There’s a long history of Buffalo and Detroit sharing their inspirational figures.

Joyce Carol Oates and Rick James, Bob Lanier and Pat LaFontaine.

They’ve easily crisscrossed the path around Lake Erie, whether by Interstate 90 or Ontario’s Highway 401, to find a familiar setting on the other end — another vibrant Rust Belt city that’s been kicked in the teeth but refuses to roll over. They’re union towns, hard-drinking towns. They’re poorer than most places their size. On the Canadian border, Tim Hortons is a local coffee shop and Labatt Blue is considered a domestic beer. Their sports teams are oxygen.

And, for generations, the Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions have deprived them.

There’ve been successes, of course: the Bills with their back-to-back AFL titles in the 1960s and four straight Super Bowl losses three decades back, the Lions with their pre-JFK dominance and Barry Sanders’ resplendence until too much dysfunction made him quit.

Who could have entertained the notion of Buffalo and Detroit playing for the Lombardi Trophy?

“It would be a Super Bowl made in heaven,” said Mary Wilson, widow of Bills founder and Detroit businessman Ralph Wilson. “It would be awesome.”

A possible championship preview will be the chief storyline on Sunday when two ringless franchises meet at Ford Field. The 12-1 Lions have been betting favorites to win the NFC, while the 10-3 Bills last week slipped back to the second-best odds in the AFC behind the Kansas City Chiefs, whom the Bills conquered last month.

Just three seasons ago, each fan base wanted to lash its head coach to a downriver barge. Lions coach Dan Campbell is the clear favorite for Coach of the Year. Bills coach Sean McDermott locked up his fifth straight AFC East crown with a month’s worth of games remaining.

“There are so many commonalities,” said John Beilein, former basketball coach at Canisius College and the University of Michigan. Beilein, a lifelong Bills fan from nearby Burt, N.Y., is the Detroit Pistons’ senior adviser for player development.

“It’s amazing how these teams have evolved. They’ve each had a renaissance, with their cultures of being good, smart teams that don’t beat themselves. Dan Campbell could run for mayor, governor, senator and he would win.”

Buffalo and Detroit are interchangeable when it comes to the old “drinking town with a football problem” quip.

Their NFL teams matter so much, at least in part, because they savor a happy distraction. Recent data shows they rank similarly among large metros in unionization (Buffalo first, Detroit seventh), poverty (Detroit second, Buffalo third) and excessive drinking (Buffalo fourth, Detroit 13th).

“It’s cold and dreary and gloomy and not a whole lot else to do, so they latch onto their teams,” said former Bills and Lions tight end Pete Metzelaars, who grew up in Michigan between Detroit and Chicago. “They’re towns that fell on hard times and needed to transition, needed to recreate themselves — much like their football teams.

“Buffalo lives and dies and bleeds with the Bills. The city’s hopes and dreams rise and fall whenever the Bills win or lose, walking around Monday morning all wowsy wowsy woo woo. Detroit’s been waiting for years and years and years to have a successful team. Now they’re living and dying with the Lions too.”

Sports examples of Detroit-Buffalo commingling are abundant. Chris Spielman was a heart-and-soul linebacker in both cities. Popular Bills quarterbacks Joe Ferguson and Frank Reich made their final starts for the Lions.

Dominik Hasek, the Buffalo Sabres’ greatest goaltender, lifted the Stanley Cup twice with the Detroit Red Wings. Iconic coach Scotty Bowman stood behind both teams’ benches and never stopped living in suburban Buffalo, usually spending his day with the Stanley Cup there in his backyard. Sabres great Danny Gare later became the Red Wings’ captain. Roger Crozier took the Conn Smythe Trophy with Detroit before becoming the first goalie in Sabres history.

No. 16 hangs from the rafters at each downtown arena. Lanier, the Bennett High and St. Bonaventure legend, is honored by the Pistons in Little Caesars Arena. LaFontaine, the Hall of Fame center who grew up in suburban Detroit, saw his number retired in KeyBank Center.

But it was Ralph Wilson who made the greatest crossover impact.

Wilson was a charter member of the Foolish Club, the group of firebrands who launched the AFL in 1960. The Detroit insurance, construction, trucking and broadcasting magnate owned a minority stake in the Lions and endeavored to be a full NFL owner, but he grew tired of the league’s reluctance to expand and threw in with the AFL instead. Wilson initially tried to put his team in Miami, but when the city refused to lease the Orange Bowl, he shifted to Buffalo.

“The reason Ralph went to Buffalo was because he was told it was such a great sports town, and Buffalo lived up to it,” Mary Wilson said. “Two great football cities. Detroit is an unbelievable sports town, but the greatest fans are the Buffalo Bills’.”

The Lions’ influence on the original Bills was unmistakable. Ralph Wilson hired Lions defensive coordinator Buster Ramsey as the Bills’ first head coach. The Bills also adopted the Lions’ uniform and helmet colors (Honolulu blue, silver and white), but switched to their current colors for their third season. A Bills-Lions summer exhibition was common from 1967 until the NFL took over preseason scheduling from individual clubs a few years ago.

Wilson remained dear friends with Lions owner William Clay Ford Sr. until their deaths 16 days apart in March 2014.

Mary Wilson assumed controlling ownership of the Bills until they were sold. Terry and Kim Pegula made the highest bid at $1.4 billion. It was a formality when NFL owners approved the Pegulas’ purchase at an Oct. 8 meeting that had been on the league’s calendar for over a year.

The date provided a poetic transition. Mary Wilson knew the final game of Ralph’s ownership era would conclude three days before the vote. She was there, sitting in the Lions season tickets Ralph maintained for over half a century, as the Bills won 17-14 in Ford Field.

The last Bills game of the Ralph Wilson ownership era was a 17-14 win against the Lions in Detroit. (Joe Sargent / Getty Images)

Now she helps oversee the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation, endowed with $1.2 billion from the Bills sale, with a focus on awarding grants in Western New York and Southeast Michigan. A major initiative was committing $200 million to transform underused parks into community destinations. Buffalo’s old LaSalle Park on the Niagara River became the 100-acre Ralph Wilson Park, and Detroit’s derelict West Riverfront Park is being turned into the new Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Centennial Park.

Not since landscape-architect grand master Frederick Law Olmsted created Buffalo’s parks system and Detroit’s Belle Isle Park in the late 1800s have the cities’ green spaces been so enriched.

“The two parks on the riverfront in Detroit and in Buffalo, they’re going to be Ralph’s greatest legacy,” Mary Wilson said.

Ralph Wilson would have emitted that trademark cackle upon learning his Bills were sold to a boyhood Lions fan. Terry Pegula grew up in Northeast Pennsylvania, but he adored Detroit Tigers right fielder Al Kaline. Pegula found it natural to adopt the Lions as his NFL team, too. Although never a Red Wings guy, Pegula tried to apply a heavy dose of “Hockeytown” mystique by branding his Sabres enterprise “Hockey Heaven.” The name didn’t stick.

Pegula has enjoyed substantially more success with his football club. From his first full season as owner, the Bills have a .611 win percentage (compared to a .463 win percentage before), reached the postseason in nine out of 10 seasons and endured just two losing seasons.

Two of the Bills’ victories happened with the Lions’ critical assistance.

Buffalo is the “City of Good Neighbors,” but the Lions twice came to the Bills’ rescue when deadly snowstorms struck Western New York and forced games to be relocated. At Ford Field, the Bills rolled the New York Jets in November 2014 and the Cleveland Browns in November 2022.

GO DEEPER

Bills cancel Thursday’s practice due to snow ahead of Lions matchup

Over the 64 years the Bills and Lions have existed, they’ve made the playoffs in the same season just five times. Before last year, they won a playoff game in the same season once. It happened in 1991, the Lions’ lone postseason victory between their 1957 NFL title and last year.

“My coaching years at Michigan were the same years the Bills were bad,” Beilein said, referring to Buffalo’s 17-year playoff drought that ended in 2017. “They went through three or four coaches, and so did Detroit. I had several guys on my staff and on the team from the Detroit area, and just remember lamenting about our teams and the misery-loving-company I had with all the Detroit fans. It connected us. A new coach, a new optimism, and there we are all over again.”

But the possibility of Detroit and Buffalo playing in the Super Bowl has added significance because somebody finally would win one.

A wonderful feat to win the AFC and advance four straight winters, but the Bills’ inability to cash any of their opportunities is an organizational scar.

From the group of 28 teams that existed upon the NFL’s 1976 expansion, the Lions and Browns officially are the last franchises without a Super Bowl trip, although the original Browns did morph into the Baltimore Ravens, winners of two Lombardi Trophies.

To explore what an NFL championship would mean to Buffalo or Detroit, scant better options exist than Mike Lodish, a native Detroiter and 11-year NFL defensive tackle. Lodish played in a record six Super Bowls. After appearing in all the Bills’ defeats, he earned two championship rings with the Denver Broncos.

“The biggest similarity between the two cities — more than being blue collar and the Great Lakes and all the manufacturing — is how their fan bases have such a desire to win a championship,” Lodish said. “Both Buffalo and Detroit need it because they haven’t had one. The need is monumental.

“If the Tampa Bay Buccaneers can win a Super Bowl, why can’t Detroit or Buffalo? Ultimately, it’s everything.”

Everyone interviewed for this story, however, insisted a championship parade would have greater significance to Buffalo. They’re all rooting accordingly.

Detroit, after all, has reveled in sports glory this century through the Red Wings, Pistons, Tigers, Wolverines and Spartans.

Mary Wilson sold the house in Grosse Pointe Shores, Mich., last month and considers herself a Western New Yorker these days. She got rid of her suite at Highmark Stadium, she said, because she got tired of playing hostess and simply wanted to concentrate on the game. So she has six Bills season tickets out in the crowd now.

She also still has two of Ralph’s six Lions season tickets. Mary will be sitting in Ford Field on Sunday, but cheering for the visitors.

“I’m really looking forward to this game,” Mary Wilson said. “People ask me, ‘Who are you going to pull for?’ I go, ‘Are you kidding?’ I never go against the Bills.”

(Top photo: Andy Lyons / Allsport, Kevin Sabitus, Harry How, Timothy T Ludwig, Mike Mulholland, Leon Halip / Getty Images, Steven King / Icon Sportswire)

NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Theismann gave two free cars to U.S. military veterans Friday to celebrate Saturday’s 125th Army-Navy Game. 

Theismann, who played against both Army and Navy multiple times during his decorated career at Notre Dame, showed up at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Friday to deliver the gifts.

Fellow former Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III joined Theismann, and the duo handed over the keys of two retrofitted vehicles to local active-duty military families. 

Theismann presented a 2024 Chevy Malibu to Navy Seaman Matthew Walker and his family, while Griffin gave a 2023 Chevy Equinox to Army Specialist Caleb Dooley and his family. 

The gifts were part of the Recycled Rides campaign in partnership with USAA. 

JD VANCE CONFIRMS DANIEL PENNY WILL ATTEND ARMY-NAVY GAME AFTER ACQUITTAL IN SUBWAY CHOKEHOLD TRIAL

Former NFL quarterback Joe Theismann speaks on stage during at SiriusXM at Super Bowl LIV Jan. 29, 2020, in Miami, Fla. (Getty Images)

Theismann told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview how “special” the giveaway is to him as someone who has great admiration for military members, especially on the eve of a historic anniversary for the Army-Navy game. 

“The service members will have transportation which they sorely need,” Theismann said. 

Theismann says the Army-Navy matchup is his favorite game this year. 

“It’s a competitive rivalry, it always has been,” Theismann said. “When we played the academy, there’s never any quit, we managed to run up some scores and put some numbers up, but it didn’t matter to the academy. They were there fighting from kickoff to the end of the game.”

No. 19 Army (11-1) won the American Athletic Conference championship with a 35-14 victory against Tulane Dec. 6. Navy (8-3) started 6-0 this season.

President Trump attends the annual Army-Navy football game at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia Dec. 8, 2018. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

This year’s Army-Navy game will also feature in-person appearances by President-elect Trump and Vice President JD Vance. 

Vance also announced in a post on X that Marine veteran Daniel Penny will be joining him and Trump in their suite at the game. Penny has recently drawn national attention after being acquitted for manslaughter for protecting New York City subway riders from Jordan Neely. 

This will also mark Trump’s fifth time attending the Army-Navy game. He first attended in 2016 and appeared three times during his first presidency. 

Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.

This wasn’t the way alpine skiing aficionados drew it up when they scheduled men’s and women’s speed races on the famed Birds of Prey course in Beaver Creek, Colo., on back-to-back weekends this month.

They figured the events held major potential for a celebration of the sport’s golden couple: American Mikaela Shiffrin, who might be closing in on her record 100th World Cup win, and her fiancé, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde of Norway, arguably the best speed skier in the world, both making the podium just a few miles from Shiffrin’s home down the road in Edwards.

That was Plan A. Not happening as Kilde announced in October he’d miss the entire World Cup season due to injuries sustained in a January crash.

On the bright side, Shiffrin is up on her feet and walking again after a crash of her own over Thanksgiving weekend in a World Cup giant slalom race in Vermont that left her banged and cut up and with a significant puncture wound in her abdomen. She is sidelined indefinitely, though she expects to be back before too long. Last weekend, she shot a video while walking carefully outside her home.

“I got my trusty little wound vacuum, we got it put in yesterday,” she said, showing off the gadget that can accelerate healing by decreasing air pressure over a wound, pulling out fluid and dead tissue and reducing swelling. “This is where I’m at,” she added with a look of reluctant acceptance as she stepped gingerly on an icy mountain street.

An update from Mikaela Shiffrin about her injury from the Killington World Cup race. pic.twitter.com/jTUIqyeZ12

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) December 7, 2024

Shiffrin’s latest injury also killed Plan B, which was for Kilde, who has spent nearly a year recovering from the major crash 11 months ago in Switzerland, to help coach Shiffrin this weekend on Beaver Creek’s Birds of Prey track — where he won three years ago and where she had never competed. Instead, he’s been coaching her in the art of patience and recovery.

Kilde has had to become an expert in that, unfortunately. The January crash wrecked his left shoulder, ripping muscles from the joint. It also left a deep gash in his right calf, courtesy of one of his skis. Then, in July, out of nowhere, an infection raged through his surgically repaired shoulder. He was on the edge of sepsis, a potentially life-threatening condition that occurs when the body’s immune system overreacts to an infection, damaging the body’s tissues and organs.

His heart racing, his shoulder swelling, his fever spiking, he went to the emergency room during a visit with Shiffrin in Colorado. Doctors took one look at him and told him he wasn’t going anywhere for a while.

There are few sports that test an athlete’s ability to manage injuries the way alpine skiing does. It has basically a 100 percent injury rate. So many of its top performers have missed full seasons or more to recover from ghastly bone breaks, torn ligaments, ruptured joints, concussions and everything else that can happen during high-speed crashes on ice while clamped into long, sharp-edged carbon boards. Skiers are good at doing the thumbs-up Instagram post from their hospital bed, but recovery and rehabilitation is anything but a happy process.

Shiffrin, 29, has been pretty lucky so far during her storied career, though last season she missed six weeks while recovering from damage to her knee ligaments that she suffered during a downhill race on the Olympia delle Tofane course in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, where the 2026 women’s Olympic competition will take place. She returned in time to capture another season slalom title, but the experience taxed her brain as much as her body.

“When you’re injured, whether it’s for nine months or eight weeks, you’re watching the world carry on without you being in a space where you are supposed to be, and that’s frustrating,” she said during an interview this fall before the start of the season. “There are so many moments of doubt when you feel pain or weakness, when it’s like, ‘I don’t know that I can do that.’”

That’s basically been Kilde’s life since his January crash.

The damage to both his shoulder and his leg left him wheelchair-bound for weeks, since he couldn’t use crutches. Kilde has been called “the Arnold Schwarzenegger of skiing” for his strength. His being too weak to get out of a wheelchair is a difficult image to conjure.

The gash in his calf severed nerves. For months, he could not make his foot and toes move the way he wanted them to. Sometimes his toes would just hang like appendages. Only in late spring did he begin to think that his foot would eventually work properly again, though he still hasn’t regained much feeling in the toes.

For months he felt like he had no purpose in his life.

“You lose your job and you’re injured, you can’t even do anything,” he said. “I can’t work on my shoulder which needed to be worked on. I can’t work on my leg which needed to be worked on. I can’t even be in the sun because of antibiotics. I had to be indoors. Just a really, really boring life, honestly.”

A few weeks in, he realized he needed to find a reason to get out of bed in the morning, especially since this recovery was going to take a while. So he looked into finding some way to stimulate his mind.

Kilde may be a two-time Olympic medalist with 48 World Cup podiums, but by some measures he is the black sheep of his very educated family. His father is an engineer. His mother is a nurse. His brother is a finance executive. He has a high school education, and for the last couple of years, he has largely focused on being outdoors and his athletic career. It had been a long time since he had to study. And even longer since he was interested in studying.

Aleksander Kilde gets evacuated by helicopter after a crash at a World Cup event in Wengen, Switzerland, in January. He’s still recovering. (Marco Bertorello / AFP via Getty Images)

He does have an interest in real estate, though. So he signed up for an eight-week online course in real estate and finance through the London School of Economics. There were a series of modules to complete each week, plus assignments and tasks, a final project and a certificate at the end.

The course description said the work would take up roughly 10 hours each week. He said it took him at least 20. He hadn’t worked with mathematical formulas in 15 years.

He said he learned plenty about his investments, but more than that, he learned something about himself.

“Reading and learning is really something that can give you a lot of energy,” he said. “I never thought of it like that before. I felt like I didn’t need it. But I think now, just always strive to learn. It’s really something that is good for you. Not only for your mental capacity but also for your mental health. It’s very nice to know things.”

It will be nice to ski again, too. He’s been cleared to get back on snow, but just for free skiing. He can’t go fast. He can’t crash. He needs another operation on his shoulder since doctors had to remove a lot of the work that had been done when they were trying to rid his body of the infection.

The next surgery will be the one that will make a comeback possible. For now, he can basically live a normal life. He just can’t ski race. To set himself up for that, he’s been paying close attention to his diet, cutting out alcohol and most sugar, making sure to eat quality meats and other proteins, biding his time for the opportunity to be able to do the thing that he has dedicated most of his life to. And if he needs his speed rush, he’s got a nice Audi that can go from zero to 60 pretty fast.

“And that’s fine,” he said.

His fiancée still has to work on her patience as she manages through her latest injury. She can be a little less zen than him at times, especially when she is on the sidelines, waiting to be healthy enough to get back into the starting hut at the top of the hill.

Then again, this one’s a little different.

“I’ve been impaled,” she announced in a video she posted on social media days after her crash.

You don’t get to say that every day. Not even when you’re an alpine skier.

GO DEEPER

Lindsey Vonn, at 40, returns to competitive skiing, earns World Cup eligibility

(Top photo of Aleksander Kilde and Mikaela Shiffrin: Alain Grosclaude / Agence Zoom / Getty Images)