This is not my beautiful house...

So I've been kind of a bad sports blogger this week. By Tuesday, when I came up for air after working on The Sporting Noobs' inaugural podcast (while alternately clearing leaves from my yard into the street for the city to pick up and finalizing plans to completely avoid costumed children later that night), I realized that I didn't have many original thoughts in my head to offer.

I was all set to write about coping with the Tigers' World Series loss, only to find that Billfer had already detailed the five stages of grieving. How about that? Well, maybe I'd joke about the fact that I was suffering from temporary sports burnout after following that World Series so closely. Except Big Al had the baseball hangover thing covered. Damn it. Boy howdy, the local sports blogosphere is really strong right now.

(Seriously, though - a lot of great stuff has been produced over the past few weeks. Bloggers have really shown what they're capable of, giving the kinds of insights and opinions that just didn't seem available in mainstream newspapers. [Or maybe the papers just seemed redundant when Detroit Sports Blog Nation gave me everything I needed/wanted.] Good show, everyone!)

But this week, it's kind of felt like coming back home after being away for a few years. Your parents turned your old bedroom into a smoking lounge or an oversized storage closet. Or your friends have new friends. Maybe a couple of them have gotten married.

And they may also now have kids, which means they don't want to go out and do cool stuff anymore, like watch a suddenly very important Thursday night football game at a sports bar, yell at the top of your lungs at giant screens, drink much more than you should when you have to go to work the next day, and exchange high-fives and/or hugs with (equally) drunken strangers over two schools you've never really given a $#!+ about.

(I'm speaking totally hypothetically, of course. Though if I may add some constructive criticism to this, like, completely fictional scenario, the second you ask your wife if you can go, you can't go. You just gave up any say you had in the matter. Just an opinion. Maybe I don't know anything since I'm single, childless, and spent the evening flipping between Louisville-West Virginia and Grey's Anatomy. And after all, the children are the future.)

Hang on - there was a point in here somewhere. I just need to find it again. Oh yeah - everything else in Detroit sports kind of has an unfamiliar feel to it, even if I'd been following it (albeit with somewhat divided attention) throughout the season.

Case in point: The University of Michigan football team. (I realize that I wrote a lot about Michigan football last season, which made several blogs generously list me in their sidebars as a "Michigan" blog, and sent some people over here to get some Sunday morning post-mortems. I apologize for slacking on that. All I can offer in my defense is that I was seduced by the mistress baseball. She was looking damn fine, man.)

I knew they were having a great year. I've enjoyed watching their defense crush opposing quarterbacks into dust, like a loaf of stale French bread. But is their season already almost over? Really? Man, that went by quick. Ohio State in two weeks? Wow. Well, at least I'll be able to settle back into the groove and watch the Wolverines play Ball State on TV tomorrow.

Wait a minute. What's this you're telling me? The Michigan game won't be on local TV tomorrow, because it's being carried by ESPNU (for which the "U" apparently stands for "Unknown to your local cable company")? That can't be right, can it? Seriously, won't a local station (Channel 7 in Detroit) pick up the feed? It has to be available. The game's a sell-out. And we're talking about the #2 team in the entire frickin' country!

Okay - apparently, I'm a few days behind on this. (Remember, the mistress baseball.) Surely, someone who knows more about the situation will tell me it's all going to be fine, and I can sink into my armchair with some pizza and watch the game like I always do? What? You're telling me it's not on regular TV.

So the only way I'll get to see Michigan-Ball State (which admittedly will hardly be the greatest contest in college football this weekend) is to either a) scalp a ticket to the game, b) invite myself to the aforementioned buddy with kid's house, since ESPNU is only available via satellite and he has Dish Network, or c) get up early and stake out a table at the previously mentioned sports bar.

I like to fall back on four words during times such as these: ARE YOU #@$%ING SERIOUS?

Yeah, yeah, yeah - I can listen to the game on the radio. I probably will. Unless I decide I'd rather just go see Borat in the afternoon instead. And yes, I understand that in the old days, such a game wouldn't have been on television. We've become spoiled. But you know what? In those old days, I wouldn't have been able to stomp up and down and pitch a fit on my sports blog either. I like these days, okay? Stick that "old days" talk in a pipe, douse it in gasoline, light it, and then roll around on the ground to try and put out your flaming upper torso, okay?

And you may ask yourself - Well... how did I get here?