When my flight landed in Detroit in late January 2006, the idea of playing a Super Bowl there seemed like a cruel joke.
The city was encased in sleet and snow, and its NFL team might as well have been stuck in the Ice Age.
The Lions had fired coach Steve Mariucci after a 4-7 start and replaced him with defensive coordinator Dick Jauron, who went 1-4 over the final five weeks of the season.
The quarterback was Joey Harrington, who was entering the death throes of a forgettable six-year professional career (career record: 26-50; career passer rating: 69.4).
The franchise had never played in a Super Bowl and had posted winning records only seven times in its previous 22 seasons.
The auto industry was well into its decline at that point and would shed some 150,000 jobs between 2000 and 2008, and Detroit's general socioeconomic doom and gloom was inherently tied to its chronically underachieving football team.
It seemed far more likely at that point that the Lions would someday produce the NFL's first 0-16 regular-season record than play for a championship.
That winless mark, and the civic shame that comes along with it, arrived three years later in 2008, when the Lions were outscored 517-268 behind an offense quarterbacked by the three-headed ogre of Dan Orlovsky (0-7), Daunte Culpepper (0-5) and Jon Kitna (0-4).
So it was somehow fitting that a few days before the Pittsburgh Steelers and Seattle Seahawks met in Super Bowl XL, a winter storm swept through, driving fans inside, grinding transportation to a crawl and providing an Armageddon-like backdrop to the league's most sad-sack city.
As an added insult, the day before the game my laptop computer died, forcing me to take a cab ride through the blizzard to buy another one.
These days, my laptop's doing quite well, thank you. And so are the Lions, who are in the midst of one of the league's all-time turnarounds.
There is no more dynamic scoring combination in football right now than quarterback Matthew Stafford (13 touchdowns, 101.4 passer rating in five games this season) and wide receiver Calvin Johnson (21 touchdown receptions since the start of 2010).
The defense has forced 11 turnovers in five games, and the offense has given it away only four times.
The result is a stunning 5-0 start for the Lions heading into today's showdown against the once-beat San Francisco 49ers at Ford Field.
Even if they lose today, coach Jim Schwartz's team has established itself as a contender with road wins in Tampa and Dallas and a Monday Night home victory over the Bears.
Detroit's turnaround can be traced to a series of good drafts (most notably Johnson in 2007, Stafford in 2009 and All-Pro defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh in 2010), a bold coaching hire (Schwartz was plucked from former Titans coach Jeff Fisher's staff over Leslie Frazier, Steve Spagnuolo and Ron Rivera), and owner William Clay Ford's decision to part ways with polarizing former team President Matt Millen in 2008.
This team is young, it's confident and it's going to be around for a while.
That's great news for the NFL, which for some time now has been selling the idea of competitive parity to its teams and fans.
If the Lions can rise from the ashes, then, theoretically, so can other mid-market rust-belt franchises like the Browns and Bills (who just happen to be executing their own renaissance with a 4-1 start that includes huge home wins over the Patriots and Eagles).
Looking back almost six years, it was tough to see then how playing a bad-weather Super Bowl in a toxic football city made sense for the NFL and its fans.
But these new-look Lions with their wins and young stars? They are good news for the league, and symbols of hope for its most dysfunctional teams.
JOHN DUDLEY can be reached at 870-1677 or john.dudley@timesnews.com .
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