The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit, Michigan. They are members of the North Division of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL), and play their home games at Ford Field in Downtown Detroit.
Originally based in Portsmouth, Ohio and called the Portsmouth Spartans, the team began play in 1929 as an independent professional team, one of many such teams in the Ohio and Scioto River valleys. For the 1930 season, the Spartans formally joined the NFL as the other area independents folded because of the Great Depression. Despite success within the NFL, they could not survive in Portsmouth, then the NFL's smallest city. The team was purchased and moved to Detroit for the 1934 season.
The Lions have won four NFL Championships, the last in 1957, giving the club the second-longest NFL championship drought behind the Arizona Cardinals. The Lions have not had much success during the Super Bowl era: the Lions are one of four current NFL teams that have yet to qualify for the Super Bowl, and the team is 1-10 in post-season play during that period. The 2008 team became the only team in NFL history to lose all 16 regular season games since the NFL went to a 16-game schedule in 1978.
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Famous quotes containing the word lions:
“When lions paint pictures men will not always be represented as conquerors. When women translate laws, constitutions, bibles and philosophies, man will not always be the declared heard of the church, the state, and the home.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1815–1902, U.S. women’s rights activist, author, editor. The Revolution (August 13, 1868)