(WWJ) — A trip to the Super Bowl was well within the Lions’ grasp Sunday night. With a 24-7 halftime lead over the 49ers in the NFC Championship, fans could taste it. What had been the greatest season in the team’s last 70 years — perhaps ever — was about to culminate with their first Super Bowl appearance ever, breaking traditions of failure that have crossed generations.
But as we all know, that’s not how things went. Instead, the season ended in brutal fashion: a 34-31 loss that has fans talking ad nauseam about “what-ifs.”
On a new Daily J podcast, WWJ’s Zach Clark took time to look at the feelings of Lions fans after a season for the ages.
He was curious as to why he — and many others across the state — were “behaving oddly” as things started to go south Sunday night.
“As the Lions began to slip, I became irrationally upset at Niners fans dancing in the stands and I wanted to yell… I’ve never seen these people before and I can’t tell you what they look like now… some of them were children, and that’s wrong,” he said on the Daily J. “Why do I react that way? What’s going on?”
Dr. Jaclyn Issner, a clinical psychologist at the Detroit Medical Center, said that reaction isn’t out of the norm.
“How dare these fans be happy when we are feeling so terrible,” she said. “ Do you remember how intensely excited you got when the Lions scored that first touchdown and then again scored later? Was that like one of the biggest adrenaline rushes?”
Of course it was.
“To go from there to feeling such extreme disappointment, anger… we’re really in it as it’s though we’re really disappointed about something truly important that goes wrong in our lives and these feelings of highs and lows are so extreme,” she said.
Issner says maintaining more of a level head when it comes to supporting our sports teams doesn’t necessarily give us the same level of excitement, though that would mean fewer heartbreaks.
“It’s worth it. As much as it’s so painful, it’s like life: if you don’t take risks, if you don’t go full into something, you don’t get to fully experience it. But that comes along with the negative feelings that you have to experience,” Issner said.
That’s a fine line Lions fans have been walking this season. Perhaps that’s why we’ve stayed with the Honolulu Blue through all those years of disappointment.
Clark also spoke with another Metro Detroit psychologist about sports fandom, as well as WWJ’s Tony Ortiz about where the Lions go from here. He also heard a “pep talk” of sorts from a young Lions fan who returned to Detroit Metro Airport Monday morning and spoke with WWJ’s Charlie Langton.
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