In Detroit, Question Is Who to Cry For?

DETROIT -- In an earlier journalistic life, Friday would've been a really big day for me. The reason: the government, each first Friday of the month, issued its most-important piece of economic news -- the unemployment report -- and I covered economics. The report it issued this Friday was an instant Page 1 story, which is what they called the first thing you saw on this thing I worked at forever called a newspaper. Friday's report revealed the recession we're in pushed the unemployment rate to its highest mark in a quarter century, 8.5 percent.

Ground zero of the misery, the report indicated, was Michigan -- 12 percent unemployment -- where I arrived Thursday for the Final Four. I'm staying in a hotel next door to GM headquarters, a poster company for our worst economic collapse since maybe the Great Depression.

It is enough to make me want to violate one of the rules of my current journalistic life as a sportswriter and root from press row Saturday night for the Final Four participant from Michigan, Michigan State. What a nice balm, no matter how temporary, a national title for one of Michigan's state schools would be for economically suffering Michiganders. Unless you're from any part of North Carolina except Durham, or from the Philadelphia area, or Connecticut, I began to think, you'd be hard pressed not to root for the home-state team in this weekend's Final Four.

But not only would doing so be against the rule of no cheering in the press box, it also would be insensitive. North Carolina is represented here, too, and it is like Michigan, one of seven states with a double-digit unemployment rate, just over 10 percent. How about cheering for the Tar Heels to provide some salve for its hurting home-state fans?

Upon closer review, there is so much misery around that it is impossible to pick one team to cheer for -- or cry for -- more in this Final Four. Villanova hails from the Philadelphia area where unemployment is just under 10 percent. Connecticut just suffered its largest job loss since the recession officially was called four months ago.

What played out Friday in Detroit at Ford Field when the home-state team came out for practice, and what played out afterward in Troy, Mich., where Michigan State held a pep rally, probably would've been replicated in North Carolina, Philly and Connecticut , too, if this Final Four was in those locales. Everybody could stand a little feel-good in these times.

Someone said the Michigan State crowd that turned out for the Spartans' practice at Ford Field numbered at least 30,000, the largest crowd one reporter familiar with Michigan State said he'd ever seen. Undoubtedly, some of them were there because, sadly, they hadn't anything else to do in the middle of a workday at the end of a work week.


Spartans sophomore guard Durrell Summers from Detroit was asked whether anybody close to him had been hurt by the recession.

"Oh, yeah," Summers said simply. "My mom, my dad, my uncles. I could go on. I know a lot of people who've been touched by it.

"They got laid off and had to get smaller jobs for the time being, looking for other jobs and still trying to support families and things like that," Summers explained. "My dad used to work at General Motors. He's working at a post office. My mom used to work at Receiving Hospital as a lab assistant, and she's also at the post office."

"They're trying to see when the next thing is coming in," he continued. "Even through the bad times, they're constantly excited and cheering me on, telling me not to worry about it and keep doing what I'm doing. I've been kind of helping them through it as well, but this is big for them. They were just speechless and in tears, [with my team] making it this far.''

After their 50-minute practice and interview session, Summers and his teammates headed from Ford Field to Somerset Collection, a mall in Troy, where of upwards of 7,000 Michigan State fans in green crowded every inch of an atrium on three levels for a pep rally to spur on their Spartans. The Detroit News reported that Michigan State President Lou Anna Simon called Somerset Collection "Spartan Land" for the day and praised the Spartans as examples in rebounding that the state of Michigan could emulate as it tries to get back on track economically.

Of course, there is nothing a college basketball team can do to stem the hemorrhaging of jobs and money in this hardest-hit state or anywhere else in the country. But if sports can ever be a diversion, this is the time and this is the place.

All you had to do was hear coach Tom Izzo address the pep rally crowd in his typical late-season raspy voice, which this time cracked with undeniable emotion.

"Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think we would be able to put on a show like this for all of you," Izzo told the crowd. "You made this the proudest day of my life, no matter what happens tomorrow."

Moments later a television reporter pulled Izzo aside and asked him about the afternoon.

"This is a dream come true for me," the Michigan-tough coach said before he wiped away his tears.

This can be a momentary awakening from a nightmare for so many here and elsewhere, too.



Kevin B. Blackistone is a panelist on ESPN's Around the Horn, the Shirley Povich Chair in Sports Journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, and a former award-winning sports columnist for The Dallas Morning News. He lives in Silver Spring, Md.