William Clay Ford bought Detroit Lions 50 years ago this month, has endured team’s ups, downs since [Detroit Free Press]

Nov. 03--A light snow was falling as the Lions loaded their bus after the only NFC championship game appearance in franchise history, a 41-10 loss to Washington at old RFK Stadium in January 1992, when then-coach Wayne Fontes noticed his billionaire owner, William Clay Ford, standing on a street corner.

Fontes told the bus to stop, got out and invited Ford and his wife, Martha, inside to keep warm while they waited for their ride.

Ford politely declined, telling Fontes he didn't want to interfere with his own team, and moments later his car pulled up to the curb.

The men shook hands, and Fontes apologized for the team's play that day and the emptiness both felt inside.

"He just kind of said, 'I understand,' and he said, 'Maybe next year,' " Fontes recalled. "He did say, or he, his wife, one of them said, 'This is the best we've been in years and it's been a great run.'

"I was down and he was down, and when we stood out there in the snow together, it was kind of -- somebody should have painted the picture of both of us standing there going, 'My goodness, what happened?' Snowflakes were falling and we were talking about the year we had and how we came up short and looking forward to more and better years and not knowing the tragedy that would (prevent us from taking) the next step. It would have been a great picture."

A fitting one, too, for a man who purchased the Lions 50 years ago this month. The only current NFL owner who has run a team longer is Ralph Wilson, who founded the Buffalo Bills in 1959.

The Lions declined interview requests from the Free Press for the 88-year-old Ford, his son, Bill Jr., the team's vice chairman, and team president Tom Lewand for this story. But in interviews over the past three months, more than 50 current and former players, coaches and executives, both with the Lions and across the NFL, paint Ford as a kind and generous man of uncommon wealth who bought the football team he grew up rooting for mostly because he was a fan.

Now largely out of sight from a skeptical public but still the final arbiter of the organization's most important decisions, Ford remains in search of his second playoff victory and that elusive Super Bowl appearance.

How that would affect his dubious legacy is anyone's guess.

Former players swear by Ford's kindness and save their harshest words for some of the managers he employed. Old coaches appreciate his loyalty that fans have come to loathe. And people across the league insist the NFL -- and football in Detroit -- wouldn't be where it is today if not for Ford's decision to rescue the team from a syndicate of 144 stockholders.

From fan to boss

A shareholder himself, Ford took over as Lions president in 1961 amid in-fighting among board members and got the idea to buy the franchise shortly thereafter.

A regular at home and road games who once flew from London to Baltimore and back to see the Lions play, Ford was forced to watch a Lions-Bears game from his couch that December after inclement weather grounded his plane to Chicago.

With the Bears ahead, 15-9, late in the fourth quarter, Ford grew so incensed at a play that he kicked a hole in his TV screen. Moments later, realizing the game wasn't over, Ford "scurried frantically around his mansion (and) located a radio in the servants' quarters just in time to hear" Terry Barr score the game-winning touchdown for the Lions, according to a 1963 profile of Ford in the Sunday Free Press Magazine. A Detroit News story the same year said Ford's brother, Henry, suggested after the incident, "Why don't you buy the Lions and straighten things out?"

Ford's interest was sufficiently piqued, and the man who grew up watching Lions games at old University of Detroit Stadium spent the next few years getting close to players.

On several occasions, he took groups of players duck hunting at a private reserve in Canada. They stayed in a plush log cabin, hunted with 12-gauge shotguns and had guides for help.

"It was such a good time," said Wayne Walker, a Lions linebacker in 1958-72. "They had a clubhouse there and we had a lunch. We did that three or four times during the course of my career. He was just, in those situations, just one of the guys. It was really great."

Pat Studstill, a Lions receiver in 1961-67, said players used to gather at Joe Schmidt's Golden Lion restaurant in Grosse Pointe after games. Ford and his wife occasionally stopped by, and at one point Ford confided in some he was thinking about buying the team.

"It didn't happen every week, but anytime we won we would have a big spirits party, what we called a spirits party, and we had just a real close team at that time," Studstill said. "This was in '62 and we kind of thought that he was looking to buy the club.

"I'm pretty sure he kind of more or less put out a, 'Should I buy the club?' "

A year later, at an Oct. 15 board of directors meeting, Ford made a $6-million bid for sole control of the Lions that surprised almost everyone. The purchase was not on the board's agenda for the day, and Ford described it to the Free Press at the time, "If you said it was a bombshell, you're right."

The bid, about $45 million in present value, included the Lions'Michigan Avenue headquarters and $1.5 million in cash and securities. Forbes estimates the franchise is worth $900 million today.

Less than two weeks later, the board approved the sale, and on Nov. 22, 1963, the same day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, 94% of the 23,000-plus shares of the Detroit Football Co. voted in favor of the deal in a meeting at the Statler Hilton Hotel. Ford's great uncle, E.R. Bryant, was the only significant dissenting vote due to his own legal entanglements.

-- Videos: Former players, coaches on Ford

Forty years later, Ford mused about the timing of the deal.

"It turned into a sad, terrible day," he told the Free Press in 2003. "About a half-hour after the meeting, a few of us were having lunch at the Statler Hilton to celebrate. And a waitress came up to me and asked if I heard about Kennedy in Dallas. And I was waiting for the punch line. There were a lot of sick people making jokes about Kennedy around that time. But then you could tell that she was serious, and she said that he had been shot.

"It's a terrible coincidence that both of these things would occur around the same time. But there were a couple of times over the years when some things happened to us that you just couldn't figure out why or how it happened, and you'd briefly think if there's some kind of stigma attached to anything else that may have taken place that awful day."

Studstill said Ford didn't come around the Golden Lion as much after he took control of the team, officially on Jan. 10, 1964, but players were generally pleased to have him as owner after years of board control.

"We were all kind of sweating it a little bit, we didn't know what was going to transpire," he said. "But he turned out to be a good owner -- a very good owner. And as far as I was concerned, he helped a lot of players -- buying cars, if nothing else. He was a good owner. He really was."

Roger Brown, a Lions defensive tackle in 1960-66, said Ford took players to a Ford factory early that decade and let them pick out a car to use for the year. Brown got a Mercury, Bruce Maher got a 450-horsepower station wagon, and Ford picked up the insurance for everyone.

"All I could think about was my little salary that I was getting," Brown said. "I said, 'Hey, at least I'll have a new car every year.' It lasted one year. The guys crashed them up, so it didn't last long."

Ford endeared himself to players in other ways, too. He paid Alex Karras'$5,000 fine for gambling late in the 1963 season, and when the Lions defensive tackle was suspended from football and something of a pariah, Ford showed up for the grand opening of his bar, the Lindell A.C.

Still, the Lions, one of the NFL's powerhouse teams of the 1950s, went through lean years immediately after Ford took control.

General manager Edwin J. Anderson, who Ford backed in a proxy fight years earlier and who described Ford to the San Francisco News Call Bulletin as a "quite rabid" fan who spends his Sundays in the press box "screaming like mad" for the Lions and a game he thinks "is the greatest invention since kissing," took over as president in 1964, and Ford gave his good friend Russ Thomas control of personnel.

Coach George Wilson, who led the Lions to their last world championship in 1957, re-signed after the '64 season much to the dismay of players after several of his assistants were fired, and the Lions had losing records the next four years with Harry Gilmer and then Schmidt as coaches.

Bud Erickson, the Lions' former publicity director and assistant general manager, said he was partially responsible for the Gilmer hire and thus "maybe I caused some of the problems that the Lions had early in the '60s."

"I'd go around and be at places like Green Bay and Chicago, and you were very friendly in those days," Erickson said. "You'd have lunch with the owner and talk about other things in the particular game coming up, and I always thought that Harry Gilmer was a guy that a lot of people thought very highly of as a new possibility for being a head coach.

"I remember, we had lunch one day with Mr. Ford and Anderson at the Detroit Club and I threw out the name of Harry Gilmer for if they were making a move. After that it was out of my hands, of course, but they went ahead and met with Gilmer and hired him, and I guess that was some of the problems early in the '60s that it didn't quite work out the way it expected."

Playoff heartache

The Lions reached the playoffs just 10 times in Ford's first 49 seasons as owner and are 1-10 in postseason games.

Two years ago, they qualified as an NFC wild card with a 10-6 record and lost to the New Orleans Saints, 45-28. They've made the playoffs in strike-shortened seasons, on four-game losing streaks and after winning in Week 17 to get in.

Twice, they've had legitimate chances to win a championship, and both times they've fallen short of the Super Bowl.

In 1970, Schmidt's fourth season as coach, the Lions went 10-4 and made the playoffs as a wild card after winning their final five games. The sense, even among opposing players, was that the Lions had as good a chance as anyone to win the NFC.

"We saw (former Cowboys running back) Calvin Hill (at last week's Lions-Cowboys game) and he said, 'You guys were the best team,' " said Hall of Fame tight end Charlie Sanders, who played for the Lions in 1968-77 and now serves as the team's assistant director of pro personnel. "He said we should have won the Super Bowl that year. He said there was no doubt that we had the best team."

The Lions finished with the league's second-best defense that year, behind a Minnesota Vikings team they lost to twice during the regular season, and with Greg Landry and Bill Munson at quarterback and Mel Farr and Altie Taylor in the backfield they had one of the best rushing attacks in the NFL.

After beating the Los Angeles Rams, 28-23, in a Monday night game to get to nine wins and with snow bearing down on the Midwest, the Lions decided to stay in L.A. to prepare for a must-win season finale against the Green Bay Packers.

Ford gave every player $100, Sanders said, to go Christmas shopping while they were away from home.

"I think I was making $17,000," Sanders said. "That $100 was a lot."

And when players got back to the team hotel after the game they took over the bar and threw themselves a party at the Lions' expense. Schmidt ended up on stage singing or playing the piano -- or both -- and Thomas found himself stuck with a surprise bill the next day.

"I remember that night Karras signed Russ Thomas' name to one of the checks," said linebacker Mike Lucci, who played for the Lions in 1965-73. "They locked the doors. It was one of the great times."

Farr, who suffered a dislocated shoulder in the game, was one of the few players who did not attend the party. Instead, he flew home with Ford by private plane to get his shoulder looked at, an experience he said changed his life.

"That plane flight did wonders for me," said Farr, who worked for Ford Motor Co. during his playing days and bought his first Ford dealership the year after he retired. "It made me dream, dream of owning my own plane. And guess what? I did."

The Lions shut out the Packers, 20-0, to make the playoffs, but Farr's injury and a late Munson interception off the hands of Earl McCullouch were too much to overcome in a 5-0 road playoff loss to a Cowboys team that went on to lose in the Super Bowl.

Sanders collapsed to his knees as Munson's pass glanced of McCulloch's fingers "because I knew it was over then." Farr said his injury "cost us the Super Bowl."

"I still believe that that team, we were destined to win the Super Bowl," Lucci said. "Every time I go to all these functions and everybody's got a Super Bowl ring on, I got the championship ring (I won in) Cleveland, but it's not the same."

In 1991, Fontes thought he had a team good enough to reach the Super Bowl, too, even after the Lions lost to Washington, 45-0, in their season opener. They went on to win a franchise-record 12 games and had Barry Sanders, a future MVP and the best running back in the league.

"I remember losing to Washington in the first game of the season and Barry Sanders didn't play," Fontes said. "I remember I got really thrashed for it by the league because I didn't tell the league he wasn't going to play and everybody was upset about it. But I told Mr. Ford after the game, and he was upset that he didn't know Barry wasn't going to play, and I told him the situation and he understood it.

"And I remember, I said, 'Mr. Ford, come in the locker room.' And he came in the locker room and the players, they were distraught, they were sitting there -- this is a true story -- they were sitting there, taking their uniforms off. And I said, 'Guys, heads up.' And they all came up to the middle of the room where I was, they always did -- they gave me great respect that football team -- and I said, 'Guys, take a look around. Take a look around where you're dressing.' Mr. Ford was in the room. I said, 'Take a look around where you guys are getting dressed.' I said, 'We'll be back here in December to play these guys to go to the Super Bowl.' And it happened, but we lost again."

When the Lions got to Washington in the playoffs, longtime trainer Kent Falb said they appeared overwhelmed by an experience that was new to most in the franchise.

A motorcycle escort took the team bus from the airport to the hotel, and as they drove down Pennsylvania Avenue, Falb said a police officer on the corner flashed the thumbs-up sign that became a rallying cry for the team that year after Mike Utley suffered two fractured vertebrae in his neck and was paralyzed on the field.

After the game, Fontes and Ford shared that moment outside on the curb.

"I looked at him and I looked at his wife and I said, 'Mr. Ford, I'm very sorry and disappointed that we couldn't win this one for you,' " Fontes said. "And he and his wife looked at me both and said, 'That's OK. This is the furthest we've ever come and we're very proud of the team.' "

Loyal to a fault

Never before or since have the Lions, who've had losing seasons in 31 of the last 49 years, been that close to the Super Bowl, and there is one popular theory why.

"Mr. Ford was not a kind of guy who showed his authority," Farr said. "He was very real and genuine and really, really wanted to do the very best thing for the players. But unfortunately, he chose some poor, poor, poor managers. And I can see how it'd be very difficult for Bill to be able to determine -- he was a guy that did not want to exert his power, never have. But some of the people that he'd stick with (were) not very good."

Of all the Lions coaches over the last 50 years, just two, Schmidt and Gary Moeller, who replaced Bobby Ross on an interim basis for the final seven games of the 2000 season, had winning records during their time in Detroit.

Ford has delegated most of the hiring responsibilities during his tenure as owner, but he also has spent plenty of time meeting with or talking regularly to his coaches.

In the '60s and '70s, when he was a vice president at Ford and still heavily involved in day-to-day operations of the automotive company, Ford would show up at team headquarters in Detroit or at the Pontiac Silverdome most evenings driving whatever Honolulu blue model car he had that year.

He made small talk with players after games and assistant coaches in the hallway, and he sat in on draft meetings and the draft itself, lighting a cigarette or taking a swig from his bottle of Coke after every Lions pick.

"He would never come in and say, 'I saw this guy play on film and take this guy,' no," Fontes said. "His (purpose) was informational and he would say, 'OK. If that's what you guys want to do, go ahead.' "

With day-to-day coaching decisions, Ford has always been the same hands-off way.

Ross, who quit the Lions midway through his fourth season because of blood circulation problems in his legs, said Ford allowed him to move training camp to Saginaw Valley State without any hassle and didn't question his decision to bench Scott Mitchell for Charlie Batch. Fontes said it wasn't unusual for him to spend an hour or two talking to Ford after home games. And Rick Forzano, who coached the Lions in 1974-76, said he met with Ford and Thomas every Monday night with Thomas doing "most of the interrogating."

Schmidt, a Hall of Fame linebacker who played on the Lions' 1953 and '57 championship teams before becoming coach, said he watched game tape with Ford during their meetings. One time after a loss to Buffalo, he saw the owner get so angry he kicked an empty water bucket 10 yards across the locker room. Schmidt said, "too bad you weren't kicking today," and Ford snapped back, "don't you ever tell me that again."

"I always knew he was the boss, let's put it that way," Schmidt said. "And you always try to please the boss. But he wasn't Jerry Jones, thank God, and some of the other guys that are similar to Jerry. Although Bill, he'd get mad, too, just like anybody else, but he would I think channel his, how should I say, being (ticked) in a different manner. He would be more business-like as opposed to screaming and hollering."

As close as Ford got with some of his coaches, his greatest allegiance was clearly and most perplexingly to the general managers he hired to run his team.

Thomas was promoted to vice president and GM in 1967 and stayed in that post until he resigned in 1989. The Lions made three playoff appearances and never won a postseason game with him in charge.

In 2001, Ford famously lured Matt Millen out of the broadcast booth and made him president and general manager. Millen signed a five-year contract extension in 2005, after four straight losing seasons, and finally was fired three games into 2008 after steering the Lions to a 31-84 record. That year, the Lions became the first team to go 0-16.

Millen said he met Ford for the first time a couple of years before he was hired, at the behest of Ford Jr. The two spent a day getting to know each other at Ford headquarters in Dearborn and bonded over shared interests in history, reading and football.

"He was very easy to talk to, he's very easy to relate to, he's just got a great sense of humor," Millen said. "We had a lot of common ground on a lot of different things."

Millen said he turned the job down four times before finally agreeing to it after meeting another time with Ford in Florida.

Over the next seven-plus seasons, Millen and Ford saw each other most Mondays, Wednesdays and Sundays, and the two would talk on Fridays or Saturdays. When Ford couldn't make it to the Lions'Allen Park headquarters, Millen would sometimes meet him at his Grosse Pointe Shores home.

"I'd go to his house sometimes and (he'd) ask me if I want a sandwich or something and Mrs. Ford would bring out a couple sandwiches and he would eat the nastiest stuff," Millen said. "He'd have some nasty sandwich like bologna and mayonnaise and I'm like, 'Oh, my gosh, you got to be kidding me.' On pure white bread. And I'd say, 'You eat that?' And he would look at me and say, 'And I love it.' "

Millen, like many who've worked for the Lions, said one of his biggest regrets is not winning more for Ford. Publicly, he doesn't have a good explanation for Ford's allegiance to him, though he insists there's more to it than just their close relationship.

"People say a lot of things because people don't know what goes on," Millen said. "People have no idea. If they knew what really happened in there they would have a lot more praise for Mr. Ford."

An impact on many levels

While many struggle to understand Ford's loyalty, Farr said it's both a detriment to the organization and the beauty of Ford as a person.

"No one can say anything bad about Mr. Ford other than the fact that he's too loyal," Farr said.

Indeed, Ford is widely respected by fellow owners even though he has grown reclusive in recent years and hasn't been a regular at league meetings in about two decades.

He socialized with owners such as Art Modell of the Cleveland Browns in the '60s, and a decade later was one of the most influential voices when the NFL was dealing with bouts of labor strife.

"There were some people that would say, 'Why do we have to change our way we operate so much?' " said Ernie Accorsi, the former New York Giants general manager who spent two years in the league office in the '70s. "He was one of the guys that I thought was a tremendous realist. And if he's going to speak on anything regarding that issue, he wasn't running a deli, you know? He was running one of the great companies in the history of this country, so he had more experience with that particular situation, with auto unions, than anybody had. And he was always reasonable. He would explain that you have collective bargaining now, it's a different world."

Ford picked his spots carefully during general sessions in the "Fish Room" at league headquarters, a room so named because of the mounted swordfish on the wall. But during breaks, Accorsi said he was one of the few owners then-commissioner Pete Rozelle summoned to his office for private meetings.

One instance when Ford did speak up, Accorsi said, is when some owners pushed for the league to begin rotating games on Thanksgiving Day.

"I do remember how vociferous the support was for him on that 'cause he got up and said we've done this when things weren't really going that great and the league just backed him completely," Accorsi said. "They weren't going to let it happen. And neither was the commissioner."

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said Ford is missed at league meetings today but is still held in high regard by his colleagues.

"I've literally been at owners (meetings) when an owner came up and met Mr. Ford for the first time, and the owner was a new owner in the NFL," Jones said. "I was standing right with him and the owner talked about how his granddad had been a Ford dealer in Texas, in the depths of Texas, and he literally teared up when he talked about what Ford, what the brand and what the individuals stood for and had stood for in his evolving to the point that he could buy an NFL football team. He actually teared up and showed that kind of emotion, and that was (former Minnesota Vikings owner) Red McCombs</person>.

"We don't have anyone that can approach that stature in the NFL other than Mr. Ford."

Several former Lions said Ford has had a similar impact on their lives.

Doug English, whose career ended in 1985 after he suffered a ruptured disk in his neck that began to press on his spinal cord, said he helps raise money to fight paralysis through his Lone Star Paralysis Foundation in part because of the care he received as a Lion.

Fontes said Ford was "a cornerstone of a stadium" for him and his family after his brother, Len, died of a heart attack the spring after the Lions reached the NFC title game. Lions offensive lineman Eric Andolsek was killed the same off-season when he was struck by a truck while in his front yard, and Fontes said those two those tragedies greatly affected the team in a down season in 1992.

Falb, the Lions' head trainer in 1967-99, said Ford made a lasting impression on his father-in-law, an Iowa farmer, after a game in 1969 when the two bumped into each other by accident in a hallway. After exchanging pleasantries, they struck up a conversation about farming and hog prices "like two old buddies."

And Jerry Glanville, a Lions assistant in 1974-76, said Ford once helped a player he wouldn't name kick a drug habit by getting him help after he briefly went missing. Millen said Ford did the same for more than one coach during his tenure who battled alcohol problems.

"He'd do anything for you if you had a problem," Glanville said.

A lifelong love

Bill Ford Jr. was surfing eBay one day last year, looking for a Christmas gift for his father, when he came upon an album of pictures a fan put together from old Lions training camps at Cranbrook.

They were candid shots of players, photographs that went back to the '60s, and Ford Jr. decided it was worth a buy.

"I gave it to my dad," Ford Jr. said during a keynote question-and-answer session at the Lions' Courage House dinner last month. "His eyes lit up and as he went through each page, he knew every single player, a story about the player and usually stories about their families. And it was really like time just melted away for him."

Time will do that after 50 years.

Back in the '60s and '70s, Sanders said he and Lem Barney spent hours talking with Ford about topics that would be off limit for most owners now. They asked him how much money he carried in his pocket (usually $100), why he drove himself everywhere rather than employ a chauffeur (he liked driving), and joked that he must have got his powder blue pants and dark blue suit jacket at Kmart even though they knew full well "they probably came from England somewhere."

"He'd just sit right down and just get all involved," Sanders said. "Never saw him angry, never saw him raise his voice, just like he was really interested in what you had to say. It was almost like sometimes he wanted someone to talk to."

A few current Lions have had smaller personal interactions with Ford. Matthew Stafford said he called Ford to say thank-you after he signed his new five-year, $76.5-million contract this summer, and last year Ford took a minute to say hi to Calvin Johnson and a few others on the Lions' indoor practice field.

In 2011, when the Lions clinched a playoff spot, they gave Ford a game ball and broke down the postgame huddle by saying, "Ford Tough."

Ford put his hand in the pile and joined in.

"I don't really know much about him and what he does," receiver Nate Burleson said. "I just, when I see him, it just kind of puts things in perspective that this is his baby at the end of the day and even though we get paid a lot of money and it is the NFL, he looks at this team as something he wants to be proud of."

Jones, the Cowboys' owner, said Ford has reason for that. The Lions are the only cold-weather team to host two Super Bowls, they've built two stadiums in the metropolitan area and have had two of the game's most exciting stars in Johnson and Barry Sanders, who abruptly retired from the game on the eve of 1999 training camp.

"I know at the end of the day how much winning means, but in a different way there's other things that count, too," Jones said. "And you have more control as an owner in some of the areas like getting stadiums and doing things like that than scoring touchdowns and fumbling that ball, those types of things. And the closer he gets to where he can put his thumbprint on it, the more success the Lions have had and the more success he's had."

Still, championships are how teams are judged in the NFL, and for now the closest Ford has gotten is that snowy, lonely street corner in Washington, D.C.

"You'd be surprised how many people are pulling for him because he deserves it," Charlie Sanders said. "He really, really deserves it, and just hold on. Just hold on."

Contact Dave Birkett: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett. Free Press sports writers Carlos Monarrez and Shawn Windsor contributed to this report.

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