Ok, so the dream scenario comes from the mind of ESPN.com Page 2 writer David Fleming, a Detroit area native, but I read that, and thought about the reactions my friends out here in cheeseland had to the Packers winning it all last year, and it got me thinking about how it might actually feel if the Lions were to win the Super Bowl. I'm 36 now, I've been chained to the bandwagon these last 31 years, from the earliest days of Billy Sims though 0-16, and now in this new era of hope, and honestly in the last 15 years, ever since that 58-37 playoff debacle at the hands of the Eagles, I've never allowed myself to imagine that moment.

There's something about this group, this new regime, that has those walls breaking down, and alowing just a bit of that what if to creep in there. Is it wishful thinking? This year, most probably. I mean, the Lions haven't gone through that fire, haven't paid their dues (whatever the hell that means), and just probably don't have the pieces to get the ultimate job done. But there's enough there to make dreaming just a little about the future possible. Is it a dangerous thing, this hope? Of course it is. As Lions fans, we've had countless hopes dashed, most recently when the 6-2 halfway mark in 2007 gave way to a sickening 1-23 stretch, including that historic season. I know that. You know that. But, dammit, if I, a cynic and a pessimist, can't squash that tiny ray of hope....

And if it comes to pass, I kind of hope that it happens the way Fleming describes it in his fantasy, not necessarily because I want the good people of Buffalo to suffer any more, but because it will have happened in a method diametrically opposite from all those Lions game in the past, where they pulled defeat out of the jaws of victory. Fleming is right to point to last Sunday's game as a possible signpost for what this team has to offer, for the good things that may lie ahead, because in previous years, there's no way in hell the Lions pull that out.

But this squad did go into the hellhole known as the Metrodome, fell behind by 20 on the road, and still won the game. It's the kind of performance that allows me to read Fleming's offering, and not feel like puking at the utter futility of it. It makes me imagine a day when William Clay Ford might actually hold the Lombardi Trophy, and all of use might actually forgive him for 50 years of torture,

Hope's a dangerous, dangerous animal..but it's alive in my heart, and those of a lot of Lions fans.