Sad Lions Billboard.JPG

Lions fan Niko Vlahakis, 23, of Northville is featured on a full-size billboard in downtown Detroit as part of dad's prank.

(Gus Burns | MLive Detroit)

Sad Detroit Lions fan Niko Vlahakis, 23, of Northville takes photo near the billboard his father had put up featuring a picture of him dejected at a Detroit Lions game as a prank.

DETROIT, MI -- It's sad being a Detroit Lions football fan. It's kinda funny being the son of a man with a twisted sense of humor who exploits your Lions misery by erecting an enormous billboard of your grief-stricken face in a major metropolitan area two blocks from your work.

That's what happened to 23-year-old Niko

Vlahakis of Northville, courtesy of his 53-year-old father,

Steve Vlahakis, also of Northville.

Clearly not a Lions-sponsored advertisement, MLive Detroit tracked down the Steve Vlahakis, who is leasing the billboard from CBS Outdoors.

The father said he and some friends paid to erect

the billboard featuring a saddened and befuddled

Niko Vlahakis, who is donning a Kevin Jones jersey and knit Lions hat in the front row of Ford Field during the heart-wrenching Monday Night Football loss to the Baltimore Ravens, next to the words, "Go Lions 2014."

Steve Vlahakis neglected to mention this to his son, who works about two blocks away at Quicken Loans as a recruiter for the Dan Gilbert family of companies.

The image was captured by ESPN during its broadcast of

the Dec. 16 game, during which Baltimore Ravens kicker Justin Tucker,

whom Steve Vlahakis was taunting from his first-row vantage point

,

boomed a 61-yard field goal -- his sixth of the night -- to defeat the flailing Lions 18-16 in the final minute.

"

I had a great time until (Matt) Stafford threw an interception in the third," said Niko

Vlahakis, who attended the game as a last-minute surprise from his father. "Once he threw that interception, I'm just sitting there a sad Lions fan, shaking my head. No words could explain it. You can see it on my face."

After the game, the image became a popular meme -- search for "sad Lions fan" and the image of Niko Vlahakis is surely among the results -- and was shared by Niko Vlahakis, his friends and throughout the Internet.

About six weeks ago, Niko Vlahakis was enjoying a post-work beer with some friends at the Hard Rock Cafe in downtown Detroit when he received a call from a friend in Arizona. The friend saw a picture of the billboard in a Twitter message posted by a WXYZ, Channel 7 Action News reporter.

"There's no way there's a billboard of me in Detroit," Niko Vlahakis said he told his friend.

He said, 'It's right by Buffalo Wild Wings.'"

After the beer, Niko Vlahakis walked toward his car.

"I turned the corner and there's my face on the billboard," he said, adding his next move was to call his mother.

"I don't know what to tell you but there's a billboard of me in Detroit with a sad face and 'Go Lions,'" he told his mother. Then he spoke to his father.

"I've never heard the guy laugh so had in his life," Niko Vlahakis said. "What billboard," he said and "just starts laughing his ass off."

The billboard is paid for through the end of February. Steve Vlahakis, whose company Seaway Painting contracts with CBS Outdoors, didn't want to publicly reveal what he paid, but says he has no regrets about costly prank; "It came out real good."