Irritating Detroit sports things

Evidently, yours truly is missing out on a bunch of videos. Some of them might even be good. Why? Because when clicking on such, I will not, repeat WILL NOT be force fed an advertisement for 20-30 seconds before being allowed to see the video that should have popped up in the first place. I understand the need for ads. They pay bills. But make them optional, not mandatory. Put them off to the side where a user can make a choice whether or not to pay attention to them. Making them a prerequisite to viewing what one originally clicked on is not only wrong -- it's insulting.

The Detroit Tigers' hype is getting old. Their media is counting down their "magic number" to either clinch the AL central division crown or qualify as a wild card team. Hey, enough with the former Cy Young winners, MVPs, and even a triple crown winner a while back. And enough with blockbuster trades and free agent signings. If they're all that -- show me a World Series championship -- which, BTW, they haven't won in 30 years.

Same with the Detroit Lions. They beat a bad NY Giants team at home, lost to a pretty good Carolina team on the road, then beat the Packers at home. This might be the year, quoth the ever-faithful Honolulu blue and silver lemmings. No, it is not. But hey, miracles have been known to happen. Bottom line? A Lombardi trophy is asking too much. But until the Lions are at least in the NFC championship game in January -- they can spare me the hype, because I tuned it out long ago. If memory serves me correctly, late USA olympic hockey team coach Herb Brooks once famously said -- fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Good grief, Lions' fans have bought into the same snake oil hocus-pocus nonsense every year since Eisenhower was President -- even as the ticket prices keep going up. What kind of fools are THEY?

The Detroit Red Wings just started their pre-season but, to their credit, they aren't predicting great things this year. They know they're an average NHL team.

And no word at all out of the Detroit Pistons' camp lately. Smart move. When you're already terrible with no help in sight, and those pesky Cleveland Cavs in their own division recently loaded up with Lebron and Kevin to complement Kyrie and a fairly stout supporting cast elsewhere, firing up the hype machine would be the epitome of cluelessness. They'll likely finish 20-some games back. Even the Palace roundball sappies would have enough sense to see through that -- I think. Best to lay low for a while until maybe, just maybe, the worm turns in a few years.

But the most irritating thing of all regarding Detroit sports? A new arena, that just HAS to be built to house the Red Wings. Joe Louis is no longer good enough. This is hogwash. More about that later. Stay tuned.....