From The Bleachers

Sure, the Detroit Lions have the worst record in football right now.

Sure, it’s an early game — but not that much earlier than the Sunday morning games.

Sure, it might not be the most exciting game on the tube today.

But here are a few reasons why you should watch the Detroit Lions/Tennessee Titans game.

First off, it’s a part of Thanksgiving tradition. Every year since 1934, the Lions have played on Thanksgiving, regardless of how well they’re doing or whom they play. True, they’ve lost every Thanksgiving day game in the last four years by 20 points, but really, who cares? It’s football. And who doesn’t like to watch football on a day off — even if it means just having the game on in the background while everyone is working on either the turkey or the pumpkin pies.

Secondly, which some might consider this the No. 1 reason to watch the game, is we have a home-town boy on the team in Jordon Dizon. The 2004 Waimea High School grad gets quite a bit of playing with the Lions on special teams and on plays late in the game. I’ve met his mother Darla Higa and company at a local bar early on Sunday mornings to watch the Lions’ games because we don’t have DirectTV and we always have fun watching for him.

Ask her when she comes back — she is currently in Detroit and will be at the game — we point and wave at the screen to say “Hi” to him. Obviously he can’t hear us, so he never waves back, but we like to do it anyway.

He was drafted this year to  play behind middle linebacker Paris Lenon, but has recently been playing the strong side.

“I’m just getting experience from it and last week was my first week lining head-up with the tight end – the guard and the tight end man-to-man,” Dizon told Chrissie Wywrot of detroitlions.com, “So that was a lot of experience for me and, like I said, it’s a learning thing and it’s fun.”

Third, the game will be on national television. As earlier stated, we’ve had to go somewhere to watch the game because none of the Lions’ games were broadcast to everyone. It should be a pretty good game since the Lions have gotten noticeably better and the Titans are coming off a terrible loss to the New York Jets. And who doesn’t want to root for a home-town boy playing football on national television.

You never know what could happen. This could be a trap game for the Titans. Because they’re coming off a loss, and the Lions have been getting better, they just may be able to pull off an upset. They’ve at least been scoring in the double digits since mid-October. Still though, it is the Tennessee Titans who have a strong defense.

So, in short, when you wake up early in the morning, switch on the game, try not to get gravy on your Lions shirt and maybe scan the crowd for Darla Higa. She makes jokes about how Jordon never waves back to us, so we’ll see if she does.