Just how amazing was the Detroit Lions’ 24 to 14 Monday Night Football game win over the Chicago Bears? It was so massive, it dominated Google Trends, with 10 of the 20 top searches being keywords related to that ESPN Monday Night Football game after it was over, and with 6 still on Google Trends as of this writing Tuesday morning: Detroit Lions, Chicago Bears, Calvin Johnson, Nick Fairley, Barry Sanders, and Ndamukong Suh.
For one game to almost take over Google Trends is a rare event, as not even some Super Bowl contests can lay claim to such clear search domination.
While Google Trends doesn’t show regional search intensity down to the city (it used to but Google is in the habit of hiding media-friendly data lately), it’s not hard to determine that much of the activity is being generated by the legions of long-suffering Lions fans, mostly in Michigan.
With that victory, the first 5 and 0 start in Detroit since 1956, the Lions, along with the Detroit Tigers current run in the MLB Playoffs, have electrified a city that needed a shot of good civic news.
The Motor City has been hammered by ultra-high unemployment rates: the result of corporate disinvestment. In fact, one post reports that, when part-time workers looking for full time work are considered, Detroit’s true unemployment rate is 50 percent. That stands in direct contrast to the unemployment rate for the Detroit metro area, which is just around the still-high number of 10 percent.
But with all that, Detroit Lions fans still found ways to get tickets for the Chicago Bears game – it drew a record crowd of over 67,000.
Are the Lions for real? Next week’s game against the surging San Francisco 49ers this week will determine just how far the Lions have come.
Stay tuned.
Bill Carroll