Practice, Practice?!?! C'mon man we're talkin' about practice!

Hey, my name is Mike Gray, and I am one of the co-owners of Belle Isle University Clothing LLC, I am also a local filmmaker and a college student out east, if you want to find out more about me you can take a look at our upcoming website, but I’m going to keep introductions brief because I wanted to focus on my first blog post.

I’m 20, and an avid sports fan, but as most people know being an avid sports fan in the city of Detroit is a little different than most places. It means: I love basketball and hockey, it also means I have never witnessed a championship in baseball or football. Which is sad because I’ve lived, and can remember seeing; both the Tigers and the Lions achieve the highest totals for losses in a season in their respective sports. I say this all to say, does anyone else realize that there is no other city in the world that loves sports like we do? I mean think about it, the majority of people alive in the city have never seen the lions have serious success, super bowl success, yet there were 15,000 fans waiting in the rain to see the lions practice, WE’RE TALKING ABOUT PRACTICE,

and what makes that worse is the fact that it was simulcast on TV (I was definitely watching). Chicago doesn’t do that for their teams, New York has doesn’t do that, ask the rangers, and LA sure as hell has never done that, you can ask Blake Griffin about that! So, many say the city of Detroit is the best sports city in the country, with 27 championships across all of our major sports we have held the limelight a fair amount of time, but my position is that we have the best fans in the world and we care the more about sports than anywhere else. Where else do you see fans bounce back from an 0-16 season better than the team, or fans celebrate a positive season after their Wings loose a nail biting championship game seven (after booing the other team of course).

Now the best fans in the world have all the reasons in the world to be more excited. The Tigers lead the AL central, and are getting better everyday, plus weekday tickets are cheap as hell. The Lions can only get better. They have an intriguing young core mixed with some talented new veterans, and of course Megatron on offense, and my favorite player, who I consider to be the Megatron of defense, Ernie Sims. Then you look at the Red Wings and although they are not as good as last year they will still be one of the best teams in the NHL, and they will be fun to watch. The Shock, gotta give the WNBA some love, are not doing great, but they go out there and play hard as hell every game. Finally, my favorite team in Detroit the Pistons. I am a fan of Joe Dumars because as my college coach would say, “he gets it.” Many people would disagree with me, but think about this 6 years of eastern conference championships, there are teams in the NBA that have never been to the eastern conference championships,

ask Jordan about that. When complacency would have been easy, Joe D said screw it and changed everything, and the funny thing is six months later every other team in the Eastern Conference did the same thing, and although the pistons are no longer the best, but they are returning the same fun to watch team of 04. Charlie V, and Ben G can flat out play and will be fun to watch not to mention, we have rookies again! Besides Rodney Stuckey and Tayshaun Prince the pistons rookies in the last few years haven’t mattered because the team was already playing at such a high level, but now we know that this team is scrappier, faster, tougher, and more athletic than they have ever been which in my book equals fun to watch! And with all of this Detroit is set for a year of surprises, nail biters, and more reasons to love my city!

--Mike G.