Ranking Detroit Sports Teams by the Pain they’ve Brought Me.
Detroit Lions - Despite recent success, choosing anyone other than the Lions first would be like passing on Demarcus Ware or Shawn Merriman to select Mike Williams after drafting WRs Round 1 the previous 2 years before. This team was inept for most of my life. The most exciting day of the Lions season was the draft and by the end of it we were all questioning our fandom. I have a memory etched in my brain my freshman year in college on one of the first days when I wore my Lions jersey and during intros someone asked me “why do you still care about the Lions?” I didn’t have a good answer. Didn’t even end up thinking of a good response when a good come back usually hits you in the shower. Recent years have been fun but we need to actually finish the job before the window closes.
Detroit Tigers - Speaking of, the word “window” will forever make me shiver. How this team never won it all between 07-14 is criminal. How did this pitching rotation not win a title?
This era of the Tigers gave me so many incredible memories but they’re all tainted by our inability to win it all.
Detroit Pistons - Joe Dumars deserves a lot of credit for what he built in the early 2000s. But he also deserves tomatoes be thrown at him for everything that happened starting with the Chauncey Billups for Allen Iverson trade through the rest of his tenure. The Josh smith deal is my most hated Detroit sports contract (this might be a future blog idea) in my lifetime. Its hard to even list them here after how great 04 was but I’d say the following 17 years of irrelevance warrant some disdain.
Detroit Red Wings - over the past year, Hockey has snuck into consideration as my favorite sport and I’ve had the pleasure of watching the Red Wings fumble playoff spots in March in back to back seasons. They’ve never been to the playoffs at LCA and it hopefully next year that changes. But it’s impossible to list them any higher than last on this list. The excellence the Red Wings had in the late 90s through 2010 was awesome to live through. Ultimately, we had too much focus on the “playoff streak” instead of actually winning towards the end, which led to some bleek years. But the future is bright with prospects and maturing stars like Seider and Raymond.
Honorable Mention:
Detroit Vipers - incredible jersey/branding and it’s a shame they are no longer around. If the rumors of a PWHL team be granted to Detroit are true, I’d vote we make the next era of Vipers a part of the PWHL.
