I just saw a ''happy'' story on TV, explaining that stores that make going-out-of-business signs are doing well. More pumpkin pie, please!

But if you're a snarly-faced Bears fan, in debt, mortgage-damaged, with credit-card plastic scissored all around you, there still is something to be deeply thankful for -- you're not in Detroit.

While many Chi-Town folks are disgruntled over the economy and the Bears' 6-5 record -- even though they are in a first-place tie with the Vikings in the anemic NFC North -- those fans have no clue what it's like to live in the flat-lining Motor City or ROOT for a sinkhole like the Lions.

About Detroit's economy, let me say just three things: GM, Chrysler, Ford. OK?

Then there's Football.

Not only are the Lions the only winless team in the NFL at 0-11, but they also have given up more points (346) than any team in the league and lose by an average of two touchdowns. They make Charmin seem hard. The mighty Bears have gotten a third of their wins against the Lions.

The Lions are so bereft of talent, coaching, passion and winning history -- one playoff victory in 51 years, zero Super Bowl appearances -- that there is a decent chance they can run the table and become the first 0-16 team in NFL history. Such a stench would make the 0-14 Tampa Bay Buccaneers of 1976 smell almost fresh.

''I still think it's impossible,'' veteran Detroit Free Press sports columnist Drew Sharp says of the run to imperfection.

Sharp is not a happy-blue-sky writer, either. As I speak on the phone with him, he calls the Lions' failure ''a kick in the gut'' for the reeling city, a nausea-inducing paradox. ''You go to the front page of the paper, and there's GM and bankruptcy and all that. Then you go to the sports pages, and there's the Lions. Sports are supposed to be an escape from all that.''

It's just that Sharp can't believe the Lions are that bad.

'Lions seem doomed to fail'

I remember talking with the late running back Ricky Bell, who was part of the '76 Buccaneers' winless season, and marveling as the Heisman Trophy runner-up from USC described how he finally had heard enough from the jeering hometown fans and, like a normal man gone berserk, started to climb into the stands to fight all of them.

The Bucs were a relatively new franchise at the time, and their ineptitude was partially because of a lack of development.

But the Lions have no such excuse. They just have done things wrong on and off the field for decades.

As Sharp acknowledges, ''The Lions seem doomed to fail. No other team has had a player die on the field [Chuck Hughes] or a head coach [Don McCafferty] die while mowing his lawn.''

Still, 0-16 has never been done.

Indeed, it seemed the losing had come to an end Sunday when the Lions took a big early lead over those record-holding Buccaneers.

''I wrote before that game that the Lions were going to beat Tampa Bay,'' says Sharp, who watched the game on TV at a bar in State College, Pa., where he had gone to cover Penn State the day before. ''It was 17-0 Lions in the first quarter, and this guy bought me a drink and said, 'Man, you must know something!' Thank God, I got out of there before halftime.''

The Bucs came back to win 38-20.

Don't forget the preseason

Detroit fans are so disgusted and have been staying away from Ford Field in such droves that the last three Lions home games have been blacked out on local TV. That won't be an issue for the Thanksgiving game against the Titans.

Such is tradition. And the power of a big Thanksgiving meal to make folks giddy with hope.

Which brings to mind recently signed, damaged Lions quarterback Daunte Culpepper, who started against the Bucs despite being out of Football for a year and joining the team three weeks ago while weighing nearly 300 pounds. Burp.

''Makes him a perfect Lions quarterback,'' Sharp says with a sigh.

The poor sportswriter seems to be arguing himself out of his own optimism. I tell him as much.

The Lions, after all, are 28th in the league in total offense and 31st in total defense.

Sharp, defeated, mentions wanly that the Lions did go 4-0 in exhibition games this summer and that the best-selling T-shirt in town is one that says, '' DETROIT Lions -- 2008 NFL PRESEASON CHAMPIONS.''

So eat, Chicago.

It could be a lot worse.

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