For Lions fans another season is over and the playoffs are once again for other teams. That's the way it almost always is. But we sometimes need to give our heads a shake and realize that it's just a game.
There are not that many great memories that Lions fans can carry with them over the past thirty years. But there were some great individual players. Aside from the Barry Sanders and Billy Sims there are a treasure trove of really talented players who wore the Honolulu Blue, Silver and White in Detroit and Pontiac. A few of them stick out in my mind.
Lions Retired QB Eric Hipple
There was Greg Danielson, the pencil thin quarterback in the eighties who was smarter than almost anyone on the field and off. He pulled out more wins than most of the coaches the Fords hired to direct that team.
Then there was a young man named Eric Hipple. He debuted early in the eighties because of an injury on Monday Night Football. He demolished the Bears like no rookie should with 4 passing touchdowns and two rushing touchdowns. He laboured for the Lions for ten years as a backup and sometimes starter and finally retired.
Last weekend I ventured onto the Lions website to learn that Hipple's teenage son had lost his life to suicide. Hipple was devastated. Eventually he put together a book which deals with depression titled "Real Men Do Cry"
We watch these guys and gals play each week on ice, on baseball, football fields and on basketball courts as if they aren't human. When you follow a team, win or lose as I choose to do, you know they are very human. Once in a while you reach back and find out what happened to a player you once cheered for like Eric Hipple. Well he is still a big strong physical guy but he is very human and he is probably still hurting.
That goes for every other athlete you see on television, cheer for at the local hockey rink or read about in the paper. They are humans. The sport comes second.
