By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
October 12, 2015
For months now I have used both this space and my Twitter feed to mock the notion that the Detroit Lions are actually being run by the widow of William Clay Ford, Sr. But based on recent public comments by Bill Ford, Jr. and on inside information the DSR has gleaned, we are fairly certain that Ford, Jr. has indeed been “Denise Ilitch’d” out of Allen Park.
There are three key pieces of information to contemplate when considering who is actually calling the shots for this pathetic 0-and-5 organization. A lot of it is already in the public domain.
Here is what we know:
1) In an interview last week on WJR, Ford, Jr. stated the following:
She (Martha Ford) is in charge. She absolutely is. Since my father passed away over a year ago, my mother is in charge and she makes all the decisions.”
Many Lions fans have been incredulous that a 90-year-old woman who never said boo about the franchise when her husband was alive could actually be running the show, but it appears to be true.
Even though Ford, Jr. has been a ghost lately when it comes to the Lions; even though Martha is now at league meetings representing the team; even though Jim Caldwell referenced her specifically as being upset enough over the referee error in Seattle to complain to the NFL; even though the team propaganda site has gone to great lengths to make it appear as though Martha is in control …… most Lions fans refused to accept this information at face value.
And why should they? It is preposterous that Ford, Jr. — a man who once navigated Ford Motor Company out of peril — has been passed over for an elderly woman born at third base who must think she hit a triple up the gap.
In fact, the only contribution from Martha Ford between 1963 and 2014 regarding the Lions was her edict to WCF, Sr. that the team COULD NOT have cheerleaders. That’s the sum total of her involvement prior to the old man kicking it.
2) On September 1, 2015, Detroit News beat writer Josh Katzenstein posted an article stating that Lions CFO Luis Perez had resigned from his post.
Who is Luis Perez? Well, he was a well-respected sports exec and not another Ford Family leech. This is lifted directly from Katzenstein’s article:
One of the team’s senior vice presidents, the Lions hired Perez in 2011 after he’d spent the previous seven years at Modell Ventures. He also had more than a decade of experience in professional sports, working for teams like the New York Knicks, New York Rangers, Philadelphia Phillies and Baltimore Ravens.
So why did one of the franchise’s senior execs — and an outside voice at that — quit on the verge of the 2015 NFL season commencing?
3) Here is where it gets VERY interesting. A source close to the situation has advised us that Perez was fed up with the direction of the team. And which direction was that? One without Bill Ford, Jr.
The DSR has been told that when Martha Ford took over the reins from her deceased husband, she decided that Bill Ford, Jr. had enough on his plate with his responsibilities at FOMOCO.
Furthermore, two of Bill Ford’s sisters had absolutely nothing going on at all so Martha decided to become the team’s decision-maker with those two daughters assisting her in running a BILLION-DOLLAR operation.
(Bill has three sisters. They are Martha Park Morse, Sheila Firestone Hamp and Elizabeth Hudson Ford. We have not yet been able to confirm which two of the three are in the cabal with Martha to shut Bill out. We are working on it.)
So, believe Bill Ford, Jr. when he states that he isn’t in power. He is telling the truth and is not happy about it.
For many years Lions fans held out hope that once William Fredo Ford, Sr. died, Bill, Jr. would come in as our knight in shining armor and run this organization as a REAL professional outfit and not as some dysfunctional family business manned by drunk friends of the old man.
The example of the death of Bill Wirtz and the ascension of Rocky Wirtz in Chicago with the recent thrice Stanley Cup champion Blackhawks was mentioned again and again.
And even though that idea had lost some of its luster — Ford, Jr.’s hand in the Matt Millen era certainly was an ominous sign — there were still many Lions fans holding out hope that the “kid” with a brain would be our salvation.
Apparently, Ford, Jr. has never even had the chance to become the next Rocky Wirtz. Instead, he has been usurped by his mother, who was born before the Great Depression and by two of his sisters who, it would appear, needed a hobby. I guess yoga classes and mahjong weren’t doing the trick.
And Team President Tom Lewand’s role in all of this? We are told by a source that Lewand knows the franchise should be under Bill Ford, Jr.’s control but Lewand is more worried about saving his own job than he is about doing the right thing. So he is supposedly in major ass-kissing mode.
And you thought the team on the field was a mess?