Lions

Four NFL Championships mark the Lions' history, all won before the league had a Super Bowl to point to: 1935 against the New York Giants, then 1952 and 1953, both finished off against the Cleveland Browns, who they beat again in 1957. A year earlier, in 1954, Cleveland had the better of them in the same fixture.

The franchise did not start life in Michigan. It took the field in Portsmouth, Ohio, as the Spartans, entered the NFL in 1930, and moved to Detroit in 1934 — the Lions name dates from that relocation. The 1932 "Iron Man" game belongs to the Spartans years; the 1957 comeback remembered as the "Pine Tree Game" belongs to the Lions.

Barry Sanders carried the offence through the franchise's leanest football. The ownership of Matt Millen, from 2001 to 2007, is remembered for the opposite reason.

Green Bay is the fixture that matters most, known locally as the Yooper Bowl, with Chicago and Minnesota filling out the rest of the divisional calendar. Ford Field, downtown, holds 65,000 for football and can be pushed to 70,000.

The 2023 season brought an NFC Championship Game appearance, the club's deepest run since the resurgence began. A Super Bowl has never followed it there — the Lions are the only team to have played every season of the Super Bowl era, since 1966, without once reaching one.