By Jeff Moss
August 2, 2011
DetroitSportsRag@gmail.com
Like most of you reading this column, I can remember exactly where I was when the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up to bits all over Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Because I had mononucleosis, I was home from school and was watching the catastrophic event live on CNN. It was also the reason I batted .177 in Little League that year.
(Although most of my fellow classmates at Orchard Lake Middle School thought I was faking the illness because the Challenger disaster occurred the DAY AFTER Super Bowl XX. You see, I moronically booked every 8th graders’ bet on the Bears at -17 ½ only to watch Chicago destroy the Patriots 46-10. Worst. Bookie. Ever. Poor Bar Mitzvah money.)
When Al-Qaeda attacked the USA on the morning of Tuesday September 11, 2001 I was on my way to Clio to inspect a house fire and was listening to Howard Stern on 97.1 discuss the evening he almost banged Pamela Anderson.
I can pretty much remember with great detail where I was and what I was doing at the time of every monumental TRAGIC EVENT that has occurred in the last 30 plus years of my life.
Which is why I can tell you with great certainty precisely what I was doing at around 4 pm on April 18, 1998. I was on my way back from Northville Downs and heading to my grandparents’ house when I passed the corner of 12 Mile Road and Middlebelt.
And while I was driving right by Ginopolis on the Grill, I heard Paul Tagliabue announce on my AM radio dial the following:
“With the 20th pick in the 1998 NFL Draft, the Detroit Lions select Terry Fair …. cornerback from Tennessee.”
And I know what you are mumbling right now to yourself … “Moss, how can you possibly compare the Challenger explosion and 4,000 innocent people perishing on 9/11 to the Lions making a bad draft pick?”
You are right, I shouldn’t lump them together because the Lions selection of Terry Fair over Randy Moss has affected me way more than either of those two events.
I mean, 9/11 only caused me to have to get to the airport a little earlier, deal with a little groping at security and now I can’t get on a plane with a bottle of Prell.
The Terry Fair abomination? That has absolutely RUINED my fall Sundays for the last 13 freaking years while basically killing my love for the Detroit Lions for the better part of three decades.
I have been meaning to write this column for a while, but there was no impetus to do so until this week when my brother from another mother decided to call it a career.
It is my thesis statement that the Lions decision to select a midget cornerback/return man over the Marshall Freak of Nature was the SINGLE WORST DECISION IN DETROIT SPORTS HISTORY.
And I am not talking about some sort of hysterical hindsight here. Like the Lions should have taken Tom Brady in the first round or the Pistons should have traded up to select Michael Jordan.
No, I am talking about an EXTEMELY PLAUSIBLE MOVE that a MAJORITY of the fan base wanted to see happen at the TIME of the decision.
And while Detroiters have witnessed their fair share of awfulness (the Adam Oates-Bernie Federko debacle, the Darko pick, Mike Ilitch’s hiring of Randy Smith, etc.), nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING compares to Bobby Ross’s categorically indefensible fuckup in passing on Moss.
Let’s take an in-depth look at the circumstances revolving around the Lions failure to pick Moss way back when.
The team was coming off a decent 9-7 year in 1997 which is why comparatively speaking they had a low draft pick that year. Coincidentally enough, the Vikings were also coming off a 9-7 season, but a tiebreaker gave Detroit the 20th pick and the Vikes the 21st.
And in typical Lions fashion, they couldn’t even capitalize on that serendipity. After Hard-Ass Ross inexplicably passed on Moss, Dennis Green couldn’t wait to select the wide receiver. Shit, I wasn’t even to 13 Mile and Middlebelt before that pick came in.
So not only did the Lions take an undersized corner, they allowed a divisional rival to pick the future Hall of Famer with the next pick causing an immediate mismatch on the field two times a year.
And predictably in 1998 the two 9 and 7 teams from the previous season went in completely divergent directions. With the help of Moss the Vikes went 15-1 and got to the NFC Championship. The Lions? They lost 11 of their 16 games.
It would have been horrid enough if the failure to draft Moss ONLY led to the Lions sucking the next year while their divisional companion assembled one of the greatest offenses in the history of the league.
After the team’s 5-11 season, Detroit’s greatest gridiron star EVER finally had enough. Following the ’98 season Barry Sanders never played another game for the team. After years of not saying much about his retirement, Barry finally admitted in his autobiography that the team’s losing culture and the hopelessness of the situation caused him to call it quits.
Do you think Barry would have felt the same way about the team’s future if they drafted a guy who in 1998 caught 17 TOUCHDOWNS AND PILED UP 1,313 RECEIVING YARDS!!!!!
I am pretty sure with Moss on the field, opposing defenses would have had a hard time putting eight men in the box™ (Bree Olsen) to stop #20.
And it is a fair assumption that if the Lions would have taken Moss and employed the most explosive RB and the most dynamic WR in NFL history, Barry would have been at training camp in 1998 and not in London hiding from Curt Sylvester, Mike O’Hara and Tom Kowalski.
Seriously, the thought of how close Detroit came to having Moss and Sanders on the same field gives me chest pains to this date.
It would be like a band having John Lennon and Paul McCartney in it. Oh wait …..
And even Scott Mitchell or Charlie Batch would have been able to quarterback an offense featuring Herman Moore, Randy Moss and Barry Sanders. Hell, I am pretty sure Bobby Layne could have led that team and he had been dead for 12 years.
And it wasn’t like the Lions didn’t NEED a receiver in that ’98 draft. They freaking took one in the second round!!!!! And who among us can forget the Germaine Crowell Era? (Well, me obviously, because according to NFL.com there is no “i” in his first name.)
But the General wanted nothing to do with Moss’s bong or his character issues. So he passed on him and one fax to a Wichita newspaper later my feelings for our hometown football team changed forever.
Only the limousine accident involving Vladimir Konstantinov which rendered the former defenseman permanently disabled can compare to the disappointment and depression I experienced when Barry quit.
Even typing this column and reliving all of this is making my blood boil.
But the Butterfly Effect didn’t end with Barry’s sudden retirement.
I firmly maintain that if Detroit would have called Moss’s name thirteen years ago that:
A) The Heisman trophy winner would have stayed with the team and eviscerated the all-time NFL rushing record. Instead of that fraud Emmitt Smith holding the crown, Detroit would have been able to celebrate Sanders’ career achievement. A record that probably never would have been broken if #20 stuck around for another two or three years.
B) While there is no guarantee that the Lions would have won the Super Bowl (William Clay Ford, Sr. would still have owned the team), they surely would have been a playoff team with Moss on the squad.
C) And because they would have been a contender in the late 90s and early part of this century, the FORD FAMILY WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN FORCED TO MAKE A PANIC MOVE AND HIRE A GENERAL MANAGER WITH ZERO FRONT-OFFICE EXPERIENCE!!!!!!
Yep, if you go back in time and change that one draft pick, I am HIGHLY confident that the Matt Millen Massacre never occurs.
The 31-81 record? Never happens.
No Lions player ever gets called a “devout coward.”
Johnny Morton never has to endure Millen’s homophobic “faggot” blasts.
The team never violates the “Rooney Rule.”
And Lions fans aren’t subjected to a decade of football misery comparable to the Dark Ages.
Can someone please develop a damn flux capacitor?!?!?!!?
And at this point you are probably saying to yourself, “Yes it was bad and yes the screwed-up selection cost us a chance to see Barry break the rushing record and yeah it might even have led to the Millen hiring, but, hey, at least NOBODY DIED.”
Well, think again.
After the ’98 5-11 season, the Lions were awarded the ninth pick in the 1999 Entry Draft. Because they were so awful in Barry’s final season they had the privilege of selecting USC standout linebacker Chris Claiborne with their first pick.
Now, Claiborne was from San Diego and attended Southern Cal so if he wouldn’t have been drafted by the Lions he OBVIOUSLY never would have made Detroit his home.
But when Chris had to come to the Motor City, his father Emmitt decided to move with his son. And in the spring of 2000, Emmitt Claiborne was gunned down in an apparent robbery outside an apartment building on DETROIT’s northwest side.
So if Moss would have been drafted by the Lions, they probably win 10 or 11 games in ’98 and Chris Claiborne would NEVER have been available when the Lions drafted!!!
Yes, I will say it. Bobby Ross murdered Emmitt Claiborne!!!!! If not for the asinine selection of Fair over Moss, Chris’s dad would probably be alive to this day.
Nothing in Detroit sports history is comparable to this chain of events that never should have occurred.
The Federko for Oates trade? Hahahaha.
It MIGHT have been just as bad as the Moss snub IF:
1) Steve Yzerman retired the following season because he couldn’t handle the Wings “culture of losing.”
2) A disenfranchised Mike Ilitch turned the keys to the team over to Mike Milbury.
3) Keith Primeau’s pops got murdered in a drug deal gone bad at the Cass Corridor.
The Darko Milicic selection over Carmelo Anthony and Chris Bosh?
Yeah, it was horrible in hindsight. But the Pistons won the NBA title the year they picked “Total Puke Garbage” and got to a Game 7 against the Spurs the next season.
There is nothing comparable to the tragedy of the 1998 NFL Draft. Zilch!!!!!
The whole scenario that occurred from the minute that Ross wanted no part of #84 was something out of a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book.
If the author was Stephen King.
I’ve gotta wrap this column up because I think I am going to be ill all over my laptop.
Now excuse me while I make the six minute drive to Lake Orchard and plunge my CTS into the abyss.