The Temptations have made plenty of special appearances at sporting events during the Motown group’s 64 years together.

But performing during halftime of the Detroit Lions-Dallas Cowboys game Thursday night — airing on Amazon Prime — will mean a bit more to the quintet and especially leader Otis Williams.

“It’ll be something different because it’ll be in what I still consider home, Detroit,” Williams, 84, the sole remaining founding member of the Temptations, says via phone from his current home in Los Angeles. “That’s where we started out, and now we’re coming back to do the halftime. It’s wonderful. I can’t do anything but sing its praises.”

Williams — who moved to Detroit from his native Texas when he was four years old — says he’s long been a Lions fan and is happy about the team’s success during the past few seasons. “For the longest time that we lived in Detroit there wasn’t anything happening” with the team, Williams notes. “Now they’re looking very promising.”

Some Lions players were known to hang around Motown during the 60s, most notably Mel Farr and Lem Barney, who sang backing vocals on Marvin Gaye’s hit “What’s Going On.” Williams recalls meeting them but adds that “the Tempts stayed on the road quite a bit, so we weren’t really around.” He does, however, recall Gaye’s desire to try out for the Lions at one point.

“I remember (Farr) telling me about Marvin wanting to do that,” Williams says. “(Farr) said to me, ‘Otis, he sings. We play football. He’s not gonna come show us what we’ve been doing since we were kids.’ He had me laughing talking about Marvin wanting to try out for the Lions.”

The Thursday Night Football appearance comes with the Temptations still busy on the road — the group performed Oct. 19 with fellow Motowners the Four Tops at Detroit’s Fox Theatre. The group is also continuing to celebrate the 60th anniversary of its iconic hit, “My Girl,” which was released just before Christmas in 1964 and became the Tempts’ first No. 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 during early 1965.

“I went into the control room and told Smokey (Robinson, who co-wrote and co-produced it with Ronald White), ‘I don’t know how big a record this is gonna become, but it’s gonna be a big record,’” Williams remembers. “Then in ’65, at the Apollo Theatre (in Harlem), we got telegrams from (Motown founder) Berry Gordy, the Beatles, the Supremes, the manager of the Copacabana, all congratulating us. I still have those telegrams in my home.

“It’s amazing how this song, which we recorded in 1964 and here we are in 2025 and the songs is just as loved now as it was when it came out. It’s just wonderful. I never would have imagined this song would take on the life it’s taken, but people love it. I always tell the guys we can change the show around, but we better not take ‘My Girl’ out of the rundown, ever.”

The Temptations will be appearing on the syndicated “The Kelly Clarkson Show” during December, and Williams says the group has a number of other projects its working on, possibly including a follow-up to its last album, 2022’s “Temptations 60.” Details, he says, will be announced soon.

This week’s “Thursday Night Football” game kicks off at 8:15 p.m. on Amazon Prime, with pregame coverage beginning at 7 p.m.