This week in Detroit sports

It has now been a week since the Detroit Tigers were swept out of the World Series. Manager Jim Leyland has been resigned Don Kelly, Jose Valverde, and Delmon Young are all gone. This has not been a great week but The Lions did win two games to get back to a .500 record. Of course the NHL lockout continues and we learned this week that this year’s Winter Classic to be held at the Big House is now a casualty of the latest NHL lockout. On top of all that the Detroit Pistons started their 2012-13 regular season schedule. Here are a few thoughts on the week that was.

November 4, 2012; Jacksonville, FL, USA; Detroit Lions running back Mikel Leshoure (25) runs with the ball during the first half of the game against the Jacksonville Jaguars at EverBank Field. Mandatory Credit: Rob Foldy-US PRESSWIRE

•Jim Leyland– I think him coming back is a good thing. I am very interested to see if this team can or even will resign Anibal Sanchez. 15 million a year seems like a big price to pay for what he brings to the table. Of course having Rick Porcello and Drew Smyly and the fourth and fifth starter isn’t a great alternative.
•Gary Bettman– this guy is a complete joke. It seems pretty reasonable that the NHL is in the state that it is in due to his mistakes. His calls that didn’t work out so great. Hockey in the Desert? Why didn’t that work? Expanding to Atlanta, and Columbus that hasn’t worked all that well either. There are too many teams not making money, and in my opinion that has little to do with how much the pay the players. The management of the NHL has bee horrific and that is why that league is not all that profitable. Of course with 3.3 billion in revenues that isn’t a easy argument to make.
•Lions– I think the Lions are a lot better team than what we have seen in the six games before their win against Seattle at home last Sunday. They followed that up with a dominating performance in at Jacksonville earlier today. This is a very talented offense that is finding out exactly what it is capable of, and the defense isn’t as bad as we think. Looking at the schedule the Lions have a real shot at making some noise in the NFC North. The next two weeks will tell us a lot more about this version of the Honolulu blue and silver.
•Pistons– They have yet to earn a win right? Who knows the Pistons are way to far away from most people to care about. I try to explain that to people not from Detroit that the Pistons are literally an hour or more away for most of us. There was some talk this week about moving the Pistons back downtown. That would be nice but multi use stadiums are often quite crappy for both sports. So a shared stadium with the Detroit Red Wings doesn’t seem all that great of an option to me.

There have been better weeks in the history of Detroit sports but, at the very least the Lions are heating up and maybe this season they will go on a run when it counts most. We shall see on that one. With no hockey I suppose we are all going to be Pistons watchers and hey baseball hot stove which is a great time.