Lions Owner OK With Real Lion on Sidelines Alongside Dan Campbell as Detroit Legend Wants It Secured

The one missed field goal. That’s probably the only thing most Lions fans would remember today about the 1983 NFC Championship game. Detroit, after a slow 1-4 start to the season, rallied 9-7 to the top of the NFC Central and entered that divisional clash. Even though they ultimately fell short 24-23 against the San Francisco 49ers, their confidence in the momentum entering Candlestick Park was palpable. And how! The then-HC Monte Clark brought an alpha to join the pride. Announcers Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen wondered out loud, “There is a real Lion on the field, which I have a lot of questions about that.” 42 years have passed since, and HC Dan Campbell too was raring to take a bite of that action in his very first year in Detroit. 

So, in 2021, Campbell finally marched into Lions owner Sheila Ford’s office with what he thought was “an outstanding idea,” and requested a pet Lion to keep at the team’s Allen Park practice facility. “We’re going somewhere. The problem, I don’t know if PETA’s going to allow that.” While his wild ideas seemed to have simmered down over the years, not everyone has forgotten about them. At the Up & Adams Show, host Kay Adams probed the Lions legend Calvin Johnson for his thoughts on the topic.

On Friday’s episode, the host brought up Campbell’s idea: “Did you hear that Dan Campbell wants to have a real Lion on the sidelines?… Apparently, Sheila Ford has no problem with it… How would that affect the players in any way? What do you think of that?”

But Johnson? Ah, the man just brushed aside the idea, saying, “Alright. Well, I’m keeping my b— in the stands… I’m sure the players would be juiced up. Maybe a little fear creep in, just making sure that thing is secure. But oh man, that I’m sure the guy’s got to be turned up, especially if that thing roars a little bit.” That’s right. It would be interesting to watch, but at the same time, as Adams put it, that will be “absolutely horrifying.”

While Johnson shrugged off the idea as dangerous, the head coach is bullish. Four years ago, in an episode of Pardon My Take podcast, Dan Campbell didn’t hold his mind train. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to do it, but I would love to literally just have a pet lion. Just a legit pet lion on a big-a– chain and he really is my pet. We just walk around the building, we go out to practice, we’re at seven-on-seven, we’re behind the kicker when he’s kicking.” If you think he was joking, he kind of was. But also kind of wasn’t. The Lions’ owner is supportive of the idea from the minute she first heard it.

As per reports, they even dabbled with the idea and presented it to the NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell. The base? Existing approvals of real mascots. The league has approved a surprising number of live mascots earlier. Thunder III (the Broncos’ stunning white Arabian horse) and Taima (the Seahawks’ augur buzzard) that literally leads the team out of the tunnel and well, has harassed a fan in 2021 make the cut. So maybe a lion for Detroit isn’t the safest decision?

In American memory, the visuals of Mike Tyson playing with his tigers are still fresh. But the coach took motivation from somewhere else. North Alabama, a Division I program, had a tradition to keep a real lion (Leo III) on campus. So the precedent, while rare, isn’t nonexistent. But for the King of the Jungle in a crowd of 50k+, the plan was off limits. Outrageous is a small word to describe it in words!

Of course, the thought came after he had tried to personify the old saying, “a lion does not concern itself with the opinions of sheep” with taxidermized sheep at the front of the Lions practice facility and instruct his players to not look at them. While there have been no taxidermized sheep nor Lions so far, is it really a possibility?

Will Dan Campbell be allowed to bring a lion to the NFL?

Following common sense, the league declined to allow Dan Campbell to have a real lion. But did that stop Campbell? Nope! In a 2023 Pardon My Take podcast, he brought the idea back, “Sheila, she had no problem with it, but the league apparently frowns on those types of things. I’m not gonna point fingers at Roger (Goodell) on this. I’m just gonna say the league frowns upon that, let’s just say that.” PETA is definitely not allowing this, and the NFL shot it down long ago.

“Sheila, she had no problem with it, but the league apparently frowns on those types of things,” the coach added. Even after four years, the idea is still living in the coach’s mind despite picking the hobby of gardening. The HC even admitted to giving it some piece of his own arm, just to get PETA’s green light. In 2021, he told, “Even though we would take great care of it. It would be fed well, it would be petted, it would be manicured. I might end up losing an arm because of it, but that would be even better because it would validate what, this is a freaking, this a creature now. This is an animal. This thing, this is from the wild.”

All this to ensure that players give their all. And they do. The Lions are gritty and ferocious on the field. Despite that, playing on the field with an actual beast of nature, which is looking at the players from the sidelines. That’s one idea… For now, seems like Dan Campbell’s pet Lion dream isn’t likely to die soon, no matter how many times the NFL says no.