Lions

Ford Field sits in downtown Detroit under a fixed roof, a home built for a franchise that spent decades playing outdoors in Michigan winters before moving indoors. It holds around 65,000, with room to stretch to 70,000 when the occasion calls for it.

The Lions took their name in 1934, after George A. Richards bought the team and brought it to Detroit, six years before the club's earlier incarnation had even reached the city. That naming came four years after the franchise was founded in 1930. What followed was a run of success concentrated almost entirely in one generation: NFL Championships in 1935, 1952, 1953 and 1957. Bobby Layne quarterbacked those last two title teams, and the story told about him in Detroit is that after he was traded away in 1958, he cursed the franchise to fifty years without a championship — a curse fans still bring up whenever a season turns.

Barry Sanders is the name most associated with the decades since, a running back who produced highlight-reel runs on largely uncompetitive teams before retiring abruptly in his prime. Calvin Johnson followed a similar arc a generation later, piling up receiving numbers for teams that rarely contended, then walking away from the game early himself.

Sunday afternoons against the Green Bay Packers carry more weight than any other date on the Lions' calendar; the two have played every year since the NFL's earliest seasons, making it the league's longest continuously running rivalry. Ownership has stayed in one family's hands, now held by Sheila Ford Hamp.

For all the Hall of Famers who have worn the uniform — Joe Schmidt, Alex Karras, Lem Barney, Yale Lary, Dick LeBeau, Doak Walker among them — the Lions have never reached a Super Bowl, and no championship has followed the last one in 1957.