God Help Detroit

On Friday, January 16th, the Detroit Lions introduced Jim Schwartz as their new head coach for the upcoming 2009-2010 season.  After interviewing several other candidates including Jason Garrett, the Offensive Coordinator of the Dallas Cowboys, the Lions landed with the Tennesse Titan's former Defensive Coordinator Schwartz.  The bar has been set "high" for Scwartz, as he only needs to win one game next season to have a better record than his predecessor, Rod Marinelli, in the 2008 season.  During a press conference, Schwartz stated that, "I don't shy away from a challenge."  I hope not, because challenge would be an understatement for describing any type of success to be had by the Detroit Lie-downs. Detroit has recently found itself as the punch line for a numerous amount of off-color jokes by local and national personalities alike.  Who could blame them?  Detroit has a plethora of reasons that the public can find humorous ranging from the constantly declining economic status of the city, the Kwame Kilpatrick debacle, and the newest addition, an 0-16 season by the Lions.  However, 2009 is a new year.  Even though I do not personally care for Mitch Albom, he made some interesting points in his article in Sports Illustrated.  I feel that the hiring of this coach, the inauguration of a new President, and removal of former Mayor Kilpatrick will all prove to help Detroit in the long run.  As far as the Lions are concerned, the front office will definitely have its work cut out for them as the draft approaches, and they seek to restore an image of success to the organization.  As it stands now, they are predicting that all Lions home games will be blacked out prior to Thanksgiving Day.  The combination of poor economic conditions for the surrounding areas mixed with a less than mediocre performance on the field has given marketers nightmares.  Attendance is falling, sponsors are pulling out, and feelings of apathy are beginning to set in.  People are becoming more and more expectant of failure on the field and are now doing something about it.  After years of horrible losing streaks, fans are getting fed up and doing something about it.  The recent decline in fan attendance is creating problems for the front office.  They must now resort to secondary methods for generating revenues.  

In closing, my advice to the Lions' front office would be to have more fan friendly promotions throughout the year.  I realize this may be difficult due to the shorter season length, but something needs to be done to restore excitement within not only the Lions organization, but within the city of Detroit itself.

Dollar Debauchery

As a recent addition to the 21 and up crowd (My birthday was December 9) I experienced my first ever dollar beer event at Van Andel Arena last evening as the Grand Rapids Griffins took on the Phantoms from Philadelphia.   The game was as exciting as any other AHL game with highly offensive minded teams rifling shot after shot at the opposing net minder, the occasional skirmish which was quickly disbanded by the officiating crew, much to the dismay of the heavily intoxicated crowd and of course, large amounts of beer.  It was intriguing to me just how many Griffins' "fans" are of the twenty-something target market and even more intriguing that these so called fans only attend games that take place on Friday nights.  Then I checked the schedule that I was so grateful to receive from an earlier game and saw that last night's date, similar to every other Friday night game was shaded in to signify that it was in fact the ever popular dollar beer and dollar hot dog night.  More often than not, I found myself spending more time observing the crowd than I did watching the semi-professional ice hockey players performing an elaborate symphony of skating, slashing, stick-handling, and swearing in more than a half dozen different languages that I was unable to decipher without my pocket translator... aka iPhone.   I would be lying to myself and to anyone unfortunate enough to be reading this if I did not take the time to mention that I had some secondary intentions behind my attendance last evening, namely looking for ideas to discuss in this entry.  Granted, I love semi-professional ice hockey as much as the next guy, but last night's experience was a magical mix of athleticism and advertisement.  If McFadden's Bar was a publicly traded entity, I would have bought 1000 shares prior to last night's contest.  It was not uncommon to hear the word McFadden's amongst a slur of expletives used in a grammatically incorrect fashion as they spewed from the lips of less-than-coherent frat guys in line for the bathroom.  During the second intermission, inebriated fans literally crawled over each other to catch the flyers that were falling from the sky as a promotional tactic by none other than...you guessed it...McFaddens.  On more than one occasion, the public address announcer threw in some plugs for the "Official After-Party" at McFadden's.  Little did the owners of McFadden's know, I was planning my own "Unofficial After-Party" at my apartment in Copper Beech completely withOUT $2 You-Call-It's until midnight, and ladies and gentlemen were both free before, at, and even after 11:00 P.M.  How's that for sticking it to the man?  In summation, if you're in the market for an inexpensive activity that incorporates semi professional athletics, advertising, and beer, Dollar Beer and Hotdog Night at Van Andel Arena is definitely the place for you.

Be Well...