About Detroit Lions
National Football League
The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit. The Lions compete in the National Football League as a member of the National Football Conference North Division. The team plays their home games at Ford Field in Downtown Detroit.
The franchise was founded in Portsmouth, Ohio as the Portsmouth Spartans and joined the NFL on July 12, 1930. Amid financial struggles, the franchise was relocated to Detroit in 1934 and renamed the Lions in reference to the city's Major League Baseball franchise, the Detroit Tigers.
The Lions won four NFL Championship Games between 1935 and 1957. Following the 1957 championship, the franchise did not win a playoff game until the 1991 season and did not win another until the 2023 season. They are the only franchise operational for the entirety of the Super Bowl era to not appear in the Super Bowl.
Aside from a brief change to scarlet and black from 1948 to 1950 instituted by then head coach Bo McMillin, which was influenced by his years as coach at Indiana, the Lions' uniforms have basically remained the same since they moved to Detroit in 1934–silver helmets, silver pants, and either blue or white jerseys.
Glenn Presnell, the then last surviving member of the 1934 Lions, recalled that after the Portsmouth Spartans relocated to Detroit, team owner George A. Richards asked him and his wife to pick the Lions' colors from combinations that included red and white, orange and black, and blue and silver. The Presnells liked blue and silver the best, so Richards selected it. The blue used by the Lions is officially known as "Honolulu blue", which is inspired by the color of the waves off the coast of Hawaii.
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