Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell’s bizarre request to bring a live lion to the team’s sidelines was denied by league officials, the coach recently admitted.
During a recent appearance on the Barstool Sports’ “Pardon My Take” podcast, the coach himself admitted that his big gameday experience idea was given the big N-O, Fox Sports reported.
Campbell said that at the start of the 2020 season, he floated the idea of bringing a live lion to the sidelines with team owner Sheila Hamp Ford and Ford thought it might be a good idea.
Head coach Dan Campbell of the Detroit Lions reacts during the first half of the game against the Carolina Panthers at Bank of America Stadium on December 24, 2022, in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Grant Halverson/Getty Images)
But the NFL disagreed.
“Sheila, she had no problem with it, but the league apparently frowns on those types of things,” Campbell explained.
“I’m not gonna point out [NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell] on this, I’m just gonna say the league frowns on that, let’s just say that,” he added.
This week’s podcast is not the first time Campbell told the media that his big lion idea was shot down.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to do it, but I would love to literally just have a pet lion,” he said in May of 2021. “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 7-on-7, we’re behind the kicker when he’s kicking. There we are.”
A view of a lion during hot weather at Izmir Natural Life Park in Izmir, Turkiye, on June 23, 2023. The park hosts about 3,500 wild animals from 130 species brought from different geographies of the world. (Lokman Ilhan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
In 2021, Campbell blamed some of the problem on People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
“The problem is I don’t know if PETA’s going to allow that, though. It’s gonna be hard. Believe me, though, we would take great care of it,” he said. “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 is a creature now. This is an animal. This thing, this is from the wild.”
Lions fans hope their team gets to the playoff for the first time since 2016, especially since they just missed the mark last year.
It is questionable whether having a live lion on the sidelines would be much of a help, though.
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