stafford was all of three years old, though it’s safe to assume he was already practicing his back-foot, sidearm delivery in a Georgia backyard somewhere.
• Richard Gere had just married Cindy Crawford. Back when people still really cared about Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford.
• The World Wide Web was starting to hatch out of its egg. Nobody had ever heard of Internet or e-mail. Amazon was still just a river in South America.
• The Lions -- yes, the Lions -- were actually favored in the game. At Lambeau Field. When’s the next time that will happen? It is interesting that the 11-4 Lions were tabbed as just a field goal favorite over the woeful 3-12 Packers. But Vegas must have known something. The Lions only won by four.
• Heavily involved in the Lions’ victory were Mel Gray, Eddie Murray, and a young third-year running back named Barry Sanders.
Yes, it has been a very long time since the Detroit football team had a pleasant day in Green Bay. They’ll get their chance to reverse this wildly improbable streak in just about 48 hours.
If you have any other plans whatsoever on Sunday afternoon, I’d suggest embarking on those.
Stay and watch the horror if you must, but 24 years of history tells us this will be anything but pretty.
