1957 was an interesting year in American history. Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated as President of the United States, New York’s National League baseball teams (the Dodgers and the Giants) moved to California (Los Angeles and San Francisco respectfully), but most importantly, the Detroit Lions won the NFL Championship that year.

If you are a Lions fan, you know very well about how the Lions have never won a Super Bowl, let alone played in the game. But, the Lions have won a few NFL Championships, which was essentially the equivalent to the Super Bowl before the first one was played in 1966. The Lions won the championship 4 times: 1935, 1952, 1953, and finally, 1957.

The team also played in the championship two other times: the first time was in 1932, when the team was still based in Portsmouth, Ohio and were known as the Portsmouth Spartans, where the team played the Chicago Bears. This is not only important in Lions history, but also in league history, as this was the first time that the league’s champion was decided from a championship game, rather than deciding the champions based on which team had the best record by the time the season ended. The Spartans (now Lions) lost 9-0.

The second time was in 1954 (now as the Detroit Lions), when the team was the two-time defending champions, and the Lions played, for the third straight time, the Cleveland Browns. The Lions-Browns rivalry was a huge part of the NFL back in the 1950s; these two teams played each other in the championship game a whopping four times, which is ironic now considering that the Browns, alongside the Lions, are the two teams that have the longest droughts in the league to never once make it to the Super Bowl. The 1954 matchup was the only time that the Browns won, beating the Lions in a blowout: 56-10. The Lions would later exact revenge against the Browns three years into the future in the team’s final championship matchup. This time, the Lions won 59-14 and would never win the championship again. The Lions would however win a few “Playoff Bowls” which was basically the NFL giving a consolation prize for the third place finisher in the league. Since the Super Bowl era however, the Lions have won a grand total of one playoff game and is only one of four teams currently that have never played in a Super Bowl.

So what happened to this historical winner?

Well, the main cause for the Lions’ downfall is poor ownership. William Clay Ford Sr. bought the team in 1961, which was a season before the team’s last “Playoff Bowl” victory, and since then, the Lions have only made the playoffs thirteen times and have lost all but one of them. Though Ford Sr. died in 2014, his family still owns the team, with his daughter Sheila being today’s owner. While ownership has improved from what it used to be, with Sheila taking an active role at making the Lions a great team once again, her father did not care about the Lions’ success, but instead cared more about the money the organization was making him, particularly in the ticket sales.

Regardless of who is in charge know, it is important for those who follow the Lions to know about the team’s incredible history as a staple in the NFL, and hopefully someday, the Detroit Lions will return to its former glory.