Friday,
January 20, 2006
Nice Truck!
By Greg Alexis
TLF Staff Writer
It was called the Ford F-250 Super Chief
concept car, and it was a thing of beauty. Fords concept of silver steel, and
a lot of it, with a grill that looked like it could withstand its fair share
of RPG’s, and enough wooden interior to make Henry David Thoreau
claustrophobic and reminiscent of padding. I knew the Hummers had an exhibit,
and I was also aware the Dodge had come out with a new Challenger. Apparently
Ford was going all out to head them both at the pass somewhere in the middle,
and the Super Chief looked like it could do it.
“Nice truck.” I said to no one in particular. I’d come to the North American
Auto Show with no pre-set ideas whatsoever of what it would be like. Being in
Detroit, I thought I’d get into the spirit and dress up in my Lions regalia:
Lions sweatshirt. Lions jacket. Lions baseball hat. These were the days of
Lions coaching hiring’s and interest was at an all time high.
I stood out like a blueberry at a carnivore convention.
“Nice.” A guy next to me said.
“Fifty grand?” I asked.
“Easy.”
I looked around the Cobo Exposition Center, perhaps still feeling a little bit
subconscious over my choice of wardrobe, when a strange realization came to me
as I stole a glance over at the guy I was talking to.
There are a lot of black people in Detroit.
Normally this wouldn’t occur to me as strange in the throes of a mad,
pseudo-shopping binge, but these were not normal times. I was stuck in the
middle off an unshakable depression having had to endure another season
watching the Lions cough up another hairball, and the Lions coaching search
wasn’t easing my anxieties much. A novel idea popped into my head. I turned
around and took out my notebook in secrecy so that nobody would see what I was
up to and steal my idea. I made a note to myself: “Detroit. Black city.”
I looked at the Super Chief and I chuckled despite myself. It was right there,
right before my eyes. Detroit City. Motown. Modern Midwestern city. Home of
the 2006 North American Auto Show and everything conceptualized engineering at
its finest had to promise. The thoughts and dreams of a million people
encapsulated in Ford’s revolving steel vision of urban utopia, screaming “I am
one of you!”
It’s thinking like that that got me to thinking: how cool would it be for
Detroit to actually have a football coach representative of its people? How
cool would it be for some black champion to come in and end the fifty years of
futility? Why not? In an era where equal hiring practices are being highly
encouraged, it seemed more than logical that--when four of the top eight
candidates this year are African American--now was the time for Ford to
introduce his most radical concept yet: a black head coach of the Lions.
Why not indeed. The reasoning for such a move could hardly be argued given
that on the basis if wins per number of coaches, black coaches are moving
along at about a 75% success clip; and two of the top five coaching candidates
this year are black guys in Tim Lewis and Ted Cottrell, both with 20-plus
years of coaching experience; Cottrell with the Bills, Jets, and
Vikings--reaching the playoffs 7 of the past 10 years-- and Lewis leading the
Steelers and Giants into the postseason. Either of their track records make
any recent Lions coaching history pale by comparison.
I could probably get used to it. The circumstances were right. The time, the
place, the motive. It was so simple.
I looked around at my environs and chuckled again. I entertained visions of a
saintly figure in the likeness of Joe Dumars breaking through the clouds to
take over the Lions to the reception of a thunderous ovation as three million
Detroit citizens came to their feet singing Queen‘s “Another One Bites the
Dust“ and forgetting--if for only eternity--that the organization had a
broadcaster for a GM, as the Lions put the silver back in the black and blue
recesses of my cloudy reality.
Then I stopped the comparisons there. Joe Dumars built up a team that
exemplified the city he personified: hard working, assembly line efficient,
with every piece working in harmony. And quite black.
Besides. Joe Dumars won.
What an interesting concept.
