Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell continues to emerge as one of the wildest and most interesting personalities in the NFL. If you think that’s a bit much, wait until you hear about his idea to motivate his team during practices.
In an appearance on Monday’s “Pardon My Take” podcast, Campbell said he had asked owner Sheila Ford Hamp about getting an actual pet lion to hang around the team’s practice facility.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to do it, but I would love to literally just have a pet lion,” Campbell said, via Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press. “Just a legit pet lion on a chain, 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.”
Campbell added that it would be even better to train the lion to go to the bathroom on the field if a certain positional group isn’t doing well.
“We’re going somewhere,” Campbell said. “The problem, I don’t know if PETA’s going to allow that. 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.”
Is Campbell serious? Probably not. That said, if the guy had a legitimate opportunity to parade a real lion around the team facilities, he’d absolutely take it.
Campbell made headlines for his epic introductory press conference, and the quotes haven’t stopped since. Win or lose, the Lions are unlikely to be boring as long as he’s around.
