The Lions Finally Roar

The Ford Family, the Detroit Lions, and the Road to Redemption in the NFL

Bill Morris

The epic and tumultuous story of the Lions, the Ford family, the city of Detroit—and how all three have come together on the cusp of a new era.

On Nov. 22, 1963, William Clay Ford, the youngest grandson of auto pioneer Henry Ford, made a successful bid to buy the Detroit Lions of the National Football League for the unheard-of sum of $6 million. As Ford and his entourage settled down to a celebratory luncheon, their waitress delivered the news that President John F. Kennedy had been shot dead in Dallas.

"Born under a bad sign" is how Bill Ford’s ownership of the Lions began. After a decade of supremacy, Ford led the team on a half-century slog of mediocrity, the fruit of his mercurial nature and undying loyalty to the wrong people. The Lions Finally Roar is bursting with the colorful ruffians who have made the team one of America’s most beloved sports franchises despite its years of futility. Readers meet the hell-raising quarterback Bobby Layne, who is said to have put a curse on the team after he was traded to Pittsburgh; the rock-solid linebacker and future coach Joe Schmidt; the stars Charlie Sanders, Matthew Stafford, Calvin Johnson and, most spectacularly, Barry Sanders, the greatest running back in the history of the game, who grew so disgusted with losing and mismanagement that he walked away when he was on the threshold of shattering the NFL’s all-time rushing record.

But the tide is finally turning. The Lions Finally Roar culminates with the team’s recent turnaround and playoff run under the stewardship of Bill Ford’s daughter, Sheila Ford Hamp. Hamp hired savvy general manager Brad Holmes and charismatic coach Dan Campbell—and has stood behind them as they methodically returned the team to the ranks of the league’s elite and, at long last, have made the Lions roar.

Deeply researched and briskly written, The Lions Finally Roar is about much more than football. It explores the American class system, the linked histories of Detroit and its auto and music industries, the city’s changing racial dynamics, the rising power of television, and how all of it played into the NFL’s transformation from a fall sport into the multi-billion dollar, year-round entertainment behemoth that is a cornerstone of American popular culture.

Bill Morris is the author of the novels Motor City and All Souls' Day.  He is currently a staff writer with the online literary magazine The Millions, and his writing has appeared in Granta, the New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, L.A. Weekly, Popular Mechanics and numerous other newspapers and magazines.  Bill grew up in Detroit and now lives in New York City.

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Endorsements & Reviews

“A very readable history about a lot more than the hapless team from Detroit. Because the Lions have long been owned by the Ford family, we learn much about the palace intrigues inside Ford Motor Co., especially those of William Clay Ford. Mr. Morris also gives readers a history of the automobile industry, from its heyday in the 1950s to the beginnings of its struggles in the 1970s. And because it’s Detroit, Mr. Morris delves into the racial politics and white flight that have made the city the symbol of American urban decay. This year, the Lions are considered one of the top three teams going into the new season. ‘The turnaround,’ Mr. Morris writes, ‘given all the history and all the misery that came before it, was beyond an astonishment. It was very nearly a miracle.'" The Wall Street Journal

“I loved this book; and I’m not even a football fan. The Lions Finally Roar is to football what Roger Kahn’s The Boys of Summer is to baseball. You don’t have to be a follower of sports to find inspiration and entertainment in this superb history of American culture and of the rebirth of a great city.” Loren D. Estleman, author of the Amos Walker series

“A masterly chronicle of the most hapless team in football. Funny, insightful, and, for a long-suffering Lions fan like myself, surprisingly fun to read. A wise and winning book that’s a must for any fan of the game.” TAYLOR PLIMPTON, sportswriter and author of Notes from the Night: A Life After Dark

“From the long-lasting curse of Bobby Layne and the depths of the Matt Millen era into today’s sunlight as one of the NFL’s most promising teams, Bill Morris takes his readers on a rollicking journey. A splendid writer, astute chronicler of Detroit’s rich history, and son of Bill Ford’s personal ‘PR guy,’ Morris was the perfect author to tell this dramatic tale.” DAVID MARANISS, author of When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi

“I don’t like sports. I particularly don’t like football. Which is why it’s so surprising how much I loved The Lions Finally Roar. Maybe it’s because it’s also a story of Detroit, which I do love, despite its complicated, crumbling, terrible, glorious, corrupt, iconoclastic, hubristic history. Morris gives us the low-down on how the team and the city could gradually rise from the ashes and finally find its own unique brand of redemption.” MICHAEL ZADOORIAN, author of The Leisure Seeker

“The ‘hero’s journey’ has always been one fraught with incalculable danger, crushing failure and injurious self-doubt. Nowhere is this truer than the decades-long epic journey of the Detroit Lions. Bill Morris brilliantly documents this journey with fascinating insights, sometimes scathing humor and impenetrable detail that gives us a grid-iron-level look at our Detroit Lions. And I say ‘our Detroit Lions’ because, like a tragic Greek play, Detroiters have always been the chorus singing in the worst of seasons, ‘We believe in you!’” Stephen Mack Jones, bestselling author of August Snow and Deus X

“Things really are turning around for the Detroit Lions. Not only is this recently woeful team must-see TV for the first time since Barry Sanders’ retirement, they are the subject of the best new sports book I’ve read in years. Maybe it’s no coincidence that the Lions have inspired two great football epics –– tough seasons make good literature –– as George Plimpton's Paper Lion is now joined in the motor city pantheon by Bill Morris’s The Lions Finally Roar. This is a truly excellent book, and, like only the best sports books, is about far more than the team or the game. It’s about the city and its people, from the auto industry aristocrats to the Strohs besotted lunatics in the cheap seats. Now that the Lions finally have their gridiron scribe, there will be no stopping them –– a realization not easy for a Bears fan like myself. Here's hoping Caleb Williams pans out!” Rich Coen, author of Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football

Praise for Bill Morris

"[Morris] does a superb job of recounting a life amid a series of significant decades. His imaginative 'mongrel' approach—a mix of…biography, history, reportage, memoir, autobiography, and, when the record runs thin, speculation that flirts with fiction—is successful. An entertaining combination of domestic and world history." Kirkus, Starred Review

“A wonderfully atmospheric novel that captures time and place, an illumination of a pivotal point in history. Bill Morris is an exceptionally gifted and savvy writer. The comparison to Graham Greene is fully merited.” Nelson DeMille

“Switching between Bledsoe and Doyle’s perspectives allows for a crackling pace, and Mr. Morris clearly loves the nooks and crannies of his hometown Detroit the way George Pelecanos loves Washington." The New York Times