If you say "lion" in Africa it inspires both respect and fear. If you say "lion" in the NFL it inspires a shrug and a laugh as one recollects the various mishaps of Detroit's franchise over the years. Then in 2003 it seemed like that was all going to change.

Michigan's own Steve Mariuci was suddenly available. He had rather successfully coached the 49's since 1997 and lead them to the playoffs four times. Then San Francisco let him go in a great purge of the underachieving organization. So the Lion's Matt Millen scooped him up and paid a hefty fine for focusing in on Mariuci and neglecting minority coaches.

In 2003 it looked like the Lions might finally live up to their name. Finally, the Lions had a good coach who could develop young talent and help turn around a long faltering franchise. However, even as he hired Mariuci to be the Lions' savior Millen retained the right to make most personnel decisions, including draft picks. This is curious considering the reason the 'Niners claimed they let Mariuci go was because Steve-o wanted more control over personnel (maybe Terrell Owens had something to do with that...just throwing that out there).

So here we are in 2005 and the Lions are the same disaster they've always been. Joey Harrington has been replaced by a veteran QB who certainly isn't capable of carrying the team, the Lions receiving core is underachieving (to put it nicely), and its defense is struggling. So after signing all this "talent" and trying to piece a team together with the flavor of the month the Lions continue to lag in the NFL cellar. So they did the logical thing: fire the head coach.

Now Matt Millen will continue to select the players he saw highlights of on TV and then be dumbfounded when a coach can't stitch the team together. Matt Millen has somehow effectively shifted the blame for the Lions failure off of him and "his players" and onto the head coach. Unfortunately for Steve he's been weaseled out of a job while the real culprit has retained his cushy job. Mariuci will land on his feet next year in a place like Baltimore or Houston (though they're more of a mess than Detroit) while the Lions will continue to languish.

The Lions will never be a winning team unless they buy into Bill Parcells' axiom:  "If they want you to cook the dinner, they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries." And they won't do that until Matt Millen is shown the door.