Detroit, Michigan In anticipation of the Detroit Lions’ NFL playoff debut on Saturday, a dozen Dan Campbell impersonators have banded together to invigorate the team’s fan base.
Members of the gang, known as the Motor City Dans, are ardent Lions supporters and also resemble the team’s head coach.
The Motor City Dans first met at a Dan Campbell lookalike contest at the HopCat restaurant location on Woodward Avenue in Detroit a little over a month ago.
Jeff Randall of Clinton, who won the contest and is a member of Motor City Dans, claimed that since he started coaching the Lions in 2021, many have told him he looks like Campbell.
Another group member, Jeff Nowosielski of Britton, claimed that after a group of Lions supporters at a Chicago pub called him by the coach’s name, his daughter that he enter the competition. Nowosielski, 53, is a former teacher, and Randall, 55, is a machinist.
One of the driving forces behind the Motor City Dans’s establishment was ESPN.
In order to record a piece for its show “Monday Night Countdown,” the sports network contacted contestants to invite them back to the HopCat location.
After filming the episode, Nowosielski claimed the group “started to blow up,” although at first he assumed ESPN was kidding when it reached out to him. Twelve of the 22 candidates returned, and we exchanged phone numbers, forming a sort of little group, Randall said.
In a recent TV appearance, Randall participated in an arcade punching game alongside former NFL players and sports commentators J.J. Watt, Matt Ryan, James Brown, and Nate Burleson at a pre-game broadcast outside Ford Field prior to the Lions’ game against the Buffalo Bills on December 15.
The Lions’ success this season has astounded the Motor City Dans, and Randall claimed that the players would “run through a brick wall” for Campbell. “The feeling is completely different,” Randall remarked.
“I’ve never seen that in my fifty-five years, and I believe it has really lifted the spirits of the entire state and the entire town of Detroit because they now have something positive to talk about.”
The Motor City Dans are now preparing for Saturday, January 18, at 8 p.m. at Ford Field, when the Lions meet the Washington Commanders in the NFL playoffs.
While Nowosielski claimed to have “lucked out” and obtained tickets to the game via a friend, Randall intends to watch the match from home. “This season has been really cool,” Nowosielski remarked. “It’s such an odd sense of sheer greatness.”
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