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Ah, now you see.

The really interesting thing about Matt Millen is that the hiring part is not what was so bad. At the time, everybody actually thought it was a great idea.

The most egregious part of the man's Detroit experience was how long it was allowed to continue.

Now in retrospect, this should not have been any great surprise. There was precedent in place for Millen's extended tenure.

Millen was only the third GM appointed to the Lions since Ford bought the team in 1964.

Russ Thomas ran the team for 22 years (1967-1988), finishing his tenure with a .443 winning percentage and only six winning seasons (four of those were under head coach Joe Schmidt).

Chuck Schmidt took the team over in 1989 and effectively took on the role of "hire head coaches, help where requested, stay out of the way." That approach led the Lions to a .495 winning percentage, three 10-win seasons and a playoff victory. Schmidt's tenure ended with the Lions narrowly missing the playoffs in 2000.

See what I'm getting at here? Millen's predecessors were each with the team for more than two decades, and it's not like Ford was demanding excellence from them. Millen's eight-year tenure is minuscule by comparison, so it's not like Ford was going to dump him after three years (no matter how often the fans told him to).

Still, his contract extension after five losing seasons? Bad.

Throwing people out of games for "Fire Millen" signs? Bad.

A .277 winning percentage in eight years? Bad.

Going 0-for-the-draft every year between 2002 and 2006? Bad.

There was just so much bad in Millen's tenure and, with few exceptions, it got worse every year.

Ford is a good man for showing loyalty to his employees and, to a certain extent, he is to be commended for standing by his guy in the darkest of times.

But where there is a good, compassionate man respected for his commitment to Millen, he is a poor business owner. The Detroit Lions are a business and allowing one man to run a would-be lucrative business into the ground in the name of loyalty to the guy in charge is not how you run a successful outfit.

You would think the grandson of Henry Ford would have known a little better than that.

Who knows where the Lions would be today if not for the great-grandson of Henry Ford?