If you watch football – and I suspect at least a few of you do – you know what happened today in Green Bay, and if you don’t I’ll repeat it for you:

The Detroit Lions completed the single most important season in the history of sports.

You’ll note I didn’t say “greatest” or “most exciting” or anything like that, because everyone knows a team winless for the course of an entire season is utterly incapable of any sort of inspirational feats. As far as sporting punchlines go, these Lions may have earned their place as the biggest – and that’s not to mention the obvious and endless cracks to made about the twin fates of the Lions and the city they call home.

But after all the taunts of “loser,” after all the half-serious cries for a federal bailout of the franchise and calls to abandon the team the way so many in Detroit have abandoned their factories, offices and homes, the 2008 Lions will stand as both a marker and a beacon: no matter how bad things go for us as fans, and no matter how badly our teams end up, at least they’re not the Lions.

The Sox lose 100 games next year? Hey, at least they’re winning every third day.

The Yankees don’t live up to the hype? At least they had a reason to get excited.

The Cubs make it to the World Series only to cough up a 3-0 lead and become the laughing stock of history? Oh, how sweet that would be.

The point is, we suddenly have a frame of reference for how bad it can get. Teams may tank, but everyone knew going into this season the Lions were doomed on an epic scale. Everyone, even the non-football types out there, already knew that even the NFL’s scheduling system couldn’t be soft enough on a team that hasn’t had a winning record since 2000. Some teams are already destined for failure in 2009 – the Orioles and Nationals come to mind – but none of us could realistically sit here and say with a straight face that either of those teams will lose every single game for four months.

And yet, there they were, those Detroit Lions doing just that. Winless, directionless, seemingly hopeless. You and I may curse the Sox every time they introduce another newly-acquired .260 hitter, may bemoan their perpetual absence from the market for top-tier free agents, may loathe every single player to have ever been called a grinder who knows how to play the game the right way baseball heart grit 2005 four touchdowns in a single game, but you know what?

At least they’re not the Lions.