My favorite team of all time has to be the Detroit Lions. I’ve been to more games than I can count, I have watched the ones I couldn't go to, and have spent more time reading Twitter rumors about the team than I do studying. But not this year. This year, I went Lions-Free.

I just couldn’t do it this year. The Lions have trained me to accept pain my whole life. I’ve physically gotten sick after some of the games I’ve seen. The Monday Night game against the Ravens two years ago still haunts my dreams. And this year I decided that I wasn’t going to watch anything. I didn’t want to go through the pain that comes from watching the Lions find new ways to lose games.

Good God it felt like I made the right decision.

Now, let me be honest. I wasn’t perfect in cutting the Lions out of my diet. I occasionally watched a drive when my roommate had the game on, but I totally succeeded in not becoming emotionally invested in the team.

When the referees screwed up that call against the Seahawks and cost the Lions the game, I was in bed asleep. I saw the replay on SportsCenter the next morning and laughed. The Lions had somehow managed to find a new way to lose, and I didn’t care. I wasn’t mad at the refs or the NFL like most of my family and friends were. I wasn’t scrambling to see how that game would affect the chances of the Lions going to the playoffs, because I wasn’t even going to watch the playoffs if they made it. When Aaron Rodgers launched a Hail Mary and somehow managed to beat the Lions a few weeks later, again, I didn’t care. I didn’t even watch the game.

The Lions weren’t going to ruin my fall and winter again, I wasn’t going to let them. I’m usually pretty optimistic compared to most Lions fans, so I somehow managed to convince myself that this was the year that they were finally going to do it. It worked, too. The only football team I cared about this this year was the Michigan State Spartans. And it was fantastic. For the first time in my life, my weekends weren’t ruined by losses on Sunday.

But looking back on the year, something didn't feel right. I missed my losing Lions.

I can’t explain why, but I just missed the hell out of the team. I missed going to the Thanksgiving Day Game with my whole family. I even missed my dad and my uncle getting in to arguments in the car on the ride back when my dad thought that Lions should have ran it when my uncle said they were right to try and pass.

The team may be one of the worst run organizations in all of professional sports, but they were my worst run organization.

So now that the Lion's season has come to a close, I’m back. I’ve already spent two hours researching the Lions new GM hire (I like it), and I’ve already gotten into arguments with people on Twitter about whether or not Calvin Johnson retiring is a good thing (it’s definitely a good thing).

I definitely enjoyed not caring whether or not the Lions won or lost, but I’m never doing it again. I realized that even though the Lions are always going to hurt me, I’ll take the pain over not having them in my life.

How does a team that is supposedly full or professionals lose while also not allowing a touchdown? I will never understand, but I also will never stop watching them do it ever again.