Six years ago to this day, Pride of Detroit officially launched. At the time, the Detroit Lions were coming off of a 5-11 season, and a couple days later they used their first-round pick on linebacker Ernie Sims. Also at the time, I was merely a sophomore in high school. To say the least, things have changed quite a bit since then.
For the Lions, they are now far from the laughingstock of the NFL. The team ended its playoff drought this past season, and hope and optimism are extremely high thanks to the job Martin Mayhew and company have done in recent years. It would be an understatement to say that writing about the team nowadays is quite a bit more fun than back in the final years of the Matt Millen era.
Pride of Detroit's sixth birthday comes at a very interesting time for me personally. I just got back from one commencement ceremony, and tomorrow I will officially graduate from the University of Michigan. It's incredibly hard to believe just how quickly the past four years have gone by, and although it's bittersweet for my time in college to come to end, I certainly won't miss having to balance writing about the Lions with going to class, writing papers and studying.
Six years ago, I never could have imagined that this blog would be where it's at today. We just recently went over the 18,000,000-page view mark, and we also recently had our 5,000th front-page post, our 6,400th FanPost and our 1,000th FanShot. (I'd love to see how many comments we've had over the last six years, but unfortunately that number isn't currently available.)
It's been one hell of a ride, and I just want to give a huge thanks to everybody who reads the site. You all make being a Lions fan a lot of fun, and I look forward to seeing where the future takes us not only as fans of the Lions but as a community here at Pride of Detroit.
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