Detroit Lions owner William Clay Ford Sr. died yesterday morning at the age of 88. He was the last surviving grandchild of automotive pioneer Henry Ford. Williams Clay Ford had been involved with the Detroit Lions since the early 1960s. He bought the team for $4.5 million in the fall of 1963 and has run the team ever since. His son William Clay Ford Jr. has taken a more active role with the team in recent years.
The Ford name is so synonymous with Detroit that there was a time when I simply assumed that the family had owned the Lions since they arrived in Detroit in 1935. It was something of a surprise to learn that the Ford relationship with the team didn't begin until the 1960s. I've always liked that Ford hired people to run his team and let them do just that. He didn't get in the way. Too often, we see more of the owner than those that actually make the football decisions. I don't think that's ever a good thing. Most owners know little of football. That's why they hire people that do. Ford let his football people do their job. Unfortunately, it was rarely successful. His Lions teams lost often. The Lions won just one playoff game in his tenure, a 38-6 victory over the Dallas Cowboys in January of 1992. If William Clay Ford was guilty of anything as owner of the Detroit Lions, it was that he was loyal to a fault. Russ Thomas spent 22 years as the general manager and made one playoff appearance. Wayne Fontes is both the winningest and losingest coach in franchise history. And then we have the Matt Millen era. As general manager, Millen amassed a league-worst 31-84 record from 2001-08. Millen wouldn't have seen four years with most NFL teams. He was finally fired in September of a 2008 season in which the Detroit Lions won zero games. I always thought that Millen might have been better suited as coach of the Lions than the general manager. He understands the x's and o's of the game. His passion for the game is obvious, even infectious. I just don't think that the business side of putting a football team together was something that he enjoyed. His love of the game and his relationship with William Clay Ford kept him going. I think that Ford saw it the very same way. He couldn't fire his friend that so obviously loved football. It's so difficult to ever think of loyalty as a bad thing.
RIP Mr. Ford.
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