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The viral Detroit Lions fan is a reminder of humility and authenticity

The viral Detroit Lions fan is a reminder of humility and authenticity

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It's not often that you do the same thing for 10 years and one day you become famous because of it. But that's exactly what happened to David Bodine on Sunday in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

He was wearing a clever hat at a football game and suddenly his phone exploded. friends, family, all He called him or texted or messaged him on social media apps to let him know he had just been seen on national television.

Well, not even caught highlightedand if this had been 10 years ago, certainly 15 years ago, the three seconds of glory would have ended right there at Lambeau Field. Another fan with funny clothing or clever trolling signage.

Bodine, if you haven't heard by now – and you probably have, since he's spent the last few days chatting happily with reporters, podcasters and radio stations – wore one to the Detroit Lions' game against the Packers Cheese grater hat.

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His wife, Sarah Bodine, who was also at the game, wore a cheese head hat; She is a Packers fan and grew up in Menominee, an hour north of Green Bay and just inside the Michigan state line.

The juxtaposition of the grater and the cheese head made for the best kind of unspoken trash talk, even though viewers had no idea the pair were a couple. Shortly after Bodine was spotted by Fox cameras, he felt his phone vibrate. It was early in the third quarter and Jahmyr Gibbs had just scored a touchdown to give the Lions a 24-3 lead.

He refused to take it out of his pocket. He's a relative idiot in this regard, figuring that his annual trip from his home in Houghton to Green Bay to see his beloved Lions is best viewed with his natural eyes.

But the vibrations continued and he finally gave in and pulled out his phone. At that point, Barstool Sports had released a screenshot of the broadcast's recording. The same goes for ESPN too. This was the main afternoon slot of the day and the Lions are a real eye-catcher and people wanted to know who he was.

Being the affable guy that he is, he took a selfie, beer in hand, including a rubbing hat, of course, and posted it on Twitter.

“Apparently,” he wrote, “I'm making the rounds on this app in case anyone's wondering who the @Lions fan in the cheese grater is…”

As it turns out, many were wondering, and 1.6 million views later…well, Bodine had gone viral. At this point he had several options, and it is to his credit, in this age of self-promotion, that he chose this one:

Humility.

With a portion of self-irony.

Hundreds of new “friends” began giving him advice about what to do with his life and insisting that he find a way to make money.

“This is the American way,” they told him.

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Meanwhile, another army of digital life coaches barked that he was a fraud because he wasn't the first to don a rub hat at a Packers game.

After posting the selfie, Bodine quickly wrote that the hat wasn't his idea. A Chicago Bears fan apparently came up with the idea years ago.

But one of the problems with social media is that posts are quickly deleted and visitors don't always understand the context. To ensure that no one thought he was taking credit for someone else's creativity, he kept repeating that he was merely a caretaker.

“Just the way I am,” he said.

Imagine that? Make sure over a million fans don't suddenly get the wrong idea?

Bodine, of course, gave his parents props.

“That’s how they raised me,” he said. “My parents always worked hard and tried to get through everything honestly.”

It also helped that he had studied social media in college – he had majored in marketing at Central Michigan. And that he learned an important lesson early on:

“You have to be authentic. I will be no different online than I am in person. I’ve always been like that.”

As for the money?

Yes, of course, he would have liked to earn something, perhaps lend his image to a company or get into the influencer business.

But?

“I don’t feel right trying to make money off (someone else’s idea),” he said. “It would be great if I felt like it was ethical.”

Bodine bought the hat a decade ago – he still has the receipt; It cost $40 plus $10 for shipping – from a company called Grater Head. The company has an Instagram page, but as far as he knows, it is no longer in business. (An online search yielded no results.)

He estimates he's worn it 10 to 15 times over the years, always to a Lions-Packers game. He mostly watched his favorite team play in Lambeau because it's closer, but he also loves wearing it at Ford Field.

It's not the first time he's attracted attention because of his hat. He was at Ford Field on New Year's Day 2017. The Lions held the lead in the NFC North before losing their last three games, including a heartbreaking game against Green Bay this afternoon.

A fan in front of him held a sign that read, “New Year, Same Old Lions.” On the back, just in case, it said, “New Year, New Lions.”

Bodine could understand that. He grew up in Canton and played football at Novi Detroit Catholic Central. By the time he graduated, he was fully privy to the Lions fan base and all its glorious torments.

“I thought it was funny,” he said of the sign.

So did a photographer who centered the desperate shield bearer in his lens, but caught Bodine in the corner of his frame. The Free Press published it. The rubbing hat went unnoticed.

That the hat stood out this time is a reminder of how much this franchise has changed and how far this team has come in just a few years. Bodine was in the right place at the right moment, and when the cameras caught his rubbing hat, he became a stand-in for hundreds of thousands of fans who had been waiting for ages to chat.

And to smile.

As Bodine smiled in the selfie he posted, he had been smiling since the Lions won again at Lambeau. And while he doesn't have to live and die with loss quite as much as he once did – he's 35 now and thought it would take years off his life – in recent days he's enjoyed being a de facto spokesman and about it to talk about how joyful it is to love this team.

This is a great reward for Bodine. Not so much the temporary spotlight, but the opportunity to talk about the rebirth at Allen Park.

“Even Packers fans told me they thought it was hilarious,” he said.

Both at Lambeau Field and on the four-hour drive home to Houghton, where he works as a marketing manager for a software company that writes programs for the auto industry.

There, in the backseat of a car, he responded to as many mentions on Twitter as he could, savoring the victory, the moment, and the best feeling in sports fandom:

Ascension.

Contact Shawn Windsor: [email protected]. Follow him @shawnwindsor.

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