The Detroit Lions are an American football team based in Detroit, Michigan. They are currently a member of the NFC North of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL). Originally based in Portsmouth, Ohio and called the Portsmouth Spartans, the team began play in 1929 as an independent professional team, one of many such teams in the Ohio and Scioto River valleys. For the 1930 season, the Spartans formally joined the National Football League (NFL) as the other area independents folded because of the Great Depression. Despite success within the NFL, they could not survive in Portsmouth, then the NFL's smallest city. The team was purchased and moved to Detroit for the 1934 season.

The Lions have won four pre-Super Bowl NFL Championships, the last in 1957, but have yet to qualify for the modern day Super Bowl.

The Detroit Lions began play as the Portsmouth Spartans for the 1929 season, drawing players from defunct independent professional and semi-pro teams in the local Ohio-Kentucky-West Virginia tri-state area. They immediately made an impact by twice defeating the heralded Ironton Tanks, a nearby independent professional team who had regularly played NFL member teams since the early 1920s with considerable success. The successful 1929 season behind them, the Spartans gained full NFL membership for the 1930 season, managing a respectable 5-6-3 in league contests, while the rival Tanks became yet another casualty of the Great Depression.

Also as the Portsmouth Spartans, the franchise played in an unscheduled NFL championship game against the Chicago Bears in 1932. The Spartans-Bears game was played because both teams ended the regular season with the same won-lost percentage (the Spartans finished at 6-1-4 while the Bears were 6-1-6; ties were not reckoned as part of the percentage in the NFL until 1972). Because of blizzard conditions in Chicago, the game was moved from Wrigley Field indoors to Chicago Stadium, which allowed for only an 80-yard field; some have called the contest the first arena football game. The Bears won, 9-0, and the resulting interest led to the establishment of Eastern and Western conferences and a regular championship game beginning in 1933.

Poor revenues and the Great Depression led to the team's move from Portsmouth to Detroit in 1934. That season, Detroit hosted its first ever Thanksgiving Day game, a tradition continued to this day.

Under quarterback Dutch Clark, Detroit won its first NFL championship in 1935.

Detroit enjoyed its greatest success in the 1950s. Led by quarterback Bobby Layne, they won the league championship in 1952, 1953, and 1957. They defeated the Cleveland Browns in each of those NFL Championship Games, but also lost to the Browns in the 1954 Championship Game.

In 1958, after he had led the Lions to three NFL Championships and provided Detroit nearly a decade of Hall of Fame play, the Lions traded Bobby Layne. Bobby was injured during the last championship season, and the Lions thought he was through and wanted to get what they could for him. According to legend, as he was leaving for Pittsburgh, Bobby said that Detroit "would not win for 50 years." Since this time, the Lions have not won another championship and have only a single playoff game win. Some have attributed the Lions' subsequent 49 years of futility to the "Curse of Bobby Layne."

Notably, the Lions succeeded in one of the greatest comeback victories in NFL postseason history. Trailing the San Francisco 49ers 27-7 in the 3rd quarter of the 1957 Western Conference Playoff game, Lions quarterback Tobin Rote rallied the team back with 24 unanswered points to beat the 49ers 31-27 at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco. The Lions have experienced only one postseason win since.

On January 7, 1961, the Lions defeated the Browns 17-16 in the first-ever Playoff Bowl matching the runners-up from the two conferences into which the NFL was divided at the time (the Lions also appeared in the game in both of the next two years pursuant to their having finished second to the Green Bay Packers in the Western Conference in all three seasons; the Playoff Bowl was abolished in 1970 when the merger of the NFL and AFL went into full effect).

On Thanksgiving day, November 28, 1974, after over 35 years, the Lions played their final game in Tiger Stadium, where they lost to the Denver Broncos 31-27 in front of 51,157, amidst snow flurries and a 21 point Broncos 3rd quarter. The football field ran mostly in the outfield from the right field line to left center field parallel with the third base line. The benches for both the Lions and their opponents were on the outfield side of the field. The Lions have played their home games indoors ever since.

The Lions made the playoffs only once in the '70s, losing a defensive struggle to the Dallas Cowboys, 5-0, in 1970. The team went through a string of average seasons, finishing 2nd or 3rd in the division in every season from 1970 through 1978. Finally, in 1979, the team finished with a 2-14 record, and thus earned the first pick in the following draft.

In 1980, the Lions drafted running back Billy Sims with the first overall pick in the NFL Draft. The Lions made the playoffs in 1982 and 1983, winning the division in the latter season. However, Sims suffered a career-ending knee injury in 1984, and the team would not finish with a record above .500 for the rest of the decade.

The 1990s were "The Barry Sanders Show" in Detroit. During his first season after being drafted in 1989, Sanders missed the NFL rushing title by 10 yards...because he chose not to go back into the game when the Lions already had the game won. According to Wayne Fontes, when he offered Sanders the chance to gain the yardage and the rushing title, Sanders declined, reportedly saying, "Coach, let's just win it (the game) and go home."

In the playoffs, the Lions got their only postseason victory since 1957, when they defeated the Dallas Cowboys 38-6 at the Silverdome. They lost to the Redskins in the NFC Championship Game, 41-10. This was the first time a team that had been shut out in its opener had reached the conference title round.

In 1997, Barry Sanders ran for 2,053 rushing yards. Sanders was one of the greatest running backs ever to play in the NFL. At the time, his career total rushing 15,269 yards was second only to Walter Payton's 16,726 yards and he joined Jim Brown as the only players among the NFL's 50 all-time rushing leaders to average 5 yards a carry, so when he retired abruptly after the 1998 season, his absence left a hole in the roster that may never be filled.

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