Who will the Lions face in the NFC Conference Championship? Who will be home team?

The Detroit Lions are in the middle of a Cinderella season. The little football team who could managed to punch their way into the playoffs, past the LA Rams, past the Tampa Bay Bucs, and into the NFC Championship for the first time since 1991.

To get here, they have had to win three of their last four regular season games, including beating the Minnesota Vikings twice.

As plucky as the Lions have been, they now have their toughest challenge so far in front of them in the form of the top-seeded San Francisco 49ers.

The Niners have home field advantage throughout, meaning that if Detroit wants to win their first ever NFC Championship, they will have to do it in hostile territory.

The Detroit Lions are the last remaining NFC team to have never won a Super Bowl. In fact, they have never made an appearance in the big game.

One of the great historical teams who have been there since the beginnings of professional football in America, the Lions have a wonderful history which includes four NFL Championships in the pre-Super Bowl era.

Since the advent of the Super Bowl, however, the Lions have had a long run of diminishing fortunes. They have only been in the NFC Championship game once before, in 1991, when they were blown out by the Washington Redskins in a 41-10 rout.

As the Lions head to San Francisco, they will be feeling the full weight of this history on their shoulders, and the magnitude of their task is every bit as enormous as it was in 91. The Niners have been outstanding all season, making short work of the Western Conference during the regular season and sending a hopeful Green Bay team, ahem... packing.

This is certainly a steep hill for the Lions to climb, but one that the city and team have waited over three decades for. They can’t wait.